When the negotiations began, Elizabeth was already thirty-eight years old and of vast experience in promoting and then avoiding marriages. As a coy and bashful damsel, she could always plead her repugnance to the marriage state, and as the head of a Protestant nation, religion was another rock of refuge when anxious or angry suitors pressed her too closely. She had fooled Philip and she had kept the poor Austrian archduke gamboling before her. What could the pockmarked François d’Alençon expect but disaster? Yet it was he who came the nearest to pinning her down to a state of matrimonial stability. The two things in Catherine’s character which seem to be especially prominent in this tale of love and lying are her thirst for power for herself and a mother’s natural ambition for her children. Alençon’s appearance is the one thing about him which is seriously discussed. He was born 1555 and was therefore twenty-two years younger than Elizabeth. This was, of course, an enormous objection, or, at least, one which could always be urged. His age is the official and public objection, but his face and stature affected Elizabeth far more.[1488] As to his character we have the testimony of the English and Venetian ambassadors. Smith, in January, 1572, calls him “a good fellow and a lusty prince” and says “he is not so obstinate, papistical, and restive like a mule as his brother is.” Dale, in the quaint letter in a Hatfield MS says of him: “As touching his behavior he ys the most moderate yn all the court; never present at any of the licentious acts of his brethren, nor here nor at Rochelle; of much credit, and namely with them of the religion; thus he ys and hath ben hetherto; what may be hereafter God knoweth.” On the whole, the English ambassadors favored him, Walsingham the least. Evidently he was not an unpleasant person, but a young and inexperienced lad, ambitious to do great things, resenting his treatment at the court, and so plunged into the current of things, only to be deceived and ruined by the superior cunning of his supposed friends. His shortcomings may be excused on the ground of his environment and bringing up; may even be praised as being more manly and significant than the effeminate Henry. Alençon’s motives in attempting to win Elizabeth are obvious. His position in France was most unpleasant to him: suspected by his brothers, made fun of and pestered by the Guises and the “mignons” of the court; condemned to a life of subordination and idleness by the accident of his birth, the prospect of the hand of the Queen of England seemed most glowing, even though she was a heretic and more than twenty years older than he. But why should Catherine and Elizabeth ever consider such an intrinsically absurd proposition?