communications of Alexander and his agents, there was not one single word
of truth.--It was all false from beginning to end, as to the
countermanding of the troops,--as to the pacific intentions of the King
and Duke, and as to the proposed campaign in Friesland, in case of
rupture; and all the rest. But this will be conclusively proved a little
later.

Meantime the conference had been most amicable and satisfactory. And when
business was over, Champagny--not a whit the worse for the severe jilting
which he had so recently sustained from the widow De Bours, now Mrs.
Aristotle Patton--invited De Loo and Secretary Cosimo to supper. And the
three made a night of it, sitting up late, and draining such huge bumpers
to the health of the Queen of England, that--as the excellent Andrew
subsequently informed Lord Burghley--his head ached most bravely next
morning.

And so, amid the din of hostile preparation not only in Cadiz and Lisbon,
but in Ghent and Sluys and Antwerp, the import of which it seemed
difficult to mistake, the comedy of, negotiation was still rehearsing,
and the principal actors were already familiar with their respective
parts. There were the Earl of Derby, knight of the garter, and my Lord
Cobham; and puzzling James Croft, and other Englishmen, actually
believing that the farce was a solemn reality. There was Alexander of
Parma thoroughly aware of the contrary. There was Andrew de Loo, more
talkative, more credulous, more busy than ever, and more fully impressed
with the importance of his mission, and there was the white-bearded
Lord-Treasurer turning complicated paragraphs; shaking his head and
waving his wand across the water, as if, by such expedients, the storm
about to burst over England could, be dispersed.

The commissioners should come, if only the Duke of Parma would declare on
his word of honour, that these hostile preparations with which all
Christendom was ringing; were not intended against England; or if that
really were the case--if he would request his master to abandon all such
schemes, and if Philip in consequence would promise on the honour of a
prince, to make no hostile attempts against that country.

There would really seem an almost Arcadian simplicity in such demands,
coming from so practised a statesman as the Lord-Treasurer, and from a
woman of such brilliant intellect as Elizabeth unquestionably possessed.
But we read the history of 1587, not only by the light of subsequent
events