The affection between the French and English, however, was too pronounced to last very long. The offensive and defensive alliance against Spain had given to the Huguenots more power than quite suited Catharine, and the Colignys and their friends of the “religion” were speaking too boldly to please her. The Emperor (whose daughter the young King Charles IX. had married), the Pope, and the Doge of Venice sent to remonstrate with the Most Christian King for thus joining rebels and heretics against good Catholics, whilst the Gondis, Biragos, and Guises were whispering to Catharine that she was provoking Philip too far. So, as the summer of 1572 wore on, the messages sent from France to England grew cooler, and Charles IX. began to cry off the bargain for the joint action with Elizabeth in the Spanish Netherlands. But still Catharine pushed industriously the love-making of her favourite boy Alençon with Elizabeth, in order that England and the Huguenots might not be driven into open opposition to her. A pretty lad named La Mole, one of the _mignons_, was sent to England in July, ostensibly to do the vicarious love-making for Alençon, but really to discourage the idea of any act of overt hostility on the part of France in the Spanish States,[207] and thus practically to withdraw from the much-lauded treaty of alliance, of which the ink was hardly dry. La Mole performed the philandering part of his mission entirely to Elizabeth’s satisfaction. She was on her progress to Kenilworth, and carried the young French gallant along with her from place to place, exerting all her mature witcheries upon him, but keenly alive and not a little apprehensive at the way in which she had been thrown over with regard to the alliance. The danger to her was great, for she had been drawn into a position of open hostility to the Spaniards in Flanders on the strength of the alliance with France, and now found herself alone. So she told everybody, and most people believed her this time, that she meant to marry the French prince without fail, and when she bade goodbye to La Mole at Kenilworth, he went on his homeward way loaded with sweet messages for the Prince and rich presents for himself.