hope that Charles, weak, nerveless, addicted to
pleasure, but not yet quite lost to a sense of honor, might yet be induced
to adopt a policy which would place France among the foremost champions of
intellectual and civil liberty, and transfer to the north of the Pyrenees
the prosperity which the Spanish monarchs had misused and had employed
only as an instrument of oppression and degradation. And, indeed, Coligny
was partially successful; for the impression made upon Charles by his
mother's complaints and menaces at Montpipeau gradually wore away, and
again he listened with apparent interest to the manly arguments of the
great Huguenot leader.

[Sidenote: Elizabeth toys with dishonorable proposals from Netherlands.]

[Sidenote: Fatal results.]

Could Elizabeth at this moment have brought herself to a more noble
course, could she for once have forgotten to "deal under hand," and help
secretly while in public she disavowed--could she, in short, have realized
for a single instant her responsibility as a great Protestant princess,
and been willing to expose even her own life to peril in order to secure
to the Reformation a chance of fair play, it might not even now have been
too late. But what was she doing at this very moment? According to the
admission of her own secretary, she was engaged in detaining volunteers
from the Netherlands, on the pretext of "fearing too much disorder there
through lack of some good head;" and "gently answering with a dilatory and
doubtful answer" the Duke of Alva, when he demanded the revocation of the
queen's subjects in Netherlands.[922] Was she projecting anything still
more dishonorable? The Spanish envoy in England, Anton de Guaras, affirms
it, in a letter of the thirtieth of June to the Duke of Alva; and we have
no means of disproving his assertions. In his account of a private
audience granted him by Queen Elizabeth, the ambassador writes: "She told
me that emissaries were coming every day from Flushing to her, proposing
to place the town in her hands. If it was for the service of his Majesty,
and if his Majesty approved, she said that she would accept their offer.
With the English who were already there, and with others whom she would
send over for the purpose, it would be easy for her to take entire
possession of the place, and she would then make it over to the Duke of
Alva or to any one whom the duke would appoint to receive it."[923] Guaras
can scarcely be suspected of misrepresen