I have good grounds for what I state." "Well, Sire," was the reply, "you can be at no loss to revenge the affront; while for myself I know of no means so fitting as those of knight-errantry, and I am consequently ready to break three lances with him this afternoon at any hour and place which your Majesty may be pleased to ordain." The preparations for this combat are so graphically described by Bassompierre himself, and so characteristic of the manners of the time, that we shall offer no apology for giving them in his own words.
"The King acceded to our wishes, as such encounters were by no means unusual, and told us that the tilting should take place in the great court of the Louvre, which he would cause to be covered with sand.

M.de Guise selected as his seconds his brother the Prince de Joinville and M.
de Thermes;[294] while I chose M.de Saint-Luc[295] and the Comte de Sault.[296] We all six dressed and armed ourselves at the house of Saint-Luc, and as we had armour and liveries ready for every occasion, my party wore silver-mail, with plumes of red and white, as were our silk stockings; while M.de Guise and his troop, on account of the imprisonment of Madame de Verneuil, of whom he was secretly the lover, were dressed and armed in black and gold.

In this equipage we arrived at the Louvre, myself and my friends being the first upon the ground." [297] Henry, with his whole Court, both male and female, was present on the occasion, and the lists were placed immediately beneath the windows of the Queen's apartments; but the diversion was not fated to be of long duration, for at the first encounter the lance of M.de Guise entered the body of his antagonist and inflicted so formidable a wound that he was carried from the spot and laid upon the bed of the Duc de Vendome, apparently in a dying state.

After his hurt had been dressed, the Queen sent her sedan chair to convey him to his residence.
Although Bassompierre, in the preceding column, assures his readers that "such encounters were by no means unusual," he goes on to state that directly he fell the King not only forbade the continuance of the tourney, but would never permit another to take place, and that this was the only one which had been held in France for the preceding century.[298] "No one can imagine," says the wounded hero in continuation, "the multitude of visits that I received, especially from the ladies.

All the Princesses came to see me, and the Queen on three occasions sent her maids of honour, who were brought to me by Mademoiselle de Guise, and stayed during the whole afternoon." These courtly diversions were abruptly terminated by the intelligence which reached Paris of the death, on the 3rd of March, of Pope Clement VIII.[299] The piety of this distinguished Pontiff, and the eminent services which he had rendered to the French King, caused his loss to be deeply felt by Henry; but when, on the 1st day of April, Alessandro de Medicis, the cousin of the Queen, was unanimously elected as his successor under the title of Leo XI, nothing could exceed the joy which was manifested throughout the country.