yet our own discretion, seeing the difficulties and dangers that you
yourself saw in the propounding of the matter, ought to have led you to
delay till further command from us."

Her Majesty then instructed her envoy, in case he had not yet "propounded
the matter in the state-house to the general assembly," to pause entirely
until he heard her further pleasure. She concluded, as usual, with a
characteristic postcript in her own hand.

"Oh weigh deeplier this matter," she said, "than, with so shallow a
judgment, to spill the cause, impair my honour, and shame yourself, with
all your wit, that once was supposed better than to lose a bargain for
the handling."

Certainly the sphinx could have propounded no more puzzling riddles than
those which Elizabeth thus suggested to Buckhurst. To make war without an
army, to support an army without pay, to frame the hearts of a whole
people to peace who were unanimous for war, and this without saying a
word either in private or public; to dispose the Netherlanders favourably
to herself and to Leicester, by refusing them men and money, brow-beating
them for asking for it, and subjecting them to a course of perpetual
insults, which she called "corrosives," to do all this and more seemed
difficult. If not to do it, were to spill the cause and to lose the
bargain, it was more than probable that they would be spilt and lost.

But the ambassador was no OEdipus--although a man of delicate perceptions
and brilliant intellect--and he turned imploringly to a wise counsellor
for aid against the tormentor who chose to be so stony-faced and
enigmatical.

"Touching the matter of peace," said he to Walsingham, "I have written
somewhat to her Majesty in cipher, so as I am sure you will be called for
to decipher it. If you did know how infinitely her Majesty did at my
departure and before--for in this matter of peace she hath specially used
me this good while--command me, pray me, and persuade me to further and
hasten the same with all the speed possible that might be, and how, on
the other side, I have continually been the man and the mean that have
most plainly dehorted her from such post-haste, and that she should never
make good peace without a puissant army in the field, you would then say
that I had now cause to fear her displeasure for being too slow, and not
too forward. And as for all the reasons which in my last letters are set
down, her Majesty hath debated them with me many times."