lip, when informed of this
manoeuvre, was naturally gratified at such masterly duplicity, while he
gently rebuked his nephew for exposing his valuable life; and certainly
it would have been an inglorious termination to the Duke's splendid
career; had he been hanged as a spy within the trenches of Ostend. With
the other details of this first diplomatic colloquy Philip was delighted.
"I see you understand me thoroughly," he said. "Keep the negotiation
alive till my Armada appears, and then carry out my determination, and
replant the Catholic religion on the soil of England."

The Queen was not in such high spirits. She was losing her temper very
fast, as she became more and more convinced that she had been trifled
with. No powers had been yet exhibited, no permanent place of conference
fixed upon, and the cessation of arms demanded by her commissioners for
England, Spain, and all the Netherlands, was absolutely refused. She
desired her commissioners to inform the Duke of Parma that it greatly
touched his honour--as both before their coming and afterwards, he had
assured her that he had 'comision bastantissima' from his sovereign--to
clear himself at once from the imputation of insincerity. "Let not the
Duke think," she wrote with her own hand, "that we would so long time
endure these many frivolous and unkindly dealings, but that we desire all
the world to know our desire of a kingly peace, and that we will endure
no more the like, nor any, but will return you from your charge."

Accordingly--by her Majesty's special command--Dr. Dale made another
visit to Bruges, to discover, once for all, whether there was a
commission from Philip or not; and, if so, to see it with his own eyes.
On the 7th May he had an interview with the Duke. After thanking his
Highness for the honourable and stately manner in which the conferences
had been, inaugurated near Ostend, Dale laid very plainly before him her
Majesty's complaints of the tergiversations and equivocations concerning
the commission, which had now lasted three months long.

In answer, Alexander made a complimentary harangue; confining himself
entirely to the first part of the envoy's address, and assuring him in
redundant phraseology, that he should hold himself very guilty before the
world, if he had not surrounded the first colloquy between the
plenipotentiaries of two such mighty princes, with as much pomp as the
circumstances of time and place would allow. After this super