we
are beginning to discover the conspiracy which the adherents of the
pretended reformed religion had entered into against me, my mother and my
brothers, you will not speak of the particulars of the disturbance, nor of
its occasion until you receive fuller and more certain intelligence from
me; for, by to-night or to-morrow morning, I hope to have cleared up the
whole matter."[1184] No wonder the courier to whom the last letter was
intrusted was bidden ride with all speed to overtake the other; nor that
La Mothe Fenelon hardly knew how to extricate himself from the dilemma in
which the king his master had placed him. Had not Charles, by throwing
all the blame, in his first letter, upon the Guises and by positively
denying any participation of his own, unambiguously proclaimed his
ignorance up to that moment of any Huguenot conspiracy? How, then, could
the French envoy go to the same Englishmen to whom he had made known the
contents of this despatch, and tell them that the king was the author of
the deed he had stigmatized as most detestable, and that the motive that
had impelled him reluctantly to order the slaughter of the Huguenots was a
conspiracy which he did not discover until a day or two after he gave the
order? Yet this was the contradictory story which was sketched in the
letter of the twenty-fifth of August, and more fully elaborated in
subsequent despatches.[1185]

[Sidenote: His cold reception by Queen Elizabeth.]

The crestfallen ambassador is said--and the authority for the disputed
statement is no less than that of the members of the queen's council,
Burleigh, Leicester, Knowles, Thomas Smith, and Croft--to have exclaimed
bitterly "that he was ashamed to be counted a Frenchman."[1186] At first
he believed that an audience would be denied him; and when the queen at
last vouchsafed to see him at Woodstock, it was only after he had waited
three days in Oxford, while Elizabeth and her council met frequently to
deliberate upon the contents of Walsingham's despatches. He was admitted
to the private apartments of the queen, where he found her Majesty
surrounded by the lords of the council and the principal ladies of the
court, awaiting his coming in profound silence. Elizabeth advanced to meet
him, and greeted him with a countenance on which sorrow and severity were
mingled with more kindly feelings. Drawing the ambassador aside to a
window, she began the discourse with a dignity which few sovereigns have
eve