In Paris, rumours were circulated during the first ten days of August that England was vanquished, and that the Queen was already on her way to Rome as a prisoner, where she was to make expiation, barefoot, before his Holiness.  Mendoza, now more magnificent than ever—­stalked into Notre Dame with his drawn sword in his hand, crying out with a loud voice, “Victory, victory!” and on the 10th of August ordered bonfires to be made before his house; but afterwards thought better of that scheme.  He had been deceived by a variety of reports sent to him day after day by agents on the coast; and the King of France—­better informed by Stafford, but not unwilling thus to feed his spite against the insolent ambassador—­affected to believe his fables.  He even confirmed them by intelligence, which he pretended to have himself received from other sources, of the landing of the Spaniards in England without opposition, and of the entire subjugation of that country without the striking of a blow.

Hereupon, on the night of August 10th, the envoy—­“like a wise man,” as Stafford observed—­sent off four couriers, one after another, with the great news to Spain, that his master’s heart might be rejoiced, and caused a pamphlet on the subject to be printed and distributed over Paris!  “I will not waste a large sheet of paper to express the joy which we must all feel,” he wrote to Idiaquez, “at this good news.  God be praised for all, who gives us small chastisements to make us better, and then, like a merciful Father, sends us infinite rewards.”  And in the same strain he wrote; day after day, to Moura and Idiaquez, and to Philip himself.

Stafford, on his side, was anxious to be informed by his government of the exact truth, whatever it were, in order that these figments of Mendoza might be contradicted.  “That which cometh from me,” he said, “Will be believed; for I have not been used to tell lies, and in very truth I have not the face to do it.”

And the news of the Calais squibs, of the fight off Gravelines, and the retreat of the Armada towards the north; could not be very long concealed.  So soon, therefore, as authentic intelligence reached, the English envoy of those events—­which was not however for nearly ten days after their—­occurrence—­Stafford in his turn wrote a pamphlet, in answer to that of Mendoza, and decidedly the more successful one of the two.  It cost him but five crowns, he said, to print ’four hundred copies of it; but those in whose name it was published got one hundred crowns by its sale.  The English ambassador was unwilling to be known as the author—­although “desirous of touching up the impudence of the Spaniard”—­but the King had no doubt of its origin.  Poor Henry, still smarting under the insults of Mendoza and ’Mucio,—­was delighted with this blow to Philip’s presumption; was loud in his praises of Queen Elizabeth’s valour, prudence, and marvellous fortune, and declared that what she had just done could be compared to the greatest:  exploits of the most illustrious men in history.