gone, but he has done nothing yet.  He said to Gondi that all he meant was to get the truce of Cambray accomplished.  I hope, however, that my brother, the King of Spain, will do what is right in regard to madam my mother’s pretensions.  ’Tis likely that he will be now incited thereto, seeing that the deputies of all the Netherland provinces are at present in my kingdom, to offer me carte blanche.  I shall hear what they have to say, and do exactly what the good of my own affairs shall seem to require.  The Queen of England, too, has been very pressing and urgent with me for several months on this subject.  I shall hear, too, what she has to say, and I presume, if the King of Spain will now disclose himself, and do promptly what he ought, that we may set Christendom at rest.”

Henry then instructed his ambassador in Spain to keep his eyes wide open, in order to penetrate the schemes of Philip, and to this end ordered him an increase of salary by a third, that he might follow that monarch on his journey to Arragon.

Meanwhile Mendoza had audience of his Majesty.  “He made a very pressing remonstrance,” said the King, “concerning the arrival of these deputies, urging me to send them back at once; denouncing them as disobedient rebels and heretics.  I replied that my kingdom was free, and that I should hear from them all that they had to say, because I could not abandon madam my mother in her pretensions, not only for the filial obedience which I owe her, but because I am her only heir.  Mendoza replied that he should go and make the same remonstrance to the Queen-Mother, which he accordingly did, and she will herself write you what passed between them.  If they do not act up to their duty down there I know how to take my revenge upon them.”

This is the King’s own statement—­his veriest words—­and he was surely best aware of what occurred between himself and Mendoza, under their four eyes only.  The ambassador is not represented as extremely insolent, but only pressing; and certainly there is little left of the fine periods on Henry’s part about listening to the cry of the oppressed, or preventing the rays of his ancestors’ diadem from growing pale, with which contemporary chronicles are filled.

There was not one word of the advancement and glory of the French nation; not a hint of the fame to be acquired by a magnificent expansion of territory, still less of the duty to deal generously or even honestly with an oppressed people, who in good faith were seeking an asylum in exchange for offered sovereignty, not a syllable upon liberty of conscience, of religious or civil rights; nothing but a petty and exclusive care for the interests of his mother’s pocket, and of his own as his mother’s heir.  This farthing-candle was alone to guide the steps of “the high and mighty King,” whose reputation was perpetually represented as so precious to him in all the conferences between his ministers and the Netherland deputies.  Was it possible for those envoys to imagine the almost invisible meanness of such childish tricks?