Several contemporary writers, as well as general tradition, state that, on occasion of one of the various embassies sent to and fro between the courts of London and Paris, the Dauphin, then about eighteen or nineteen years of age, sent an insulting present (p. 109) to Henry of a tun of tennis-balls, with a message full of contempt and scorn,[84] implying that a racket-court was a more fit place for him than a battle-field. It is well observed, that such an act of wilful provocation must have convinced both parties of the hopelessness of any attempts towards a pacific arrangement; and, since the negociations were carried on to the very last, some discredit has thence been attempted to be thrown on the story altogether. But it must be remembered (as the author of the Abrege Historique justly remarks) that these negociations were continued, on the part of France, merely to gain time, and withdraw Henry from his purpose; whilst Henry, on the other side, by his renewed proposals for the hand of Katharine, (an union on which he appears from the first to have been heartily bent,) kept up in his enemies the hope that, to gain that object, he would ultimately relax from many of his original demands. Henry certainly afterwards challenged the Dauphin to single combat, as though he had a quarrel with him personally; and nothing can fairly be inferred against the truth of the tradition, from the silence in the challenge on the point of such an insult having been offered. On the whole, the evidence is decidedly in favour of the reality of the incident; whilst Henry's reported answer is very characteristic: "I will thank the Dauphin in person, and will (p. 110) carry him such tennis-balls as shall rattle his hall's roof about his ears." And they, says the contemporary chronicler,[85] were great gunstones for the Dauphin to play withal. [Footnote 84: Otterbourne says Henry received the tennis-balls whilst he was keeping his Lent at Kenilworth.] [Footnote 85: Cotton MS. Claudius, A. viii.] * * * * *