At the close of one of these interviews, when Alessandrino had been more than usually pressing, Charles took him by the hand: “What you say is very good, and I thank you and the pope for it. If I had any other means of being revenged upon my enemies, I would not go on with this marriage; but I have not.” When Alessandrino heard of the August massacre, he exclaimed: “This, then, is what the King of France was preparing. God be praised, he has kept his promise.”[505] At the close of the interview, Charles drew a valuable ring from his finger, and pressed the nuncio to accept it, as a pledge of his good faith and obedience to the holy see. He declined, saying, with a bitterness of manner that greatly displeased the king: “The most precious of your majesty’s jewels are but mud in the eyes of the faithful, since your zeal for the Catholic religion is so cold.”[506] Sir Thomas Smith, who was at Blois, wrote to Burghley: “The foolish cardinal went away as wise as he came: he neither brake the marriage with Navarre, nor got no dimes, ... and the foolishest part of all his going away, he refused a diamond which the king offered him of 600 crowns.”[507] There are serious objections to this story--especially to Catena’s version of it--which is in contradiction to documents above all suspicion. One of these is a letter from Charles to his embassador at Rome, with instructions about the dispensation. On the 31st July he recapitulates to De Ferrails the four conditions on which the pope is willing to grant the said dispensation, and says that Henry will never concede them.[508] He then argues that the marriage will be the best means of converting the prince, and hopes the pope “will not risk every thing by holding the cord too tight in matters which belong much more to state policy than to religious scruples.” He threatens that he will do without a dispensation, if he should be driven to consult on the best means of tranquilizing his kingdom and proceeding to the said marriage. In a postscript the king adds, that he has just seen Salviati, the papal nuncio, to whom he had communicated the substance of the dispatch, and begged him to write to the pope to the same effect. Did Salviati write as requested? He did, and all his correspondence shows that up to the very day of the massacre he was entirely ignorant of any treachery being contemplated. On the very day of the massacre the king gave instructions to Beauville, who was going to Rome, to the effect that the marriage was justifiable on the ground that it would bind the Huguenots to the crown, and he also wrote to De Ferrails on the same date, that the marriage was necessary, and therefore it had been solemnized without waiting for the dispensation, “to the great satisfaction of all his subjects.” That no allusion is made to a plot in these dispatches is proof that none such existed.[509] We must not, therefore, lay too great stress upon Ossat’s letter, which, after all, only repeats hearsay.[510] The