Everyone is anxious for peace, specially the King, but the terms offered by the insurgents are very hard, as your Majesty will see from the paper I enclose. The extravagant nature of their demands will, in my opinion, make it difficult for the King to grant them. The delegates will shortly be sent back to their friends with the King’s answer, and are to return with their reply on St. John’s Day (June 24). Meanwhile there seems to be a good prospect of peace; everyone is anxious for it, and so everyone assumes that it is certain. Well, I am afraid it will be easier to _make_ peace than to _keep_ it, and also I am apprehensive that peace for the French means trouble for their neighbours, for nothing would so calm the atmosphere in another quarter (the Netherlands) as a tremendous storm in France. Frenchmen cannot keep quiet, and many years of war have made them more restless than ever; consequently it is a matter of the first importance to France that her adventurous spirits should find a field of action elsewhere instead of fastening on her own vitals. Peace has been concluded between the King and the Queen of England, on the same terms as before. The Ambassador who returned from England brings back a story of a joke the English Queen (Elizabeth) made at his first audience. She at once asked whether the King was married. He replied in the affirmative, and began telling her who the new Queen was. Her Majesty broke in—‘Yes, exactly; that was the first clause in the Cardinal’s will. Dear me, what an unlucky woman I am! What is to be my fate? I had counted on marrying the Cardinal, and now I have only one hope left—perhaps the Pope will consent to take me as his wife!’ About the 17th of last month the King’s ambassadors, Bellegarde[63] and Pibrac, set out from Paris; the former was to go by way of Venice, and your friend through Germany and Bohemia—at least he told me so.