Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 3.djvu/525

1542.] prospect of the marriage grew daily weaker; the probabilities of a rupture grew daily stronger; while the question of the debt had been complicated, as had been long feared, by the hint of repudiation. The pretext was idle. At the invasion of Provence Francis had professed himself satisfied, and even gratefully thankful, by a remission of the payment only during the continuance of the pressure upon him. His own letters were extant, emphatically committing him; but the more trivial the excuse, the greater the difficulty of enduring the fault.

The Admiral and the Queen of Navarre would not yet relinquish their hopes; and it seemed, indeed, as if the object was not really to induce Henry to surrender his debt, but to consent to an alteration in the map of Europe for the benefit of France. To the French proposal the King replied at once that it was 'too unreasonable.' If such a demand 'had been made when the Emperor and the French King were so great that all the world thought them one,' he would not have listened to it. The shuffling about the money he received so haughtily, that the French ambassador in London attempted an apology. De Bryon entered with Paget more fully into details. The money question ought to be settled, he said; what would the King of England accept? or would he accept anything? Paget was not a man to commit himself, still less to commit his country; but he hinted that the Calais boundary was a difficulty. If Ardes could be surrendered to England; if