took another course--namely, to send for Castelnau, the French ambassador, and assure him on her word of honour as a Queen that she would marry Alençon. This and other things she desired that he would convey to the King officially; but really the trick was getting too stale. Castelnau replied that she had at various times made him write so many things which she had no intention of fulfilling that he must decline to do so any more. After much persuasion, however, he consented to write, although he made no secret of his derision of the whole affair. If Mendoza is to be believed, the Queen was playing a doubly false game on the present occasion. She was trying to prevent the King of France from joining a coalition against her by again professing willingness to become his sister-in-law, she was beguiling Alençon with renewed ideas of marriage and help, to prevent him in his despair from making terms with Parma, she was sending messages urging him to retire from the Netherlands for his safety’s sake in order to relieve herself of the responsibility of helping him, whilst, by the very same messenger, she was instructing Orange and the Protestants on no account to let him go, so that she might not be plagued again by his appearance in England as a pressing suitor. All through March and April news continued to arrive of the Prince of Orange’s desperate condition. For days he was only kept alive by the repression of the severed artery by the fingers of relays of attendants night and day. Several times apparently well-founded intelligence came of his death, and Elizabeth and her councillors had to consider the new aspect of affairs which such an event would produce. Leicester, Hatton, and Walsingham were in favour of the Queen herself taking the protectorate of the Netherlands, as she could then, if necessary, make better terms with Spain; whilst if Alençon and the French once got their grip on the country it would be ruinous to England. Sussex and Cecil, on the other hand, were for making an arrangement with Spain at once. When they submitted their diverse opinions to the Queen she angrily complained that the death of a single person made all her councillors tremble and deprived her subjects of their courage. But she took her own tortuous course whatever her councillors’ opinions might be. First she publicly declared on every occasion her fixed intention of marrying Alençon; then she sent for Sussex and begged him to write to the Duke that when he had made terms with Spain or had otherwise arranged to relieve her of the need for contributing to the war, she would marry him at once; and to this she would pledge her word as a Queen and her oath as a Christian. But Sussex refused this time to be the instrument for still further injuring her reputation, as he said. He had innocently done so before, but he knew that marriage was repugnant to her, and he would have no more to do with it.[156] Finding that Sussex was obdurate, the