At Soleure he had several conferences with the French Ambassador, the Comte de Miron, and received deputations from various towns and Cantons, whom he entertained very sumptuously. A few days before Christmas he sent despatches to the Cantons convening a General Diet at Soleure for January 7, which, however, at the request of the Protestant Cantons, was postponed until the 12th. In the interval Bassompierre and Miron lost no opportunity of ingratiating themselves with the Swiss, and gave several banquets and balls. “On Tuesday, the 6th [January], the Day of the Kings, I gave a solemn feast to the Council of Soleure, at the Ambassador’s house, and after a great deal of liquor had been consumed, the ball took place.” A day or two before the Diet opened, the Papal Nuncio Scapi, Bishop of Campagna, arrived at Soleure. Bassompierre had invited him to be present, although he was aware that he would do everything in his power to prevent the Catholic Cantons from coming to a resolution favourable to France. But he was a pompous, irascible and bigoted ecclesiastic, who was unlikely to make a favourable impression on the deputies, and, anyway, the marshal would be afforded an opportunity of confuting his arguments. The Diet assembled on the 12th, and its first business was to pass a resolution that the deputies should go in a body, preceded by their beadles, to salute the Maréchal de Bassompierre. This, Bassompierre tells us, was an honour which had never been paid to anyone before. The following day the deputies sent six of their number to escort the Ambassadors of the King of France to the Diet, where Bassompierre laid his proposals before them and addressed them at considerable length. “Then the same deputies came to escort me back, and, when the assembly rose, they all came to my house in a body to thank me, as they had done the previous day, and from there we all went to the banquet which I had caused to be made ready for them in the Town Hall, where all the deputies, ambassadors, colonels and captains, to the number of 120 persons, were magnificently entertained, and afterwards 500 other persons. Then we went to the house of the Ambassador-Ordinary, where a ball took place.” On the 14th the Nuncio had an audience of the Catholic deputies, in which he made a very bitter harangue against France, in the hope of putting a spoke in Bassompierre’s wheel. The marshal, however, had taken the precaution to invite the Catholic deputies to dine with him, and the good cheer he provided would seem to have gone far to neutralise the effect of the Nuncio’s eloquence. In the evening he entertained the representatives of the Protestant Cantons to supper, and sent them away equally well pleased.