On the 16th of January, only a few days after her first interview with Simier, the Queen wrote a letter to Alençon, in which her delight at his envoy is clearly indicated. She says that she is so pleased with him that no other advocate is necessary to make his peace with her. Alençon’s own words, she tells him, are worthy not of being written on parchment, but graven on marble. She bids him consult his wisest friends about coming over, but if he thinks his honour will suffer the least thereby she would not have him come for untold gold. She assures him of her eternal friendship. She has never, she says, broken her word in her life, so that as constancy is rare amongst princes she is offering no common thing. She ends by hoping that he will reach the years of Nestor, and that all his foes may be confounded.[104] This was a pretty good beginning, but the correspondence thereafter daily becomes more affectionate. On the 8th of February the Queen writes a long letter to her lover, in which she says: “Je voy clair la constance rare résider en vostre cœur qui ne se diminue par quelque ombre d’ingratitude, qu’est asses de preuve pour m’assurer de vostre affection sincère.” She then goes on to point out to her _tres cher_ that her people are strongly opposed to the match, and it will be best for Alençon and herself to settle the conditions before commissioners are sent. The meaning of this was that Simier, to whom even thus early she had given the punning pet name of her monkey (singe), was trying to get better terms for his master, especially in the matter of religion. In vain the young Prince flatters her by saying that he should sink under his troubles but for “l’imagination de vos beautés, et lesperance que j’ai de vos bonnes grases”; in vain he says he will leave every other point to her sole discretion, but cannot give up his religion, and so offend God; but Elizabeth and her advisers were firm, and things dragged on month after month. In the meanwhile Alençon was obliged to cross the border and re-enter France, and in March made a voyage of semi-reconciliation to see his brother in Paris. Simier at the same time was pressing him warmly to come over to England at once, strike the iron whilst it was hot, and marry the Queen offhand; but the Queen’s own letters persistently threw cold water on this proposal, as did Castelnau, the French ambassador, who was bitterly jealous of Simier; and Alençon, for the present contented himself with staying at his town of Dreux awaiting her favourable decision as to the conditions “for which hope alone he lives.” But he was more loving than ever in his letters, and writes on the 22nd of March: “Je garde vostre belle pinture, qui ne se separara james de moi que par la fin de mes os. C’est ou je fes mes auresons et pase la pluspart du tans en ladoration des divintés qui y sont. Je supplie tres humblement vostre majesté pardonner a mes pations (_i.e._, passions)