“After we had exchanged compliments,” he says, “I told him that I knew not whether to give him the _parabien_ or the _pesame_ on his approaching marriage,[163] since, although it might be a great satisfaction for him, nevertheless a gallant of the Court, such as he was, could not without sorrow abandon the pleasant existence he had led up to the present to accept a lonely life, full of anxiety and care, as was marriage. “He answered that he must perforce obey the master, who commanded him to execute what he had promised the mistress; and that, although it was a hard condition which he was placing on his shoulders, it was an ill for which there was no remedy. “It appeared to me, from his discourse, that the pack-saddle galled him, and that he would be very willing to find some alleviation. And this encouraged me to tell him that there were more remedies than he thought of, if he desired to be cured, and that the express command which I had received from the Infanta-Queen to assist in every way I could the duke-cardinal his father, as her own person, obliged me, when I perceived the palpable displeasure with which he and all his family regarded this forced marriage, to offer him, on this occasion, my aid and assistance to extricate him from it, if he so desired. “‘And what aid and assistance can you bring me,’ said he, ‘when neither I myself nor my relatives are capable of doing anything?’