any pretext for maligning a pageant of which Wolsey had the prime
direction.

Francis still hovered on the frontier in the fruitless hope of being
invited to take part in this interview with the Emperor. The day before
Charles left Ghent, the Lady Vendome and the Duchess her daughter-in-law
contrived to have business in that town, but their artifice was not
successful. Francis was obliged to content himself with the assurance
that the visage and countenance of his English ally appeared "not to be
so replenished with joy" as at the valley of Ardres, and that he had
given proofs of undiminished affection by riding a courser that Francis
had given him. With an impressiveness intended to be candid, he told Sir
Richard Wingfield, who had succeeded as English resident at the French
court, that "if the King Catholic were a prince of like faith unto the
King his brother [Henry], and that he might perceive from Wolsey that
his coming thither [to Calais] might be the cause of any good conclusion
between them" (that is, between himself and the Emperor), "he would not
fail to come in post, and not to have looked for rank and place to him
belonging, but would have put him into the King's chamber as one of the
number of the same." But neither his extreme humility nor his flattering
proposal that Henry and himself, "the chief pillars of Christendom,"
should handle the Pope, whom Francis knew "to be at some season the
fearfulest creature of the world, and at some other to be as brave," nor
the schemes and blandishments of the ladies, availed. He chafed under
disappointment; still more at his ill-success in counteracting the
growing intimacy of Henry and the Emperor. He had exhausted, to little
purpose, "that liberal and unsuspicious confidence" which too credulous
historians are apt to think characterized his proceedings at the Field
of the Cloth of Gold, to the disadvantage of his less attractive and
engaging contemporary. He could neither prevent the meetings of his two
rivals nor penetrate their secrets. He was utterly foiled, yet dared not
show his resentment. While the Pope and the Spaniards, unable to
penetrate beneath the surface or read the signs of the times, were
puzzled and scandalized at the Emperor's condescension, the world looked
on with astonishment, as well it might, to see the two monarchs of the
West thus anxiously soliciting the Cardinal's good graces. What could
there be in the son of a butcher to command such defer