In the meanwhile, Alençon's love-letters to his mature flame grew warmer; but much as Elizabeth liked such attentions, she dreaded to go too far. Charles IX. was sinking fast, and the next heir was Anjou. With Alençon for heir-presumptive of France, the position would be changed; and once more the queen began to get doubtful about those unfortunate pock-marks on her lover's face. Once Alençon planned with Henry of Navarre to escape from his mother's custody and make a dash for England on his own account, but Catherine held him firmly. Both the Huguenots and the French king wished for the marriage, but each party frustrated the other because their objects were different. When the French ambassador, therefore, asked Elizabeth when Alençon might come to see her, she refused to name a time, because she knew secretly that a great Huguenot movement in France was pending, and she wished Alençon to be there as figurehead at the time--the very thing that the official French Government wished to avoid. The projected movement was betrayed and suppressed, and Alençon's life was for a time in danger; but when Henry III. (Anjou) was seated on the throne, Alençon kept openly a rival court to that of his brother, and the Huguenots around the prince were at deadly feud with the minions of the king. At last the crisis came. Alençon escaped from Paris in disguise, pursued by his mother, and, joining the Huguenots in arms, defied the king and the Guises. France was not big enough to hold both brothers in peace, and Catherine told Alençon that as Elizabeth seemed so ready to help him and his Huguenots, he ought to reopen the marriage negotiations. But Alençon was useless to England as a counterbalance to Spain unless France herself could be pledged as well, and Elizabeth considered it safest for the time, since that could not be done, to feign a new cordiality with Philip. The Catholic party in France was again paramount, and by bribery and Catherine's diplomacy, Alençon and his friends were bought over. For the next three years the young prince held aloof from affairs, but in 1578 the hollow truce ended; he was suspected and placed under arrest, all his friends being cast into the Bastille. In February, 1578, Alençon broke his prison and fled, and all France was plunged into turmoil. Elizabeth was profoundly moved. The keynote of English policy was the exclusion of France from Flanders, and if Alençon was secretly supported in his action by his brother, then Elizabeth must oppose to the death any interference in Flanders.