wrote a series of interesting letters to Elizabeth in his usual strain, giving her a full account of all that had happened. She, for her part, kept up the correspondence actively, and zealously endeavoured to induce his master to restore him to favour. Alençon seems to have treated his servitor very badly. Simier tells the Queen that only a few days before his disgrace he lent the Duke 90,000 crowns, and that suddenly he had been deprived of all he possessed, “and turned out in his shirt.” He ascribes his trouble mostly to Margaret, and his letters --particularly that of the 18th of October[121]--are so full of scandal that one can well understand his fervent prayers that the Queen will burn his letters and not let a soul but herself read them. It is almost impossible to read these letters and believe in the innocence of the Queen’s relations with Simier, as witness the final words in the aforesaid long letter of the 18th of October: “I pray you, madame, that no living soul shall know of my letters. I place my life in your hands, and only wish to preserve it to do you service. For I am your ape, and you are my creator, my defender, my stay, and my saviour. You are my god, my all, my life, my hope, my faith, and my consolation. I supplicate you then, and pray you with all my power to deign in your grace to bring my affairs to a happy issue. You will thus still further pledge the ape who in all humility will render you complete obedience to death, as willingly as he now humbly kisses and rekisses a hundred million times your beautiful and loving hands.” All this is mighty fine, but he gives the Queen in a postscript a piece of news which must have interested her still more, and certainly influenced her attitude towards Alençon. “Saturn” (_i.e._, the King of Spain), he says, “has informed the King and Queen-mother that if they can dissuade Monsieur from his plans in the Netherlands, he (the King of Spain) will grant him the territory of Cambresis, and will put him into possession of all the rest (_i.e._, of Catholic Flanders). The Pope and the Dukes of Savoy, Florence, Urbino, and Ferrara will guarantee this grant; and the Queen-mother has undertaken to make these overtures to Monsieur, who knows nothing of the matter yet. For God’s sake burn this letter and let no soul see it.” The effect of this was that loving letters were at once sent to Alençon, all difficulties were smoothed over, the commissioners should be cordially welcomed as soon as they liked to come, and what was of far more importance still, the Queen promised the French ambassador that when they arrived she would give Alençon 200,000 crowns of Drake’s plunder to help him in the Netherlands enterprise and subsidise Duke Casimir’s mercenary army of Germans to cross the frontier and co-operate with him.