The resolute position thus assumed by M. de Rohan alarmed the ministers; who apprehensive that the neighbouring provinces, already disaffected by the negative result of the Assembly of Saumur, would support the cause of so bold a recusant, and thus renew the civil war by which the nation had formerly been convulsed, became anxious to temporize.  Negotiations were accordingly commenced between the adverse factions; and it was ultimately agreed that the keys of the city should be restored to the mayor from whom they had been taken, and some subaltern officers displaced by the Duke reinstated in their functions, and that so soon as this arrangement had been completed a new election should take place, by which M. de Rohan was to be at liberty to substitute others more agreeable to himself.  This absurd ceremony was accordingly performed; the royal authority was supposed to have enforced its recognition; and the Duke, by a merely visionary concession, preserved his government.[147]

Meanwhile the young Duc de Mayenne had taken leave of the Court, and departed with a brilliant suite for Madrid, to demand the hand of the Infanta for the King of France; and on the same day the Duque de Pastrano left the Spanish capital on his way to Paris to solicit that of Madame Elisabeth for the Prince of Spain.

The ducal envoy reached the French capital early in the month of July, accompanied by his brothers Don Francisco and Don Diego de Silva and a number of Spanish grandees, having been received with extraordinary honours in every town which he had traversed after passing the frontier.  The Ducs de Luxembourg[148] and de Nevers met him beyond the gate of the city, accompanied by five hundred nobles on horseback, sumptuously attired in velvet and cloth of gold and silver, with their horses splendidly caparisoned.  The retinue of the Iberian grandee was not, however, as the French courtiers had fondly flattered themselves that it would have been, eclipsed by the lavish magnificence of their own appearance, his personal costume being of the most splendid description, his horses and equipages costly and gorgeous, and his numerous train of attendants habited in a livery of extreme richness.

On the 16th of the month the Spanish Duke had his first audience of the young King, at which were assembled the Princes of the Blood, all the high nobility of France, and the Cardinals de Sourdis and de Gondy.[149] The two latter dignitaries endeavoured to excuse themselves, on the pretext that their rank as Princes of the Church would not permit them to seat themselves below the Princes of the Blood; but this pretension on their part was considered so monstrous, even by the Regent herself, that, anxious as she was to secure their attendance in order to render the ceremony more imposing to the Spanish envoy, she did not venture to support them in their arrogant assumption of equality with the first subjects of the Crown; and she accordingly informed them in reply that upon the present occasion there would be no regard paid to precedence, but that each individual who was entitled to attend the audience would be at liberty to seat himself as he saw fit.