He found Charles V. dressed in mourning, seated beside a little table, in a modest apartment hung with black.  When the admiral handed to the emperor the king’s letter, Charles could not himself break the seal, and the Bishop of Arras drew near to render him that service.  “Gently, my Lord of Arras,” said the emperor; “would you rob me of the duty I am bound to discharge towards the king my brother-in-law?  Please God, none but I shall do it;” and then turning to Coligny, he said, “What will you say of me, admiral?  Am I not a pretty knight to run a course and break a lance, I who can only with great difficulty open a letter?” He inquired with an air of interest after Henry II.’s health, and boasted of belonging himself, also, to the house of France through his grandmother Mary of Burgundy.  “I hold it to be an honor,” said he, “to have issued, on the mother’s side, from the stock which wears and upholds the most famous crown in the world.”  His son Philip, who was but a novice in kingly greatness, showed less courtesy and less good taste than his father; he received the French ambassadors in a room hung with pictures representing the battle of Pavia.  There were some who concluded from that that the truce would not be of long duration. [Histoire d’Espagne, by M. Rosseeuw Saint-Hilaire, t. viii. p. 64.]

And it was not long before their prognostication was verified.  The sending of the Duke of Guise into Italy, and the assistance he brought to Pope Paul IV., then at war with the new King of Spain, Philip II., were considered as a violation of the truce of Vaucelles.  Henry II. had expected as much, and had ordered Coligny, who was commanding in Picardy and Flanders, to hold himself in readiness to take the field as soon as he should be, if not forced, at any rate naturally called upon, by any unforeseen event.  It cost Coligny, who was a man of scrupulous honor, a great struggle to lightly break a truce he had just signed; nevertheless, in January, 1557, when he heard that the French were engaged in Italy in the war between the pope and the Spaniards, he did not consider that he could possibly remain inactive in Flanders.  He took by surprise the town of Lens, between Lille and Arras.  Philip II., on his side, had taken measures for promptly entering upon the campaign.  By his marriage with Mary Tudor, Queen of England, he had secured for himself a powerful ally in the north; the English Parliament were but little disposed to compromise themselves in a war with France; but in March, 1557, Philip went to London; the queen’s influence and the distrust excited in England by Henry II. prevailed over the pacific desires of the nation; and Mary sent a simple herald to carry to the King of France at Rheims her declaration of war.  Henry accepted it politely, but resolutely.  “I speak to you in this way,” said he to the herald, “because it is a queen who sends you; had it been a king, I would speak to you in a very different tone;” and