The French were naturally elated at this, and Alençon at once sent off the great news to his brother, but the feeling amongst the courtiers was very different. Leicester and Hatton were in dismay; they had felt certain hitherto that the Queen was only play-acting, but surely matters were getting serious, and tears, lamentations, and reproaches, were the order of the day. But the Queen was playing her own game, and sage old Cecil was perhaps the only one of her advisers who really understood her move. He was ill in bed with the gout at the time, and was chatting with a couple of gossips when the message reached him. Instead of dismay he expressed great satisfaction, and placed the matter at once in its true light. “Thank God,” he said, “the Queen, for her part, has done all that she can; it is for the country now to take the matter in hand.” This meant that the Queen, ever evasive of responsibility, had shifted the onus upon Parliament, which had been summoned for the 6th of December. There was not the slightest need for Parliament to be consulted at all, but Elizabeth had been driven into a corner by Alençon’s presence and persistence and the immovable determination of his brother to stand aloof until the marriage had taken place. By taking the course she did, she artfully attained three objects which could have been compassed by no other way short of marriage: she secured further delay without offence to the King, she personally bound Alençon to her, come what might, and, most important of all, she sowed the germ of discord between him and his brother, who now appeared the principal obstacle to the marriage, as he refused the terms demanded by the English (which Parliament would be asked to insist upon) before the marriage could take place. Having the most secret correspondence before our eyes now, we are able to see clearly that this was the clever plan of the Queen herself; but her most intimate contemporaries were puzzled and disturbed at her apparent instability. The balance of opinion was that the Queen had been caught at last, and had pledged herself too deeply to draw back, although Leicester, after his first dismay was over, went about industriously spreading a contrary view. He and Hatton, however, were not so reassured as they would have had it appear. Hatton went to the Queen, and with many tears and sighs boldly told her that even if she wanted herself to marry, she ought to consider the grief she was bringing upon the country by doing so, not to mention what might happen to her personally if she married against the will of her people, upon whose affection the security of her throne depended. This almost seditious speech at another time would have aroused Elizabeth to fury, and consigned her “sheep” Hatton, to the Tower, but the Queen was quite confident in her game and only smiled and petted her future Lord Chancellor. Leicester, by right of his greater intimacy with his mistress, was blunter in his reproaches.