Such were the circumstances under which the Bayonne conference took place--a meeting which Cardinal Granvelle assured his correspondents was a simple visit of a daughter to her mother,[363] but to which contemporaries, both Roman Catholic and Protestant, ascribed a far deeper significance. At this meeting, according to Jean de Serres, writing only four or five years after the event,[364] a holy league, as it was called, was formed, by the intervention of Isabella, for the purpose of re-establishing the authority of the ancient religion and of extirpating the new. France and Spain mutually promised to render each other assistance in the good work; and both pledged themselves to the support of the Holy See by all the means in their power. Philip himself was not present, either, it was conjectured, in order that the league might the better be kept secret, or to avoid the appearance of lowering his dignity before that of the French monarch.[365] The current belief--until recently almost the universal belief of historians--goes farther, and alleges that in this mysterious conference Catharine and Alva, who accompanied his master's wife, concocted the plan of that famous massacre whose execution was delayed by various circumstances for seven years. Alva was the tempter, and the words with which he recommended his favorite method of dealing with heresy, by destroying its chief upholders, were embodied in the ignoble sentence, "Better a salmon's head than ten thousand frogs."[366] In fact, a general impression that the conference had led to the formation of a distinct plan for the universal destruction of Protestantism gained ground almost immediately. Within about a month after the queen mother and her daughter had ended their interview, the English ambassador wrote to Leicester and Cecil that "they of the religion think that there has been at this meeting at Bayonne some complot betwixt the Pope, the King of Spain, and the Scottish queen, by their ambassadors, and some say also the Papists of England."[367] [Sidenote: No plan of massacre agreed upon.] Fortunately, however, we are not left to frame by uncertain conjecture a doubtful story of the transactions of this famous interview. The correspondence of the Duke of Alva himself with Philip the Second has been preserved among the manuscripts of Simancas, to dispel many inveterate misapprehensions. These letters not only prove that no plan for a massacre of the Huguenots was agreed upon by the two parties, but that Alva did not even distinctly declare himself in favor of such a plan. They furnish, however, an instructive view, such as can but rarely be so well obtained, of the net of treacherous intrigue which the fingers of Philip and his agents were for many years busy day and night in cautiously spreading around the throne of France. [Sidenote: June 14th.] [Sidenote: June 15th.]