upon Queen Margaret’s news. The delay, she said, was entirely owing to the King of France. She, Heaven knows! had done enough, even to the verge of impropriety. “Et pense que le Roy pour telle me reputera, que je suis la récherchante, qui sera tousjour une belle reputation pour une femme.” But she still kept tight hold of the money and did not send him the aid he so confidently requested. She was, she said, a poor hand at financial affairs and had but little love for playing the economist. She was fain, therefore, to leave money matters in the hands of those who understood them better than she did, and the answer would be given to Marchaumont. This meant that she would send him no money until the position of his brother was made clear, but she reminds him that she has risked much already for him, and that England has nothing to gain by the marriage and very much to lose if the French should become masters of Flanders.[164] This letter was cool enough, and contrasts greatly with a short note written by Alençon the next day--May 25th --brought by one of the English courtiers who was returning. He winds up this note by bidding her farewell: “avecque autant dafection que je me souhet vostre mari couché entre deus dras dedans vos beaus bras.” The fear that the French might after all dominate the Netherlands or make terms with Spain, was not only tightening her purse-strings but had led her to consider an entirely new combination of the European powers, by which the North was brought in to redress the balance of the South. Eric of Sweden had a fair daughter of fourteen, whom it was proposed to marry to Alençon: a confederacy between England, Scotland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Russia, and Poland being formed; the reversion of the elective crown of Poland being secured to Eric, and a northern fleet being placed at Alençon’s disposal to oppose any naval attack upon him by Spain. Alençon and his mother, it was understood, were not indisposed to listen to this arrangement, but the countries were distant, their interests not identical, and whilst the negotiations were slowly dragging, events outstripped them and rendered them nugatory.