The task was not an easy one, for she knew the position as well as anybody, and was hard to please. She was dissatisfied with the formal undertaking, which was read to her, and demanded that the King should add a personally binding confirmation in his own handwriting; but this he refused to do. When the Queen again talked about marrying Alençon immediately, if certain new conditions were granted, Castelnau besought her to speak frankly and state her final terms, so that, in any case, a firm national alliance might be arranged. She affected to fly into a passion at this, and said she was not such a simpleton as to trust Frenchmen if she did not marry Alençon. She then broke into strong language, as was her wont, and called curses down upon her own head if she did not instantly marry the Prince after the King granted her demands. Calling Cecil as witness to her words, she renewed her vows, swearing like a trooper, until, as Castelnau says, it made his blood run cold, and Cecil himself whispered to Lady Stafford as he left the chamber that if the Queen did not fulfil her word this time God would surely send her to hell for such blasphemy.[165] The French, however, strongly backed up by Leicester, were now all for a national alliance, having lost belief in a marriage; the Queen for her part stoutly maintaining that one thing was impossible without the other; and when Cobham, early in December, approached the King with regard to the new conditions demanded, he was made clearly to understand that there was no belief whatever in the Queen’s sincerity, and that her object was what we now know it to have been, namely, to pledge France to a war with Spain, whilst her own hands were free. The “monk” Marchaumont, too, was equally undeceived and sick of the whole affair; blamed by Alençon for his ill-success, and ceaselessly begging for his recall. Indeed, by this time there was not a soul who believed any more in the marriage negotiations, and Elizabeth began to grow angry that the trusty weapon which had served her well for so many years had lost its point. So when La Mothe Fénélon, on his way to Scotland, spoke to her about the relations between France and England, she gave him a piece of her mind. She told him that, notwithstanding all his professions, the King of France was the worst enemy she had. The Dauphin and Marshal de Biron, she said, although on the frontier of Flanders with troops, had tarried long there, and had refused to go to the aid of the States; besides which France, Spain, and the Pope, were all intriguing against her in Scotland and elsewhere; and the King was making friends with the Guises again. Having thus tried to alarm La Mothe, a desperate attempt was made once more to drag up the marriage. Walsingham assured him that the Queen really was in earnest, and a suggestion was made that if the King of France would break with Spain and help Alençon, the Queen would declare the latter heir to the English crown.