not receiving direct letters from Parma,
and her anxiety on the subject explains much of her caprice during the
quarrel about the governor-generalship. Many persons in the Netherlands
thought those violent scenes a farce, and a farce that had been arranged
with Leicester beforehand. In this they were mistaken; for an examination
of the secret correspondence of the period reveals the motives--which to
contemporaries were hidden--of many strange transactions. The Queen was,
no doubt, extremely anxious, and with cause, at the tempest slowly
gathering over her head; but the more the dangers thickened, the more was
her own official language to those in high places befitting the sovereign
of England.

She expressed her surprise to Farnese that he had not written to her on
the subject of the Grafigni and Bodman affair. The first, she said, was
justified in all which he had narrated, save in his assertion that she
had sent him. The other had not obtained audience, because he had not
come provided with any credentials, direct or indirect. Having now
understood from Andrea de Loo and the Seigneur de Champagny that Parma
had the power to conclude a peace, which he seemed very much to desire,
she observed that it was not necessary for him to be so chary in
explaining the basis of the proposed negotiations. It was better to enter
into a straightforward path, than by ambiguous words to spin out to great
length matters which princes should at once conclude.

"Do not suppose," said the Queen, "that I am seeking what belongs to
others. God forbid. I seek only that which is mine own. But be sure that
I will take good heed of the sword which threatens me with destruction,
nor think that I am so craven-spirited as to endure a wrong, or to place
myself at the mercy of my enemy. Every week I see advertisements and
letters from Spain that this year shall witness the downfall of England;
for the Spaniards--like the hunter who divided, with great liberality,
among his friends the body and limbs of the wolf, before it had been
killed--have partitioned this kingdom and that of Ireland before the
conquest has been effected. But my royal heart is no whit appalled by
such threats. I trust, with the help of the Divine hand--which has thus
far miraculously preserved me--to smite all these braggart powers into
the dust, and to preserve my honour, and the kingdoms which He has given
me for my heritage.

"Nevertheless, if you have authority to enter u