The deed was done.  In vain had an emissary of the French court been exerting his utmost to prevent the consummation of this close alliance.  For the wretched government of Henry III., while abasing itself before Philip ii., and offering the fair cities and fertile plains of France as a sacrifice to that insatiable ambition which wore the mask of religious bigotry, was most anxious that Holland and England should not escape the meshes by which it was itself enveloped.  The agent at the Hague came nominally upon some mercantile affairs, but in reality, according to Leicester, “to impeach the States from binding themselves to her Majesty.”  But he was informed that there was then no leisure for his affairs; “for the States would attend to the service of the Queen of England, before all princes in the world.”  The agent did not feel complimented by the coolness of this reception; yet it was reasonable enough, certainly, that the Hollanders should remember with bitterness the contumely, which they had experienced the previous year in France.  The emissary was; however, much disgusted.  “The fellow,” said Leicester, “took it in such snuff, that he came proudly to the States and offered his letters, saying; ’Now I trust you have done all your sacrifices to the Queen of England, and may yield me some leisure to read my masters letters.’”—­“But they so shook him, up,” continued the Earl, “for naming her Majesty in scorn—­as they took it—­that they hurled him his letters; and bid him content himself;” and so on, much to the agent’s discomfiture, who retired in greater “snuff” than ever.

So much for the French influence.  And now Leicester had done exactly what the most imperious woman in the world, whose favour was the breath of his life, had expressly forbidden him to do.  The step having been taken, the prize so tempting to his ambition having been snatched, and the policy which had governed the united action of the States and himself seeming so sound, what ought he to have done in order to avert the tempest which he must have foreseen?  Surely a man who knew so much of woman’s nature and of Elizabeth’s nature as he did, ought to have attempted to conciliate her affections, after having so deeply wounded her pride.  He knew his power.  Besides the graces of his person and manner—­which few women, once impressed by them, could ever forget—­he possessed the most insidious and flattering eloquence, and, in absence, his pen was as wily as his tongue.  For the Earl was imbued with the very genius of courtship.  None was better skilled than he in the phrases of rapturous devotion, which were music to the ear both of the woman and the Queen; and he knew his royal mistress too well not to be aware that the language of passionate idolatry, however extravagant, had rarely fallen unheeded upon her soul.  It was strange therefore, that in this emergency, he should not at once throw himself upon her compassion without any mediator.  Yet, on the contrary, he committed