“On Good Friday,” writes Bassompierre, “while we were at the sermon on the Passion at Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, La Varenne came to tell the Maréchal d’Ornano[20] that the duchess had just died,[21] and that we ought to prevent the King, who was travelling post to Paris, from coming there; and he begged him to go and meet him, in order to stop him. I was with the marshal at the sermon, and he asked me to accompany him, which I did. We met the King beyond La Saussaye, near Villejuif, travelling at the top speed of his horses. When he saw the marshal, he suspected that he was the bearer of bad news, which caused him to weep bitterly. Finally, they made him alight at the Abbey of La Saussaye, where they laid him on a bed. He gave vent to every excess of grief which it is possible to describe. At length, a coach having arrived from Paris, they placed him in it to return to Fontainebleau, whither all the princes and nobles had hastened to find him. We went with him to Fontainebleau, and when he had mounted to the great Salle de la Cheminée, he begged all the company to return to Paris to pray God for his consolation. He kept with him _Monsieur le Grand_, the Comte du Lude, Termes, Castelnau de Charosse, Montglat, and Frontenac; and, as I was taking my leave with all those whom he had dismissed, he said to me: ‘Bassompierre, you were the last who was with my mistress; stay with me to talk to me of her.’ So I remained also, and we were eight or ten days without the company being augmented, if one excepts certain of the Ambassadors, who came to condole with him[22] and then returned to Paris immediately.” During this time the King remained prostrated with grief. “My affliction,” he wrote to his sister Catherine, “is incomparable, like the person who is the cause of it. Regrets and tears will accompany me to the tomb. The root of my love is dead and will never put forth another branch.” But alas! how changeable are the affections of kings! Scarcely two months had passed[23] before his Majesty had embarked in a new love-affair, with Henriette d’Entragues, whom he created Marquise de Verneuil, that ambitious, greedy, intriguing woman, who, later, was to conspire with the enemies of France against her royal lover. Nor did this attachment prevent him from seeking amusement in other directions and honouring with his fugitive attentions, not only divers beauties of the Court, whose names Bassompierre does not hesitate to hand down to fame, but even that vulgar class which the chronicler qualifies with a word so explicit that we dare not repeat it. The following scene described by Bassompierre is too typical of the life of Henri IV and his immediate entourage to be omitted. It occurred during a flying visit to Paris which the King and a few of his favourites paid in July, 1599, while the Court was in residence at Blois:--