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540 at her duplicity and selfishness, and spoke in no sparing terms of her.

Destruction of the Spanish Armada. (See page 531.) Nevertheless, his necessities soon compelled him to lower his tone, and even to condescend to flatter her in the most outrageous manner. He well knew how fulsomely her courtiers incensed her vanity, and that no adulation, however gross, was unacceptable to her, and he adopted this absurd extravagance to move her to his assistance, which was duly reported to her by Unton, her ambassador; who was no doubt prevailed upon purposely to do it. "He asked me one day," wrote Unton, "what I thought of his mistress, the fair Gabrielle, and was so impatient for my opinion that he took me into a private corner of his bed-chamber, betwixt the bed and the wall. I answered very sparingly in her praise, and told him that if without offence I might speak it, I had a picture of a far more excellent mistress, and yet did her picture come far short of her perfection of beauty. 'As you love me,' said Henry, 'show it me, if you have it about you.'" Unton, after making some difficulty, showed him the portrait, on which he went into transports, as though he had never seen a portrait of her before, and as though she was not then in her sixty-third year. "Henry," Unton continues, "beheld it with passion and admiration; saying, I had reason, 'Je me rends;' protesting that he had never seen the like. He kissed it, took it from me, vowing that he would not forego it for any treasure; and that to possess the favour of the