The last of Elizabeth's wooers was the Duke of Alençon. Catherine de Medicis had tried hard to win the hand of the queen for an older son who was not at all eager for the honor. When this plan failed, Catherine wrote to her minister in England: "Would she have my son Alençon? He is turned of sixteen, though but little for his age." She went on to say that "this youth had the understanding, visage, and demeanor of one much older than he is." Elizabeth was thirty-eight, and when the scheme was first proposed to Cecil, he exclaimed, "Why, it would look like a mother with her son." Elizabeth never refused a suitor at once, and she demanded full information about the Duke of Alençon. "How tall is he?" she asked. The duke was really so stunted as to be almost dwarfed; he had an enormous nose, a wide mouth, and a face scarred by the smallpox. "I have waited a long time," said the queen, "and if I should now marry a man so much younger than myself and so badly marked with the pox, indeed I know not what they would say." "The duke is growing older every day," replied the French ambassador, "and in London there is a learned physician who declares that in two or three days he can remove all traces of the disease. The duke's heart is full of love and admiration for your Majesty. If I might venture, but no----" and he thrust back into his pocket a paper that he had partly drawn forth. "What is that?" demanded Elizabeth. "Pardon, your Majesty, but it is a paper that I have no right to show. This is but the private letter of the duke, and was not meant to fall under the eyes of your Grace." Finally he was prevailed upon to give her the paper, which proved to be a note--written expressly for the purpose--from Alençon to a friend in France. She read and reread. "That is a fair penmanship," said she. "That is marvelously well done." "And the matter of the letter," asked the ambassador, "is not that, too, well done? It is but the outpourings of an honest heart and of its longings to win your Grace for himself." "It is very fairly written," said Elizabeth, and she ended the audience, but she did not return the note. The duke wrote many letters to the queen, and they do have an air of sincerity and earnestness that is different from the writings of some of Elizabeth's suitors. Catherine sent word that the learned doctor from London was doing much to improve the appearance of her son's face, but she wished to be sure that the medicines were harmless. "He can easily practise on a page," she wrote, "and if it does well, he can use his remedies on my son." The French ambassador hastened to tell the good news to Elizabeth, but this disappointing sovereign replied coolly, "I am really surprised that so loving a mother did not attempt sooner to remove so great a disfigurement."