have no more means of supplying my table, especially as for more than six months they have had no money. Judge whether I deserve to be so treated, and fail not to come. I have on my mind, besides, two or three other matters of consequence on which I wish to employ you the moment you arrive. Do not speak of all this to anybody whatsoever, not even to your wife. Adieu, my friend, whom well I love.” Henry IV. accomplished all that, when he wrote to Rosny, he had showed himself resolved to undertake. External circumstances became favorable to him. Since his conversion to Catholicism, England and her queen, Elizabeth, had been colder in the cause of the French alliance. When, after his declaration of war against Philip II., Henry demanded in London the support on which he had believed that he might rely, Elizabeth answered by demanding in her turn the cession of Calais as the price of her services. Quite determined not to give up Calais to England, Henry, without complaining of the demand, let the negotiation drag, confining himself to saying that he was looking for friends, not for masters. When in April, 1596, it was known in London that Calais had been taken by the Spaniards, Elizabeth sent word to Henry, then at Boulogne, that she would send him prompt assistance if he promised, when Calais was recovered from the Spaniards, to place it in the hands of the English. “If I must be despoiled,” answered Henry, “I would rather it should be by my enemies than by my friends. In the former case it will be a reverse of fortune, in the latter I might be accused of poltroonery.” Elizabeth assured the French ambassador, Harlay de Sancy, “that it had never been her intention to keep Calais, but simply to take care that, in any case, this important place should not remain in the hands of the common enemy whilst the king was engaged in other enterprises; anyhow,” she added, “she had ordered the Earl of Essex, admiral of the English fleet raised against Spain, to arm promptly in order to go to the king’s assistance.” There was anxiety at that time in England about the immense preparations being made by Philip for the invasion he proposed to attempt against England, and for the putting to sea of his fleet, the Grand Armada. In conversation with the high treasurer, Lord Burleigh, Elizabeth’s chief minister, Sancy found him even colder than his queen; Burleigh laid great stress upon all that the queen had already done for France, and on the one million five hundred thousand gold crowns she had lent to the king. “It would be more becoming,” he said, “in the king’s envoys to thank the queen for the aid she had already furnished than to ask for more; by dint of drawing water the well had gone dry; the queen could offer the king only three thousand men, on condition that they were raised at his own expense.” “If the king,” replied Sancy, “must expect neither alliance nor effectual aid on