“I accordingly replied that I was unable to understand what necessity there was for the King to have a favourite, since he had dispensed with one so easily for eight months; that his favourites ought to be his mother, his brother, his relatives and his good servants, wherein he would be following the example of the King his father, and that if some fatality inclined him to have one, the choice and the election ought to be left to him; that I had never heard tell of any prince who took his favourites according to the decrees of his council; but that, however that might be, it would not be I who would occupy that place, because I did not deserve it; because, also, the King would not wish to honour me with it, and because, finally, I would not accept it; that I aspired to a moderate degree of favour, and a fortune of the same kind acquired by my virtue and by my merit, and which might be securely preserved; that my lavish expenditure, and the little care I had taken up to the present to amass wealth, were sufficient proofs that I aspired rather to glory than to profit; that I wished to seek a moderate and a secure fortune, and despised favour to such a degree that, if it were lying on the ground before me, I should not condescend to stoop and pick it up; and that such was my unalterable resolution, which did not allow me to take advantage of their good-will towards me, for which I rendered them very humble thanks.” As for their complaints about Puisieux, he said, it seemed to him that they were really complaining of the King and questioning his Majesty’s right to confer privately with, and demand advice from, whichever of his Ministers he pleased. Puisieux was his [Bassompierre’s] friend, and had always behaved as such, and, so long as he continued to do so, he declined to be a party to any intrigue against him. Condé then warned Bassompierre that a time might come when he would regret having lost his friendship and that of his allies in order to preserve that of Puisieux; to which Bassompierre replied that he would be “extraordinarily grieved to lose their good graces, but that the consolation would remain to him of not having lost them through any fault of his own, and that he would never purchase those of anyone at the price of his reputation.”