Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/487

I57I-] THE RIDOLFI CONSPIRACY. 473 near her, she said that the first article should be 'the restoration of Calais/ La Mothe exclaimed that it was plain now that she was trifling, and he gave no obscure intimation that France might be more dangerous to play tricks with than Sweden or Austria. The Emperor was far off, while a night's sail would bring the. French into Eng- land. To speak of Calais, as Cecil said, could mean only that she intended ' to procure a break/ and a break of the most dangerous kind. The council unanimously entreated her ' to forbear that toy of Calais/ and generally again urged upon her ' the prosecution of the marriage as a matter of all others most necessary.' 1 She listened, and as Burghley said, ' seemed to intend it earnestly ; ' she told La Mothe that she was most anxious to bring the matters to a happy termination ; but as fast as one obstacle was removed she raised another, and the situation was the more embarrassing because she had herself begun the negotiation. The French might naturally conclude that she had been amusing them with proposals which she had predetermined should end in nothing, merely to extricate herself from immediate embarrassments. Probably this was not the truth : with the present, as with all her marriage projects, she perhaps hoped and expected at first that she might be able to overcome her repugnance, and only found her resolution fail her when the moment came to decide. Even yet she could Burghley to "Walsingham, June 7 : DIGGES.