Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/487

 1578.] THE ALENCON MARRIAGE. 467 coldly and grow so hateful to this people, and he him- self for her sake the less esteemed. The mischief grows irreparable through distrust of the performance of that which hereafter may be promised for their relief.' : Strange as Elizabeth's manoeuvres appeared, they were but exaggerated specimens of her usual habits, and the explanation when it came was no less strikingly characteristic. It appeared that the French ambassa- dor, knowing that she detested the course into which events were forcing her, had suggested unknown to Burghley or to any one that there was a cheap and easy escape for her. The much-talked-of Alencon was still uncommitted to matrimony, still eager, if she would have him, to forget her ill-treatment and become the partner of her throne. The nature of him was by this time known to every one. He was an adventurer, un- easy at home, and anxious only for an independent position of some kind. He had been Huguenot after the massacre. He afterwards made his peace with the Court, and on the revocation of the Edict he had shown his penitence by presiding over the destruction of a Huguenot town. He had planned with Guise an inva- sion of Scotland. He had been a suitor since his last rejection by Elizabeth for a Spanish princess, and the Pope to further so useful an alliance had offered him a pension of 40,000 crowns, and had suggested that he should succeed Don John in the Low Countries as Walsingham to Burghley, September 9 : MSS. Holland.