to desire
than we; for if the King my master, should lose a battle, he would be
able to recover it well enough, without harm to himself, being far enough
off in Spain, while, if the battle be lost on your side, you may lose
kingdom and all."

"By God's sufferance," rejoined the Doctor, "her Majesty is not without
means to defend her crown, that hath descended to her from so long a
succession of ancestors. Moreover your Highness knows very well that one
battle cannot conquer a kingdom in another country."

"Well," said the Duke, "that is in God's hand."

"So it is," said the Doctor.

"But make an end of it," continued Alexander quietly, "and if you have
anything to put into writing; you will do me a pleasure by sending it to
me."

Dr. Valentine Dale was not the man to resist the temptation to make a
protocol, and promised one for the next day.

"I am charged only to give your Highness satisfaction," he said, "as to
her Majesty's sincere intentions, which have already been published to
the world in English, French, and Italian, in the hope that you may also
satisfy the Queen upon this other point. I am but one of her
commissioners, and could not deal without my colleagues. I crave leave to
depart to-morrow morning, and with safe-convoy, as I had in coming."

After the envoy had taken leave, the Duke summoned Andrea de Loo, and
related to him the conversation which had taken place. He then, in the
presence of that personage, again declared--upon his honour and with very
constant affirmations, that he had never seen nor heard of the book--the
'Admonition' by Cardinal Allen--and that he knew nothing of any bull, and
had no regard to it.'

The plausible Andrew accompanied the Doctor to his lodgings, protesting
all the way of his own and his master's sincerity, and of their
unequivocal intentions to conclude a peace. The next day the Doctor, by
agreement, brought a most able protocol of demands in the name of all the
commissioners of her Majesty; which able protocol the Duke did not at
that moment read, which he assuredly never read subsequently, and which
no human soul ever read afterwards. Let the dust lie upon it, and upon
all the vast heaps of protocols raised mountains high during the spring
and summer of 1588.

"Dr. Dale has been with me two or three, times," said Parma, in giving
his account of these interviews to Philip. "I don't know why he came, but
I think he wished to make it appear, by coming to Bruges,