l is he?" she asked
Cecil. "About as tall as I am," replied the elderly minister. "As tall
as your grandson, you mean!" snapped the queen. But Walsingham, Smith,
and the French envoys plied her busily with descriptions of Alencon's
manly charms, and a treaty between France and England was settled by
which the Huguenots for a time became paramount in France conjointly
with the marriage of the Huguenot Henry of Navarre with Margaret, the
king's sister. Feasts and cordiality were the rules on both sides of the
Channel now, and the Huguenot leaders urged the Alencon match with
Elizabeth with all their force. In reply to all these offers, Elizabeth
replied that, though the discrepancy of age was a great drawback, yet
the pock-marks on the suitor's face were a greater objection still; yet
if he would let her see him, without a pledge, she might like him. She
would never, she said, marry a man she had not seen.

But already Charles IX. and his mother were chafing under the Huguenot
yoke and cooling towards England. They were determined not to be drawn
by their new treaty with England into war with Spain; so, under the
pretence of keeping up the negotiations for the Alencon match, they sent
the youth La Mole to England in the autumn of 1572, really for the
purpose of dissociating France from the Huguenot-English aid to the
Protestant Netherlanders. La Mole was a gallant young lover, with whom
Elizabeth was charmed, and when he played the vicarious wooer for
Alencon, she could not make enough of him. But whilst he was
philandering with her at Kenilworth, and she was losing patience at his
political mission, there fell like a thunderbolt the awful news of the
massacre of St. Bartholomew at Navarre's fatal wedding. At once the
scene changed. La Mole and the French envoy hurried away amidst curses
upon all false Frenchmen. Elizabeth, in a panic, smiled upon Spaniards
again, and, for a time, the project of a French consort for her slept.

But not for long. Alencon had no part in the massacre, and was known to
favour Huguenots. He wrote a fervent love-letter to Elizabeth, and
proposed to escape to England; whilst his agent Maisonfleur joined with
Mauvissiere, the official French ambassador, in wooing Elizabeth anew
for Alencon and for France. Gradually the parties drew together again,
for Catherine was already alarmed at the effect of St. Bartholomew. All
the Protestant world was arming, the English ports were full of
privateers to