This letter fully bears out Cromwell’s instructions to Hoby. It is plain from its wording that Hoby had already obtained a portrait of Louise at Havre, and at least one other, of some unnamed lady (“pour la tirer comes _les aultres_”); and that the painter who had drawn them was the painter now at Joinville. Their journey was, however, in part at least, a failure, for their chief purpose in visiting the Duchess was to obtain a portrait of her daughter Renée, the “religieuse.” Hoby was ordered “to take the physiognomy of her, that he may join her sister and her in a fair table”; in other words, he was to get a drawing of the younger girl in order that her portrait might be painted as a companion to the one of her sister Louise already completed, so that they might be hung side by side in one of those double frames hinged together of which Henry VIII had several in his collection. Unfortunately for their purpose, Renée was not at Joinville, so that nothing could be done, and Hoby had to be content with an interview with Louise in her bedchamber. The fourth daughter, Anthoinette, was at home, but she was then only a child of seven. Thanks to the curiosity of the Duchess, however, we know that they succeeded in the second half of their mission. They spent a day at Nancy, where they were well received by the Duke of Lorraine, and evidently procured the drawing required, which Holbein would easily make in a few hours. Hoby attempted to conceal the real purpose of this visit to Nancy from the Duchess of Guise, but the lady was sharp enough to guess what was in the wind. Whether Louise or Anne, however, it was all in the family. “If the worst comes to the worst,” she tells the Queen of Scots, “if you do not have your sister for neighbour, it may well be your cousin.” The letter is far from easy to decipher, owing to its extraordinary spelling and grammar. It is difficult to gather from it which of the two places Hoby and his companion first visited. The Duchess, writing only two days after they had been with her, says that the envoy told her that “he wished to go to Nency,” which seems to indicate a prospective journey; but, on the other hand, she says “they have been to Nency,” and a journey from Joinville to Nancy and back again, together with a whole day spent at the latter place, could not possibly have been accomplished between August 30 and September 1, so that it looks as though they had gone straight to the Duke of Lorraine in spite of Cromwell’s instructions, and then from there on to Joinville. The point, however, is of little importance.