Bassompierre requested the Council’s permission to reply forthwith, and, this being granted, “he did so with great vehemence and better to his own liking than he had ever spoken in his life.” We can understand his satisfaction, for it was undoubtedly a very able and eloquent speech, and gives us a high opinion of his promptitude and address. The turn he gives to the “Tyburn pilgrimage”--the act which the commissioners asserted had driven Charles I to extremities--is extremely ingenious. He admits that the Queen went with her French attendants to Tyburn, but it was in the course of one of her customary evening walks in the park of “St. Jemmes” and the “Hipparc,” which adjoins it--a walk such as she had often taken in the company of the King her husband. But that she had made it in procession, or that she had approached within fifty paces of the gallows, or that she had offered up any prayers, public or private, or that she had fallen on her knees, holding the hours or chaplets in her hands, he most strenuously denies. For the rest, to have thought a little of God at sight of the gibbet seems to him a small offence. “Granted,” says he, “that they prayed for those who died on the gibbet, they did well, for however wicked the men might have been who died on it, they were condemned to death, and not to damnation. And never has one been forbidden to pray to God for such. You tell me that is to blame the memory of the kings who had them put to death. On the contrary, I praise the justice of these kings, and implore the compassion of the King of kings, in order that He may be satisfied with their bodily death, and that He may pardon through our prayers and intercessions (if these be sufficient) the souls upon whom neither the justice nor the pardon of the kings of this world can have any effect. To conclude, I deny formally that this action has been committed, and offer, at the same time, to prove that they would have done very well to commit it.” Bassompierre’s oration lasted an hour, “and when I came out,” says he, “I went to find the Queen to show her the fine answer which they had given me, and the substance of what I had replied and protested.” In the evening Buckingham sent the Ambassador word that all of the Council who could speak or understand French would call upon him the following morning, and that he might hope for a favourable conclusion; “for the King had told him that it was his intention to satisfy the King his brother and to send him [Bassompierre] away content.” At seven o’clock next morning, Lord Dorset came to tell him that he should have satisfaction and that the Council would come soon afterwards to meet him, adding that “it only depended upon himself that all should go right.”