He reckoned on Francis I. to help him to understand it; but that prince was about to receive the pope’s niece into his family, and Henry made every exertion, but to no effect, to prevent the meeting of Clement and Francis at Marseilles. The King of England, who had already against him the Netherlands, the Empire, Rome, and Spain, saw France also slipping from him. He was isolated in Europe, and that became a serious matter. Agitated and indignant, he came to an extraordinary resolution, namely, to turn to the disciples and friends of that very Luther whom he had formerly so disdainfully treated. [Sidenote: Missions Of Vaughan And Mann.] Stephen Vaughan and Christopher Mann were despatched, the former to Saxony, the other to Bavaria.[340] Vaughan reached Weimar on the 1st of September, where he had to wait five days for the Elector of Saxony, who was away hunting. On the 5th of September he had an audience of the prince, and spoke to him first in French and then in Latin. Seeing that the elector, who spoke neither French, English, nor Latin, answered him only with nods,[341] he begged the chancellor to be his interpreter. A written answer was sent to Vaughan at seven in the evening: the Elector of Saxony turned his back on the powerful King of England. He was unworthy, he said, to have at his court ambassadors from his royal majesty; and besides, the emperor, who was his only master, might be displeased. Vaughan’s annoyance was extreme. ‘Strange rudeness!’ he exclaimed. ‘A more uncourteous refusal has never been made to such a gracious proposition. And to my greater misfortune, it is the first mission of kind with which I have ever been entrusted.’ He left Weimar determined not to deliver his credentials either to the Landgrave of Hesse or to the Duke of Lauenberg, whom he was instructed to visit: he did not wish to run the chance of receiving fresh affronts. A strange lot was that of the King of England! the pope excommunicating him, and the heretics desiring to have nothing to do with him! No more allies, no more friends! Be it so: if the nation and the monarch are agreed, what is there to fear? Besides at the very moment this affront was offered him, his joy was at its height; the hope of soon possessing that heir, for whom he had longed so many years, quite transported him. He ordered an official letter to be prepared announcing the birth of a prince ‘to the great joy of the king,’ it ran, ‘and of all his loving subjects.’ Only the date of the letter was left blank.