osed
doors.

The French ambassadors could not have chosen a worse moment to approach
Elizabeth; and to gain time she declined to receive M. de Villiers,
returning the answer that he would himself know next day the reason for
this refusal. And indeed, next day, the rumour spread in London that the
French Embassy had contagion, and that two of the lords in it having died
of the plague at Calais, the queen, whatever wish she might have to be
agreeable to Henry III, could not endanger her precious existence by
receiving his envoys. Great was the astonishment of M. de Bellievre at
learning this news he protested that the queen was led into error by a
false report, and insisted on being received. Nevertheless, the delays
lasted another six days; but as the ambassadors threatened to depart
without waiting longer, and as, upon the whole, Elizabeth, disquieted by
Spain, had no desire to embroil herself with France, she had M. de
Bellievre informed on the morning of the 7th of December that she was
ready to receive him after dinner at Richmond Castle, together with the
noblemen of his suite.

At the appointed time the French ambassadors presented themselves at the
castle gates, and, having been brought to the queen, found her seated on
her throne and surrounded by the greatest lords in her kingdom. Then MM.
de Chateauneuf and de Bellievre, the one the ambassador in ordinary and
the other the envoy extraordinary, having greeted her on the part of the
King of France, began to make her the remonstrances with which they were
charged. Elizabeth replied, not only in the same French tongue, but also
in the most beautiful speech in use at that time, and, carried away by
passion, pointed out to the envoys of her brother Henry that the Queen of
Scotland had always proceeded against her, and that this was the third
time that she had wished to attempt her life by an infinity of ways;
which she had already borne too long and with too much patience, but that
never had anything so profoundly cut her to the heart as her last
conspiracy; that event, added she with sadness, having caused her to sigh
more and to shed more tears than the loss of all her relations, so much
the more that the Queen of Scotland was her near relative and closely
connected with the King of France; and as, in their remonstrances, MM. de
Chateauneuf and de Bellievre had brought forward several examples drawn
from history, she assumed, in reply to them on this occasion