A few days after this Catharine sent Cavalcanti to see Dale and sound him about Elizabeth’s present sincerity. He talked about the “_honte_” to them all if the Duke went to England and nothing came of it, and hinted that he, Cavalcanti, or a greater personage might first be sent to the English Court to “learn the Queen’s mind.” Dale prudently counselled Cavalcanti not to deal alone in the matter, but to have some other pair of shoulders to bear part of the responsibility if the affair fell through. This was not very encouraging, and two days afterwards Alençon providentially fell ill of fever. This was at once seized upon as the excuse for his not meeting the Queen; and Gondi, Count de Retz, was sent to England in the last week of August to see Elizabeth at Dover and explain the reason for Alençon’s absence. He took letters from the King, Catharine, and Alençon, and was to obtain, if possible, some assurance from the Queen. He accompanied her as far on her journey to London as Canterbury, and there took his leave with many loving but vague messages. By him Elizabeth wrote to Alençon (September 15th) thanking him for the visit he intends making her, and saying she considers herself fortunate that the sea cannot restrain his desire to see her. Besides the formal letter he had sent by Retz, Alençon had written another in much warmer terms. “He had been,” he says, “twice near his last sigh, but is now, thank God, better, although still with continual fever. He is told that there are some in France who, _par finese, cotele, ou ruze_, wish to bring about that she shall love him no longer. He begs her not to believe them, for if such should be the case he should die,” and he sends her a ring as a love token. This was a fair beginning of a romance between a “feather-headed” prince of eighteen and the clever Queen of forty, and for a time all looked prosperous again. Retz’s report was favourable, and Catharine was more inclined to let her son go. Dale saw the Prince, and wrote to Burleigh in October that he had “shot up” much since his sickness, and that his “colour was amended of the ruddiness it had”; but, he adds, “as for the rest, the liking or misliking is in the hands of God.”