One day, while the Court was at Fontainebleau, the King sent for Bassompierre and announced that he proposed to send him on a secret mission of the highest importance to his Majesty’s brother-in-law, Henri II, Duke of Lorraine. By his first marriage with Catherine de Bourbon, the Duke had had no children; but by his second marriage with Margherita di Gonzaga, at which, it will be remembered, Bassompierre had assisted in the quality of Ambassador Extraordinary, he had two daughters, the Princesses Nicole and Claude; and the chief object of the mission which he was now to undertake was to propose, on behalf of the King, an alliance between the elder princess and the Dauphin, and to employ all his powers of persuasion to induce the Duke to consent to it. These would be needed, for the Lorrainers, like the people of all small countries, were always exceedingly suspicious about the designs of their powerful neighbours; and, though the prospect of one of his daughters sharing the throne of France might flatter the pride of Henri II, his subjects would probably regard the affair in a very different light. However, the advantages to be derived from such an alliance were so great that the King was determined to spare no expense to bring it about, and, with the idea that corruption might succeed where other means might fail, he authorised Bassompierre “to offer pensions up to the value of 12,000 crowns to any private persons whom he should judge capable of assisting him in this affair.” Finally, “in order to encourage him to serve him the more zealously on this occasion, he offered to marry him to Mlle. de Chemillé[70] and to re-establish in his favour the estate of Beaupreau into a duchy and peerage.” “But,” continues Bassompierre, “I was so over head and ears in love just then, that I told him that, if he desired to do me any favour, I begged that it might not be by way of marriage, since by marriage he had done me so much injury.”