of the pledge and ring. For his own dignity’s sake she thought he ought not to have done so, as her pledge was purely conditional, and the King had not seen fit to accede to her conditions. Besides, she could not bring herself to the idea of marriage, which had always been repugnant to her; “and she hated it more every day, for reasons which she would not divulge to a twin soul if she had one, much less to any living creature.” She entered into a very complete defence of her action in the matter to Sussex, and wound up with, “And now, by God! what living man in future will ever dare to throw the blame on me, seeing that they want to pin me down to a contract that was only conditional?” Poor, honest, consumptive Sussex was certainly not the man to disagree with her, and promised to do his best to get Alençon away in a good humour. There was an excellent reason why the Queen should prime Sussex with arguments in her justification, because he was the only councillor who was a hard-and-fast advocate of the match, and she knew that all she said to him would be repeated both to Castelnau and to Alençon’s friends. But Sussex could no more get rid of him than could Cecil. The Queen, seeing the possibility of her terms being accepted by Henry III., tried on one occasion to raise the religious difficulty again. Look how difficult it would be, she said to Alençon, for them to live together if one were a Protestant and the other a Catholic; but he soon met this objection by swearing that he would be a Protestant for her sake, and she dropped the subject. On New Year’s Day a grand tournament was given in his honour, where he made a determined attempt to revive the idea of a romantic affection for the Queen. When he had to appear in the jousts he entered mounted on a chariot fashioned in the form of a rock, to which he was bound by heavy fetters. He was drawn by figures representing Love and Fate to the Queen’s feet; and Fate addressed to her Majesty some couplets beseeching her to restore the prisoner to his cherished liberty, and then to forget her vow of chastity and let Hymen bind their hearts together. The Duke acquitted himself well in the tourney, and the Queen, before all the company, embraced him again and again for his gallantry. At night she accompanied him to the door of his apartment, and came to visit him before he was out of bed the next morning.[153] This was all very fine and quite raised poor Alençon’s spirits for the time; but our present knowledge enables us to see quite clearly that all these cajoleries were only with the object of getting him away with a good grace.