From town to town through Central France the Queen-mother followed her flying son, but he always escaped her. At last she had the boldness to appeal for aid to the _moderates_, and released their chief, Montmorenci, from the Bastille for the purpose of influencing Alençon. By this time the Huguenots were in arms everywhere. Wilkes, the clerk of Elizabeth’s Council, was sent to Condé and Montmorenci’s son, Meru, at Strasburg, with a large sum of money, and thence across the Rhine to raise, through Duke Casimir, “one of the finest armies that for twenty years has issued from Germany” to enable Alençon to hold his own against Henry III. and the Guises. But before reinforcements could reach him Marshal Montmorenci had induced him to patch up a six months’ truce with his brother at the end of November, and for the moment the danger of civil war was averted. But Henry III. found, as his brother Charles had found before him, that France was not large enough to hold both him and Alençon. The latter must be got rid of somehow. The Duke himself said that an attempt was made to poison him, but in any case his mother suggested to him that now that Elizabeth had been so ready to help him with money would be a good opportunity for reviving the marriage negotiations. Alençon, nothing loath, sent one of his friends, named La Porte, with two letters of thanks to Elizabeth dated at Montreuil on November 28, 1575.[94] They contain no word about marriage, but La Porte was instructed to co-operate with Castelnau de la Mauvissière, who was now the ambassador in England, in bringing it forward. Elizabeth insisted, however, as a preliminary, that a complete reconciliation should take place between the brothers and peace made with the Huguenots before she would again entertain the matter. The best way, said Catharine to Dale, to bring that about is for your mistress to desist from helping the rebels; and again the negotiations were shelved. Elizabeth’s new coolness is easily explained. Convinced, probably, of the inutility of an alliance with France in its present divided and unstable condition, she was for the moment actively engaged in making friends with Spain. Granvelle’s brother Champigny, who had come from Flanders as an envoy from Philip’s governor of the Netherlands to treat for a resumption of friendly relations, had been received with effusive civility. Philip’s fleet, under Pedro de Valdes, had been hospitably entertained at Plymouth, and Corbet had been sent to Flanders to arrange a commercial treaty between England and the Spanish States. Elizabeth had, moreover hastily recalled the English levies serving with Orange, although but few obeyed the call; and finally she had despatched young Henry Cobham as an envoy to Philip himself, in order to smooth matters over between them. In Philip’s notes of his interview with Cobham,[95] he says that the latter told him that Elizabeth had seen a letter from the King of France to the