If, however, like a true courtier, he had been ready to bow to the caprice of his sovereign, and to make the best of the situation, his vanity had been wounded far too deeply for him to allow himself “to be led in triumph”--as he expresses it--by Condé, when that prince’s formal betrothal to Mlle. de Montmorency took place: “I was that morning in the King’s apartments, when _Monsieur le Prince_, after speaking to several others, approached me and said: ‘M. de Bassompierre, I beg you to come this afternoon to my hôtel and accompany me to my betrothal at the Louvre.’ The King, seeing him speak to me, inquired what he had said. ‘He has asked of me, Sire,’ I replied, ‘a thing which I am unable to do.’ ‘And why?’ said he. ‘It is to accompany him to his betrothal. Is he not sufficiently great to go alone, and can he not be betrothed without me being present? I answer that, if there is no one to accompany him but myself, he will be very badly escorted.’ The King said that it was his wish that I should go, to which I replied that I begged his Majesty not to command me, for go I would not; that his Majesty ought to be content that I had renounced my passion at the first expression of his desires and wishes, without desiring to force me to be led in triumph, after having ravished away my wife and all my happiness.’ The King, who was the best of men, said to me: ‘I see well, Bassompierre, that you are angry, but I assure you that you will fail not to go when you have reflected that he who has asked you is my nephew, first prince of my blood.’ Upon which he left me and, taking MM. de Praslin and Termes aside, ordered them to go and dine with me and persuade me to go, since duty and decorum demanded it of me. And this I did, after a little remonstrance, but in such fashion that I did not set out until the princesses were conducting the _fiancée_ to the Louvre, and were passing before my lodging, which obliged me to accompany her with the gentlemen who had dined with me. And then, from the gate of the Louvre, we returned to find _Monsieur le Prince_, whom we met as he was leaving the Pont-Neuf to come thither. The betrothal took place in the gallery of the Louvre, and the King maliciously leant upon my shoulder and kept me close to the affianced couple during the whole ceremony.”