Catharine de Medici on her side was just as eager in appearance for the match as Elizabeth--and probably equally insincere, since she too had her own game to play. She had a long talk about it with Smith in Bordeaux in April, in which she said that the ages seemed the principal objection, but if Elizabeth would put up with the youth of the King, she (Catharine) would put up with the age of the Queen; upon which the youthful suitor himself burst in with the remark that he hoped his mistress would be as satisfied of his age as he was of hers. Catharine went on to discuss the other two difficulties raised; namely, the objection to the Queen residing out of England, and the fear of the unpopularity of the match; but Smith declined to give any opinion upon the matter. It was clear, indeed, all through that the English ambassador would not commit himself in a negotiation which he felt to be a hollow one. He said his instructions were limited. If the King were a few years older, if he had seen the Queen and really liked her, he (Smith) would feel less astonishment at the present advances, but now----“But really,” interrupted the King, “I do love her.” “Your Majesty does not know yet what love is,” said Smith, “but you will soon go through it. It is the most foolish, impotent and disrespectful thing possible.” The boy blushed at this, and his mother answered for him saying that his was not a foolish love. Perhaps not, said the ambassador, but it is just because it must rest upon very grave reasons and great and worthy considerations that it ought only to be undertaken after mature deliberation.[40] Catharine pressed for a reply before the Bayonne meetings, which were fixed for the following month of May, but this Smith thought impossible. On the following day she again tackled Smith on the subject; and said that, as Cecil himself had had a son at fifteen or sixteen, the King’s age could not be made an objection. Secret as the negotiations were kept, Guzman in London was irritated and alarmed to see the coming and going of Huguenot secretaries, without being able to fathom the reasons, although it was evident that something was afoot. Both de Foix and he were ecclesiastics, and many were the feline passages of words that passed between them on the subject. There was really nothing at all going on, said de Foix, only mercantile affairs were being negotiated. Guzman did not believe him --as he was a Huguenot although an Archbishop--but still did not guess that the Queen’s marriage with Charles IX. was seriously being discussed. For some time he thought that the matter in hand was the marriage of the Queen and Leicester under French patronage, but at last in the middle of April the Queen could keep the secret from him no longer. He was sneering at the long delay at the arrival of a present of a coach and some camels that were being sent from Catharine to the Queen, when the latter told him he was jealous, and asked him what he