"I can assure you, my dear sister, that I can bear no more unless I am to burst. Certainly I never felt all that the dead King of France did against me, nor all that the present one is trying to do, nor yet the affronts which the Constable puts upon us now, half as keenly as I have felt and am feeling the treatment which I have received from the King my brother. I can only pray God to grant him good-will and understanding, and give me strength and patience, in order that we may arrive at some agreement, and that, if your coming does not serve to convert him, it may at least give me some consolation. "Your loving brother, "CHARLES."[431] On receiving this letter, Mary started for Augsburg without a moment's delay. Attended only by the Bishop of Cambray and three ladies, the brave Queen rode all the way from Binche to Augsburg in twelve days, and arrived at five o'clock on the evening of New Year's Day, 1551. [Sidenote: JAN., 1551] FAMILY CONFERENCES] All through November and December the Emperor hardly left his room. When he dined with the Knights of the Fleece on St. Andrew's Day, the hall was heated like a furnace, and Marillac, the French Ambassador, remarked that he looked so old and feeble he could not be long for this world.[432] But on the Feast of the Three Kings he dined in public, with his brother and sister, and his two nephews, Maximilian, who had arrived from Spain on the 10th of December, and the young Archduke Ferdinand. They were, to all appearances, a happy and united family, and Stroppiana noted an evident improvement in the Emperor's spirits. Roger Ascham watched these illustrious personages with keen interest. He describes how Charles and Ferdinand sat under the cloth of state and ate together very handsomely, "his Chapel singing wonderful cunningly all dinner-time." "The Emperor," he remarked, "hath a good face, constant air, and looked somewhat like the parson of Epurstone. He wore a black taffety gown, and furred nightcap on his head, and fed well of a capon--I have had a better from mine hostess Barnes many times." Ferdinand he describes as "a very homely man, gentle to be spoken to of any man," the Prince of Spain as "not in all so wise as his father." But King Max was Roger's favourite--"a Prince peerless" in his eyes. He is never tired of extolling this "worthy gentleman, learned, wise, liberal, gentle, loved and praised of all."[433]