e it is because, being but a young man, and lately
advanced to the crown, not by ordinary succession of blood, but by
election, he understandeth not yet the way of such affairs." And so
on--for several minutes longer.

Never did envoy receive such a setting down from sovereign.

"God's death, my lords!" said the queen to her ministers; as she
concluded, "I have been enforced this day to scour up my old Latin that
hath lain long in rusting."

This combination of ready wit, high spirit, and good Latin, justly
excited the enthusiasm of the queen's subjects, and endeared her still
more to every English heart. It may, however, be doubted whether the
famous reply was in reality so entirely extemporaneous as it has usually
been considered. The States-General had lost no time in forwarding to
England a minute account of the proceedings of Paul Dialyn at the Hague,
together with a sketch of his harangue and of the reply on behalf of the
States. Her Majesty and her counsellors therefore, knowing that the same
envoy was on his way to England with a similar errand, may be supposed to
have had leisure to prepare the famous impromptu. Moreover, it is
difficult to understand, on the presumption that these classic utterances
were purely extemporaneous, how they have kept their place in all
chronicles and histories from that day to the present, without change of
a word in the text. Surely there was no stenographer present to take down
the queen's words as they fell from her lips.

The military events of the year did not testify to a much more successful
activity on the part of the new league in the field than it had displayed
in the sphere of diplomacy. In vain did the envoy of the republic urge
Henry and his counsellors to follow up the crushing blow dealt to the
cardinal at Turnhout by vigorous operations in conjunction with the
States' forces in Artois and Hainault. For Amiens had meantime been
taken, and it was now necessary for the king to employ all his energy and
all his resources to recover that important city. So much damage to the
cause of the republic and of the new league had the little yellow Spanish
captain inflicted in an hour, with his bags of chestnuts and walnuts. The
siege of Amiens lasted nearly six months, and was the main event of the
campaign, so far as Henry was concerned. It is true--as the reader has
already seen, and as will soon be more clearly developed--that Henry's
heart had been fixed on peace from the