As she had commissioned Paul de Foix in the case of Charles IX., so now she instructed La Mothe-Fénelon, her representative in London, to open the proceedings in the cause of Monsieur, as the Duke of Anjou, since he was the heir-apparent to the throne of France, was called. Elizabeth, when the delicate matter was broached to her, was not unwilling to entertain the idea; indeed, her Majesty of England was seldom unwilling to think of any man; she would think, and that was all; thought never developed into action, or led to any practical result. The Queen liked what she called a "proper man," one handsome in face, graceful in carriage, tall in stature, sound in limb, and who excelled in all manly exercises. Among all the aspirants whom she had at one time or another encouraged, there was not a man—and from Courtenay to Essex the list is a crowded one-who was not pleasing to look upon. Now the Duke of Anjou was essentially a proper man." "He is taller than I am by an inch," writes Walsingham to Leicester, who had been somewhat curious as to the appearance of his successor, "rather pale, well made, and with long limbs. If all that one sees is as good as what one does not see, he is healthy enough. At first sight he seems haughty, but on acquaintance he is courteous, and far more easy of access than either of his brothers. He has numerous friends, partly for his own sake and partly to humour his mother, with whom he is the favourite son." Tall, with well-cut features, and the dark languishing eyes which made the women of the Valois race so bewitching, the young Duke was the most favoured of all the favoured gallants in the loosest court of Europe. He had begun life as a soldier, and had brilliantly distinguished himself in two battles; but he soon permitted himself-after his sword had been sheathed in his scabbardto be corrupted by the idle and voluptuous life which then made Paris the most courted city on the Continent. His early manhood was passed in one succession of what are called "conquests "-though when the citadel is ever ready to surrender, conquest is perhaps too strong a word to employ. He was a great dandy, and spent enormous sums upon his wardrobe; he was given to much jewelry, and his hands, of which he was justly proud, were covered with brilliants. His disposition was generous, and the presents he bestowed upon the frail beauties who attended upon Catherine de Medicis were said to be lavish in the extreme. "If the Queen, your mistress," said a great French seigneur to Walsingham, who had gone over to Paris to sound the queen-mother, " is not content with Monseigneur, she should never marry, but at once take the oath of perpetual virginity." Elizabeth was, however, perfectly willing to be contented-at least for a time. She carefully studied the portrait of the young Duke, considered him handsomer than the Duke de Nemours, and hoped that he would take boat and pay her a visit at Greenwich. Lord Buckhurst was despatched upon a special mission to Catherine to support Walsingham, and to give expression to the views of Elizabeth upon the matter. Her Majesty, he said, was desirous of entering into an alliance with France; she was honoured with the attentions of the Duke of Anjou, and it was her wish seriously to consider them. The queen-mother, who was perfectly aware of the weakness of the daughter of Anne Boleyn for tempting a man on by false promises to a certain point, and then quietly deserting him for a newer and therefore more fascinating rival, was resolved, now that her favourite son was concerned, to tolerate no feminine trickery in the matter. She replied that if she was sure that Elizabeth really intended marriage, and would not behave to the Duke of Anjou as she had behaved to the others who had pretended to her hand, both she and the King of France were in favour of the match; but she must be assured that there would be no evasion in the negotiations, no giving of promises and then backing out of them, as had been the case with the brother of Monsieur. Buckhurst thereupon declared that he had been especially charged to say that the Queen of England had resolved upon marriage, that she would not marry one of her subjects, and that she was desirous of uniting herself with one of the royal houses on the Continent. The Duke of Anjou, he urged, pleased her, and the alliance was in every way a suitable one. Her other royal suitors-the Kings of Sweden and Denmark, and the Archduke Charles-were poor, and belonged to countries at a great distance from England. The Duke of Anjou, on the contrary, was a neàr neighbour, and the dependent of a great king; in the present state of Europe an alliance between England and France was most desirable. Catherine, thus reassured, was of the same opinion; she entered into details with Buckhurst, and drew up a series of articles upon which the proposed marriage was to be based, which she requested the envoy on his return to England to place in the hands of Elizabeth. The interview then ended. Similar proceedings were being carried on in London. La MotheFénelon was frequently closeted with the Queen, and spoke so glowingly of the beauty of the Duke of Anjou, the charm of his manner, and the grace and vigour of his bearing, that the impulsive Elizabeth -for, like all fickle characters, she was very impulsive-could scarcely restrain herself when this prodigy was under discussion. She must see the Duke, she blurted forth; she knew he was most agreeable ; all who had come in contact with him were fascinated by him; why could he not cross the Channel and pay her a visit at once? She wrote eagerly to Walsingham that she had made up her mind to marry, and to accept the hand of the Duke of Anjou if he now came forward ; she, however, requested her representative to entrust the negotiation entirely to the queen-mother, who had had “considerable experience in cases of this sort, and would suggest all that was required in the matter." Woman-like, however, she inserted what was the most important item in her epistle in the postscript. "As regards religion," wrote Elizabeth, "on no account would she permit the Duke openly to profess the Catholic faith." It is remarkable how often people whose lives evince little of the control and teaching of the creed they profess, are resolute, whilst discarding the animating spirit of their religion in maintaining its mechanism whole and intact. Elizabeth, who always displayed the utmost malevolence towards those she disliked, who did not scruple when she deemed it advisable to tell a downright lie, and who, in her various passages of love, acted with so marked and open an indiscretion as to appear in the eyes of many most culpable, at least consoled herself with the soothing reflection that she was a firm pillar of the Anglican Church, and a staunch upholder of the Book of Common Prayer. In like manner the Duke of Anjou, who was leading a life of notorious dissipation, and whose amours, even when he was supposed to be a claimant to the hand of the Queen of England, were the talk of Paris, was the most devoted of Catholics, and an intolerant foe of Protestantism of all shades. Between these two fervent followers of their faith a collision naturally ensued, when love began to occupy itself with business details. Elizabeth, as the queen of a Protestant country, and the hope of the Huguenots and the Low Countries, then in revolt against Spain, would not permit the Duke, if he became her husband, to offend the feelings of her people by the open exercise of his religion. In his turn Monsieur avowed himself a true Catholic, and refused to worship in secret. "I have no wish," said Elizabeth, "to see the Duke abandon his religion; for if he abandoned his faith he would not hesitate, when it suited his purpose, to desert me; but upon one matter I am resolved-mass must be celebrated in secret." Whilst this question was being mooted Buckhurst arrived from Paris with the articles of marriage, drawn up by the queen-mother. They were brief and clear. The marriage was to be performed according to the ceremonies of the Church of Rome. The Duke of Anjou, both for himself and his household, was to have perfect liberty to openly profess and practise his religion. The marriage entered into, the Duke was to be styled King, and to administer the affairs of the kingdom conjointly with the Queen. He was to be crowned. He was to receive an annual sum of 60,000%. charged upon the revenues of England. Should the Queen die before him he was to retain the title of King, and continue to administer the affairs of the realm. A perpetual union was to be established between the two kingdoms. : These articles were strongly disapproved of both by Cecil and Elizabeth if they were carried out, said the minister, they would create much scandal and perhaps turbulence throughout the kingdom. He advised his sovereign to reject them altogether. Cecil, however, was not in love. The Queen was of the same opinion; so clever a woman could not have thought otherwise; but as her heart, or rather her fancy, was touched by all the accounts she had heard of the young Duke, she was unwilling to approach the subject with the resolve necessary to end the negotiation one way or the other. She hesitated, postponed, procrastinated. La Mothe was a frequent visitor in her apartments, and the wily ambassador knew well how to plead his cause. He flattered the Queen to the top of her bent, and encouraged on every occasion the interest she avowed she felt in the husband proposed to her. He spoke of how deeply enamoured the Duke was with her charms; how much he valued her intellectual superiority to other women; how fond he was of England and everything English, and the like-the Duke who was leading the life of the true Parisian viveur, and who was then indifferent to any other woman but Mdlle. Châteauneuf! Elizabeth, when her vanity was pampered, was very credulous and easily led. She permitted herself to be captivated. In the midst of some grave discussion or the drawing up of some important State paper she would suddenly break off the conversation and talk of the charms of her lover. "Ah!" she cried, “in another seven years I shall be an old woman, and Monsieur will then be handsomer than ever: at the present moment I may please him, but," she sighed reflectively, "in the future!" Then she would anxiously inquire whether the Duke had been told what a pretty little foot she had, how white and well rounded was her arm, and how both artists and sculptors raved about her beautiful hands-he, whose hands were said to be so beautiful, could not, she observed, but admire hers. The ambassador gravely assured her that the Duke thought himself the most fortunate of men, and was eagerness itself to become the possessor of all such charms. One of the equerries of the Duke, a Captain Larchant, had been sent over to Elizabeth with a billet-doux from her lover. The Queen read it with much delight, kept it as the most cherished of her relics, but declined to reply to it. La Mothe begged her to vouchsafe some answer to her anxious suitor. Elizabeth at first positively refused; she was as coy as the shyest of maidens ; she should not know what to say, she modestly pleaded; she was sure the pen would fall from her fingers if she even tried to write; she had never written to any of the princes who had done her the honour of paying her court, and other similar excuses. The prayers of La Mothe, however, at last prevailed, and the Queen placed in the hands of Larchant the following epistle : Monseigneur, combien que ma dignité excède ma personne et que mon royal rang me fait douter que mon royaume est plus recherché que moi-même, si estce que la réputation que j'ai entendue par mon ambassadeur et aussi par votre gentilhomme que avez conçue de quelques grâces miennes, me fait croire que la règle de notre affection se tirera par la force de choses plus excellentes qu'oncques ai connues en moi résider, et pourtant me fâche en pensant que mon insuffisance ne pourroit satisfaire à une telle opinion que M. de Larchant m'a déclaré que déjà en avez conçue, espérant que vous n'aurez occasion de vous repentir de cet honneur que de jour en autre me faites. Still the religious question, the more it was considered, the more formidable it appeared. The Catholic party, both in France and Spain, were strongly opposed to the meditated union, branding Elizabeth as a heretic, and stigmatising her conduct in the past with the young men she affected as light in the extreme. One accusation particularly angered her Majesty, who, like all spinsters whose charms are somewhat on the wane, was especially sensitive to all personal remarks of a disparaging nature. She had been taunted by many an enemy in Edinburgh and Paris with her red hair, her freckles, the parrot-like prominence of her nose, her angularity of figure, and the rest; and the Queen, sharp in retort, had denounced her detractors in all the choicest terms of her fluent Tudor vocabulary. The malevolent wits of Paris now added to their list of unfounded charges by spreading a report that the flame of the Duke of Anjou was lame in one of her legs. Elizabeth, when this piece of spite reached her ears, carried to her no doubt by some candid friend, was almost hysterical with rage. She sent at once for La Mothe. "I know the author of this report," she cried; "he is a man holding a high position at your court. He has had the baseness to declare openly that I have an affection in my leg which is incurable, and that it will be a good excuse, when I am once married to the Duke of Anjou, to poison me off, so that my husband, when a widower, may marry Mary Stuart and become the master of this island." La Mothe vowed upon his honour that he had never |