ch companions can teach him, if he does not know,
what course he ought to take in this affair."

Thus goaded, Oxford sent an acceptance; but before the duel could take
place, the lords of the Privy Council forbade it, and besought the queen
to effect a reconciliation between the two.

The queen's way of reconciling them was to send for Sidney and scold him
roundly. She pointed out to him the difference between peers and
commoners and the respect that inferiors owed to superiors, then she
commanded him to apologize to the earl.

"That, your Majesty," he answered, steadily, "I _cannot_ do. No peer
has, by his rank, privilege to do wrong; and though the Earl of Oxford
be a great lord by virtue of his birth and your Majesty's favors, he is
no lord over Philip Sidney."

In spite of queen and court and Privy Council, Philip Sidney would not
retreat an inch from this position; and Oxford was compelled to take
refuge in her Majesty's order, to avoid fighting with the fiery young
courtier. Shortly afterwards, the earl sent a messenger--supposed to be
Sir Walter Raleigh--with the proposition to Sidney that their
disagreement cease. Thus was the coward peer compelled to humble himself
to the proud commoner.

Negotiations for the queen's marriage to Anjou progressed favorably for
a while, to the deep distress of Sidney. Actuated by his great distrust
of Anjou and his equally great dislike to any sort of alliance with
France, he at length addressed a letter to the queen, setting forth
without reserve his objections to her marriage. He warned her Majesty,
in the most unmistakable terms, of the worthlessness and viciousness of
her suitor, and ended with a passionate appeal to her not to enter into
an alliance which would so surely cripple the advancement of the English
Church. But Sidney's letter was not one of reproof and entreaty only.
All through its pages could be seen the romantic devotion of subject to
sovereign, and the chivalric respect of a man for the woman whom he
imagined to be possessed of all feminine virtues.

The "most excellent lady" to whom the letter was indited answered it by
flying into a rage and dismissing the writer from court.

This was scarcely punishment to Sidney. He hated the vanities of court
life with his whole heart, and when he was thus dismissed, he was as one
from whom heavy shackles had been struck. He spent the time of his exile
with his beloved sister, the Countess of Pembroke, and while at