Enviable position of Bassompierre at the Court of France--The Connétable de Montmorency offers him the hand of his beautiful daughter Charlotte, the greatest heiress in France--The marriage-articles are drawn up--The consent of Henri IV is obtained--The Duc de Bouillon, whom Bassompierre has offended, endeavours to persuade the King to withdraw his sanction and to marry Mlle. de Montmorency to the Prince de Condé (_Monsieur le Prince_)--Henri IV falls madly in love with the young lady--Singular conversation between the King and Bassompierre, in which his Majesty orders the latter to renounce his pretensions to Mlle. de Montmorency’s hand--Astonishment and mortification of Bassompierre, who, however, yields with a good grace--Bassompierre falls ill of chagrin and remains for two days “without sleeping, eating or drinking”--He is persuaded by his friend Praslin to return to the Louvre--Mlle. de Montmorency is betrothed to the Prince de Condé--Bassompierre falls ill of tertian fever, but rises from his sick-bed to fight a duel with a Gascon gentleman--The combatants are separated by friends of the latter--Serious illness of Bassompierre. Bassompierre had now fairly established his claim to be regarded as “the most amiable and elegant gentleman of the Court,” and his position was in every way an enviable one. He was idolised by the ladies to a degree that no gallant has ever been either before or since his time, with the possible exception of the too-celebrated Maréchal de Richelieu, in the days of Louis XV;[57] liked and admired by the men, who looked upon him as “the glass of fashion and the mould of form;” so great a favourite of the King that his Majesty grumbled whenever he absented himself from Court, and there seemed no rank or office, however high, to which he might not ultimately aspire; and, though not wealthy, as wealth was accounted in those days at the Court of France, enabled, thanks to his extraordinary good fortune at play, to vie with the greatest in the land in luxury and extravagance. “It would have been well,” says a writer of the time, Tallemant des Réaux, “if there had always been at the Court someone like him; he did the honours and received and entertained foreigners. I used to remark that he was at the Court what _Bon Accueil_ was in the romance of _la Rose_. People everywhere used to call a man a Bassompierre, if he excelled in good looks and the elegance of his appearance and manners.”