Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/514

 494 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 61 had seen him, and that excuse for indecision existed no longer. He was a small, brown creature, deeply pock- marked, with a large head, a knobbed nose, and a hoarse croaking voice, but whether in contradiction, or from whatever cause, she professed to be enchanted with him. She, who was accustomed to the stately presence of the Dudleys and the Sidneys, declared she had never seen a man who pleased her so well, never one whom she could so willingly make her husband. 1 For him too, as for Simier, she had a name of endearment. Simier was her monkey. Alencon became her ' grenouille/ her frog, or frog prince, beneath whose hideousness lay en- chanted, visible only to a lover's eye, a form of preter- natural beauty. 2 In seriousness the impression which he left was be- lieved to have been favourable, and the marriage to have been made many degrees more likely. An uneasy and angry murmur began to be heard like that which had risen when Queen Mary was to marry Philip, only deeper and more unanimous. Antipathy to France was stronger in England than difference of religion. Though Alencon was a Catholic, and though his presence was expected to produce a change in their religious position, the prospect did not even reconcile the Romanists ; and Mendoza consoled himself with thinking that if the Queen took him it would be a judicial blunder per- mitted by God to punish the apostasy of England and 1 Mendocja a su Mag d, 25 de Agosto : MSS. Simancas. 3 Alencon accepted the name, and in the long love correspondence, which is preserved at Hatfield, he thus pathetically signed himself.