This time Fortune was on his side. He found the Minister’s wife seated at her writing-desk and apparently very busy. She was engaged, she told him, in drafting a very important letter to her husband concerning a singular adventure. Bassompierre, having an idea that this singular adventure might well have some relation to his own, pressed her to tell him more, upon which the lady explained that an attempt had been made that morning to counterfeit the King’s seal; that the man who had been sent to the engraver had unfortunately succeeded in effecting his escape, but that the letter of which he was the bearer had been seized, and that the President Séguier had just sent it to her, with the request that she would forward it to her husband, in order that he might lay it before the King, when perhaps they would be able to get to the bottom of the matter. And Madame de Loménie added that she would willingly give 2,000 crowns to solve this imbroglio. Bassompierre, with a sigh of relief, offered to enlighten her for nothing, and proceeded to furnish her with the same explanation of the affair which he had already given Madame de Moret. Madame de Loménie accepted it, and, after having given him a good lecture, promised to smooth things over for him, on condition that he would go on the morrow to Villers-Cotterets, where the King and her husband had just arrived, and take with him a report of the matter which she would draw up. Bassompierre agreed readily enough, as may be imagined, and, having called again upon Madame de Verneuil to obtain her answer to the King’s letter, and also upon Madame de Moret, who wrote likewise to thank his Majesty, although she had not received the one intended for her, set out for Villers-Cotterets, where Henri IV laughed heartily over the adventure, of which he does not appear to have suspected the true explanation. A few days later, Henri IV, in celebration of his bloodless victory over the Duc de Bouillon, made a sort of triumphal entry into Paris, where he was received with salvoes of artillery and loud acclamations from the populace. The effect of this ceremony, however, appears to have been somewhat spoiled by the extraordinary attitude assumed by the rebellious vassal whom he had just brought to heel, and who rode along bowing and smiling to the people who thronged the streets and the windows and roofs of the houses, for all the world as if he himself were the hero of the day and the object of all the acclamations. “He [the King],” writes Bassompierre, “desired M. de Bouillon to march immediately before him, and this he did, but with such assurance and audacity, that it was impossible to decide whether it was the King who was leading him in triumph or he the King.”