Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 5.djvu/138

118 afford more. He was at the moment on the Rhine, just recovering from a severe attack of gout, and collecting an army to wrest Metz from the Duke of Guise. Fortune at that time seemed again turning in his favour. The French invading force had been compelled to retreat out of Lorraine, decimated by fever, Guise himself remaining with a few picked troops. De Roulx, the Imperialist general in Flanders, had carried fire and sword to the banks of the Somme, and penetrated France to within fifty miles of Paris, sacking houses, and burning towns, villages, and farms. A company of English volunteers from the Calais Pale had joined him in an attack, which all but succeeded, upon Ambletue; while Albert of Brandenburg, who had quarrelled with Maurice, and was now in the Emperor's camp, had taken the Duke of Aumale in a skirmish.

Accounts, by competent persons, of interviews with Charles V. are always interesting. When Sir Richard Morryson waited upon him with the reply of the English Government to his request for assistance, 'the Emperor,' he said, 'was at a bare table, without carpet or anything else upon it, saving his cloke, his brush, his spectacles, and his picktooth.' His lower lip had broken out during his illness, and he kept 'a green leaf' upon it, which, adding to his 'accustomed softness in speaking,' 'made his words hard to be understood.' He listened to the message kindly, but coldly, 'thinking, as Morryson might perceive, to have heard somewhat of joining force against another enemy of his' beside the Turk: but he spoke warmly of England; he talked of