After Easter the King went to Fontainebleau, where on April 25 the Queen gave birth to her third son, Gaston, Duc d’Anjou, afterwards Duc d’Orléans. Bassompierre, however, excused himself from accompanying his Majesty, apparently on the plea of illness, and remained in Paris, where, he tells us, he passed his time very agreeably. “I pretended to be suffering from a weakness of the lungs, so that no one saw me until midday, when all the Court came to my lodging to pass the time until nine o’clock in the evening, when I made believe to retire, on account of my delicate state of health; but it was to pass the night in good company.” The “good company” he speaks of was a little coterie of gamblers, “eight or ten worthy men of the town, and of the Court, M. de Guise, Créquy, and myself,” who played for tremendously high stakes, since Bassompierre had considerately introduced amongst them a Portuguese merchant named Fernandez, who came prepared to make good the losses of those upon whom Fortune happened to frown, in return for approved security. This kind of arrangement was so convenient that, when the King returned from Fontainebleau, he wished to be of the party, which met every day either at the Louvre, Zamet’s, or the Marquis de Roquelaure’s; and doubtless the organiser of these _séances_, who appears to have been one of the luckiest gamblers who ever turned a card or rattled a dice-box, and the accommodating Fernandez, derived substantial benefits from them. In July, Queen Marguerite gave a grand _fête_ at the Arsenal, the principal feature of which was the then fashionable pastime of tilting at the ring. Bassompierre, of course, attended it, very splendidly arrayed, but also very reluctantly, since, as he naïvely explains, those gentlemen who, like himself, had several love-affairs on their hands simultaneously were often sadly embarrassed at these great assemblies, since all the ladies whom they professed to adore were sure to be present, and it was practically impossible to pay sufficient attention to one without giving umbrage to the others. “I thought,” he continues, “that I should experience great difficulty there; but Fortune came to my aid in such fashion that, without neglecting anyone, I contented all. For, in short, having stationed myself unintentionally beneath the Queen’s stand, where Mlle. de Montmorency[55] was sitting, Pérault,[56] who had served with me in Hungary, insisted on my taking his place; and then, for the first time, I spoke to her and strove to insinuate myself into her good graces, little imagining what was to happen later. After the _fête_ was over, I was delighted to see that I had contented all the ladies with whom I was on good terms, and that not one of them had had reason to be jealous of another, a thing which very rarely happened on such occasions.”