stood on the shores of Zealand.  Francis Hercules, Son of France, Duke of Alencon and Anjou, was at that time just twenty-eight years of age; yet not even his flatterers, or his “minions,” of whom he had as regular a train as his royal brother, could claim for him the external graces of youth or of princely dignity.  He was below the middle height, puny and ill-shaped.  His hair and eyes were brown, his face was seamed with the small-pox, his skin covered with blotches, his nose so swollen and distorted that it seemed to be double.  This prominent feature did not escape the sarcasms of his countrymen, who, among other gibes, were wont to observe that the man who always wore two faces, might be expected to have two noses also.  It was thought that his revolting appearance was the principal reason for the rupture of the English marriage, and it was in vain that his supporters maintained that if he could forgive her age, she might, in return, excuse his ugliness.  It seemed that there was a point of hideousness beyond which even royal princes could not descend with impunity, and the only wonder seemed that Elizabeth, with the handsome Robert Dudley ever at her feet, could even tolerate the addresses of Francis Valois.

His intellect was by no means contemptible.  He was not without a certain quickness of apprehension and vivacity of expression which passed current, among his admirers for wit and wisdom.  Even the experienced.  Saint Aldegonde was deceived in his character, and described him after an hour and half’s interview, as a Prince overflowing with bounty, intelligence, and sincerity.  That such men as Saint Aldegonde and the Prince of Orange should be at fault in their judgment, is evidence not so much of their want of discernment, as of the difference between the general reputation of the Duke at that period, and that which has been eventually established for him in history.  Moreover, subsequent events were to exhibit the utter baseness of his character more signally than it had been displayed during his previous career, however vacillating.  No more ignoble yet more dangerous creature had yet been loosed upon the devoted soil of the Netherlands.  Not one of the personages who had hitherto figured in the long drama of the revolt had enacted so sorry a part.  Ambitious but trivial, enterprising but cowardly, an intriguer and a dupe, without religious convictions or political principles, save that he was willing to accept any creed or any system which might advance his own schemes, he was the most unfit protector for a people who, whether wrong or right; were at least in earnest, and who were accustomed to regard truth as one of the virtues.  He was certainly not deficient in self-esteem.  With a figure which was insignificant, and a countenance which was repulsive, he had hoped to efface the impression made upon Elizabeth’s imagination by the handsomest man in Europe.  With a commonplace capacity, and with a narrow political education, he intended to circumvent the most profound statesman of his age.  And there, upon the pier at Flushing, he stood between them both; between the magnificent Leicester, whom he had thought to outshine, and the silent Prince of Orange, whom he was determined to outwit.  Posterity has long been aware how far he succeeded in the one and the other attempt.