ip the Second, or those
of his ministers, before the feast of St. John of the coming year. Fifty
thousand dollars were to be the reward of this piece of work, combined
with other services; "and the sooner they set about it the better," said
Philip, writing a few months later, "for the longer they delay it, the
less easy will they find it."'

The money was never earned, however, and meantime Don Antonio made
himself as useful as he could, in picking up information for Sir Edward
Stafford and the other opponents of Spanish policy in Paris.

The English envoy was much embarrassed by the position of affairs. He
felt sure that the French monarch would never dare to enter the lists
against the king of Spain, yet he was accurately informed of the secret
negotiations with the Netherlands, while in the dark as to the ultimate
intentions of his own government.

"I was never set to school so much," he wrote to Walsingham (27th July,
1584), "as I have been to decipher the cause of the deputies of the Low
Countries coming hither, the offers that they made the King here, and the
King's manner of dealing with them!"

He expressed great jealousy at the mystery which enveloped the whole
transaction; and much annoyance with Noel de Caron, who "kept very
secret, and was angry at the motion," when he endeavoured to discover the
business in which they were engaged. Yet he had the magnanimity to
request Walsingham not to mention the fact to the Queen, lest she should
be thereby prejudiced against the States.

"For my part," said he, "I would be glad in any thing to further them,
rather than to hinder them--though they do not deserve it--yet for the
good the helping them at this time may bring ourselves."

Meantime, the deputies went away from France, and the King went to Lyons,
where he had hoped to meet both the Duke of Savoy and the King of
Navarre. But Joyeuse, who had been received at Chambery with "great
triumphs and tourneys," brought back only a broken wrist, without
bringing the Duke of Savoy; that potentate sending word that the "King of
Spain had done him the honour to give him his daughter, and that it was
not fit for him to do any thing that might bring jealousy."

Henry of Navarre also, as we have seen, declined the invitation sent him,
M. de Segur not feeling disposed for the sudden flight out of window
suggested by Agrippa D' Aubigne; so that, on the whole, the King and his
mother, with all the court, returned from Lyon