more
such passionate and incoherent expressions of rhapsody, as of one
suddenly smitten and spell-bound with hapless love, bitterly reproaching
the ambassador for never having brought him any answers to the many
affectionate letters which he had written to the queen, whose silence had
made him so wretched. Sir Henry, perhaps somewhat confounded at being
beaten at his own fantastic game, answered as well as he could, "but I
found," said he, "that the dumb picture did draw on more speech and
affection from him than all my best arguments and eloquence. This was the
effect of our conference, and, if infiniteness of vows and outward
professions be a strong argument of inward affection, there is good
likelihood of the king's continuance of amity with her Majesty; only I
fear lest his necessities may inconsiderately draw him into some
hazardous treaty with Spain, which I hope confidently it is yet in the
power of her Majesty to prevent."

The king, while performing these apish tricks about the picture of a lady
with beady black eyes, a hooked nose, black teeth, and a red wig, who was
now in the sixty-fourth year of her age, knew very well that the whole
scene would be at once repeated to the fair object of his passion by her
faithful envoy; but what must have been the opinion entertained of
Elizabeth by contemporary sovereigns and statesmen when such fantastic
folly could be rehearsed and related every day in the year!

And the king knew, after all, and was destined very soon to acquire proof
of it which there was no gainsaying, that the beautiful Elizabeth had
exactly as much affection for him as he had for her, and was as capable
of sacrificing his interests for her own, or of taking advantage of his
direct necessities as cynically and as remorselessly, as the King of
Spain, or the Duke of Mayenne, or the Pope had ever done.

Henry had made considerable progress in re-establishing his authority
over a large portion of the howling wilderness to which forty years of
civil war had reduced his hereditary kingdom. There was still great
danger, however, at its two opposite extremities. Calais, key to the
Norman gate of France, was feebly held; while Marseilles, seated in such
dangerous proximity to Spain on the one side, and to the Republic of
Genoa, that alert vassal of Spain, on the other, was still in the
possession of the League. A concerted action was undertaken by means of
John Andrew Doria, with a Spanish fleet from Genoa