e by deputy?" he
asked. "I must depend upon my own eyes"; besides, he added, he must hear
them sing, and see how they comported themselves. Perhaps, suggested the
French ambassador sarcastically, he would like to go further and test the
ladies in other ways, as the knights of King Arthur used to do. Henry
coloured at this; but vauntingly replied that he could, if he pleased,
marry into the imperial house; but he would not marry at all unless he was
quite sure that his new relation would prefer his alliance to all others.
When, at length, in June, the truce of Nice was signed, and soon
afterwards the fraternal meeting and close community between Francis and
Charles was effected at Aigues Mortes, Henry began to get seriously
alarmed. His matrimonial offers, to his surprise, were treated very
coolly; all his attempts to breed dissension between the imperial and
French ambassadors, who were now hand and glove, were laughed at;[185] and
the intimate confidence and friendship between his two Catholic rivals
seemed at last to bring disaster to Henry's very doors; for it was not
concealed that the first blow to be struck by the Catholic confederacy was
to be upon the schismatic heretic who ruled England.

With Francis there was no more to be done; for Henry and Brian, by their
want of delicacy, had between them deeply wounded all the possible French
brides and their families. But, at least, Henry hoped that sufficient show
of friendship with Charles might be simulated to arouse Francis' jealousy
of his new ally. Henry therefore began to sneer at the patched-up
friendship, as he called it.[186] "And how about Milan?" he asked the
French ambassador, knowing that that was the still rankling sore; and soon
he began to boast more openly that he himself might have Milan by the
cession of it as a dower to Dom Luiz of Portugal, on his marriage with the
Princess Mary; whilst Henry himself married the young widowed Duchess of
Milan, Charles' niece, Christina of Denmark, that clever, quick-witted
woman, whose humorous face lives for ever on the canvas of Holbein in the
English National Gallery.[187] There had been a Spanish ambassador, Diego
Hurtado de Mendoza, in England since the spring of 1537, to negotiate the
Portuguese marriage of the Princess Mary; but the eternal questions of
dowry, security, and the legitimacy of the Princess had made all
negotiations so far abortive. Now they were taken up more strongly, by
means of Wyatt at Madr