In the following year, 1601, Biron was sent as ambassador to England, to announce to Elizabeth the marriage of Henry. He was accompanied by the counts of Auvergne and Chateauroux, the marquis de Créqui, and a splendid train of a hundred and fifty gentlemen. Elizabeth received him in the most flattering manner; but there was one of her conversations with him which might well have excited ominous thoughts in his mind. Essex had recently suffered. Speaking of that nobleman, she said, “I raised him to the most eminent dignities, and he enjoyed all my favour; but the rash man had the audacity to imagine that I could not do without him. His too prosperous fortune and his ambition rendered him haughty, perfidious, and the more criminal from his having seemed to be virtuous. He suffered a just punishment; and if the king my brother would take my advice, he would act at Paris as I have done here. He ought to sacrifice to his safety all the rebels and traitors. God grant that his clemency may not prove fatal to him. For my part, I will never show any mercy to those who dare to disturb the peace of the realm.” Biron must surely have felt his heart sink within him, when he heard this language, which, in all ways, was so applicable to himself. It is said, and we may easily believe it, that he omitted to mention this speech, when he gave an account of his embassy. The forbearance of Henry, and the lesson of Elizabeth, were alike powerless to check the downward career of the infatuated Biron. His treasonable practices were still persevered in. After his return from England, he was sent as ambassador, to Soleure, to ratify a treaty with the Swiss, and, on his way thither, he had a four hours’ conversation with Watteville, the duke of Savoy’s agent. Instead of proceeding to Paris, to render an account of his mission, he stayed at Dijon, the capital of his government, where the violent and insulting language in which he spoke of the king, gave abundant proof that little reliance could be placed upon his fidelity. In the meanwhile, various parts of the kingdom, particularly Poitou, the Limousin, and Périgord, in the last of which provinces the marshal had numerous partisans and vassals, were thrown into a ferment by insidious reports of Henry’s tyrannical intentions. Among the nobles also discontent was at work; the duke of Bouillon and the count of Auvergne were the principal malecontents. The provinces Henry quieted, by the kindness which he displayed in a journey through them; the nobles were not so easily to be reclaimed. It was obvious that a speech which the duke of Savoy made, after his leaving France, was not a mere idle vaunt. His friends rallying him on his failure, and alluding to the season at which he came home, told him that he had brought nothing but mud back from France. “If I have put my feet into the mud,” replied the duke, “I have put them in so far, and have left such deep marks behind, that France will never efface them.”