Bassompierre, who was above all things a courtier, seeing that the King was determined, and that, unless he submitted with a good grace, he would lose both his bride and the royal favour, protested his willingness to obey, adding the hope that “this new affection would bring his Majesty as much joy as it would occasion him pain, but for his consideration for his Majesty.”[147] His chagrin was, nevertheless, intense, and when, next morning, the young lady having been acquainted with the change that had been made in the disposition of her hand, greeted her too facile lover with an expressive shrug of her pretty shoulders and a glance of the most withering disdain, his grief and mortification were such that he fled precipitately to his lodging, where, he assures us, he spent three days without food or sleep. The betrothal of Condé and Charlotte de Montmorency took place shortly afterwards (2 March, 1609), in the great gallery of the Louvre. The Constable gave his prospective son-in-law 100,000 écus; while the King granted him an increase of his pension and a present of 150,000 livres. The bride received 18,000 livres from his Majesty, for the purchase of jewellery, as well as a magnificent trousseau. Owing to the necessity of obtaining the Papal dispensation for the union of cousins,[148] the marriage-ceremony was postponed until 16 May, when it was celebrated at Chantilly, “very inexpensively, but very gaily.” This gaiety was not of long duration. Scarcely had the young couple rejoined the Court, which was then at Fontainebleau, than the King began to lay the closest siege to the princess’s heart and strove by every means in his power to gain her affection. The girl, flattered by the homage of her Sovereign, of which she perhaps did not divine the end, was far from discouraging his attentions, and, if we are to believe Tallemant des Réaux, appeared one evening on the balcony of her apartments in a _peignoir_, with her hair falling over her shoulders, in order to please the King, who was transported with admiration. “_Dieu!_” cried she, “how foolish he is!” And she laughed heartily. Her husband, however, did not laugh. The affair had become a public scandal. Even in the streets, people laughed and jested about the infatuation of the King, and “talked with the utmost freedom of his Majesty and of the corruption and debaucheries of his Court.”[149] If Condé had little love for his wife, he was exceedingly jealous of his honour, and, to Henri’s intense chagrin, absolutely declined to accept the odious rôle he had intended for him, and began, in his Majesty’s phrase, “to play the devil.”[150]