communications with Elizabeth than did the chivalrous king.  No man knew better than he how impossible it was to invent terms of adulation too gross for her to accept as spontaneous and natural effusions, of the heart.  He received the letters from the hands of Sir Henry, read them with rapture, heaved a deep sigh, and exclaimed.  “Ah!  Mr. Ambassador, what shall I say to you?  This letter of the queen, my sister, is full of sweetness and affection.  I see that she loves me, while that I love her is not to be doubted.  Yet your commission shows me the contrary, and this proceeds from her, ministers.  How else can these obliquities stand with her professions of love?  I am forced, as a king, to take a course which, as Henry, her loving brother, I could never adopt.”

They then walked out into the park, and the king fell into frivolous discourse, on purpose to keep the envoy from the important subject which had been discussed in the cabinet.  Sir Henry brought him back to business, and insisted that there was no disagreement between her Majesty and her counsellors, all being anxious to do what she wished.  The envoy, who shared in the prevailing suspicions that Henry was about to make a truce with Spain, vehemently protested against such a step, complaining that his ministers, whose minds were distempered with jealousy, were inducing him to sacrifice her friendship to a false and hollow reconciliation with Spain.  Henry protested that his preference would be for England’s amity, but regretted that the English delays were so great, and that such dangers were ever impending over his head, as to make it impossible for him, as a king, to follow the inclinations of his heart.

They then met Madame de Monceaux, the beautiful Gabrielle, who was invited to join in the walk, the king saying that she was no meddler in politics, but of a tractable spirit.

This remark, in Sir Henry’s opinion, was just, for, said he to Burghley, she is thought incapable of affairs, and, very simple.

The duchess unmasked very graciously as the ambassador was presented; but, said the splenetic diplomatist, “I took no pleasure in it, nor held it any grace at all.”  “She was attired in a plain satin gown,” he continued, “with a velvet hood to keep her from the weather, which became her very ill.  In my opinion, she is altered very much for the worse, and was very grossly painted.”  The three walked together discoursing of trifles, much to the annoyance of Umton.  At last, a shower forced the lady into the house, and the king soon afterwards took the ambassador to his cabinet.  “He asked me how I liked his mistress,” wrote Sir Henry to Burghley, “and I answered sparingly in her praise, and told him that if without offence I might speak it, I had the picture of a far more excellent mistress, and yet did her picture come far from the perfection of her beauty.”

“As you love me,” cried the king, “show it me, if you have it about you!”