Sir Thomas Smith and Killigrew arrived at Amboise, where the Court was, on January 1, 1572. His first interview was with de Foix, who assured him that Anjou was still firm on the question of religion. Smith said he did not think the last word had been said on that matter, but refrained from appearing anxious for an audience of the Queen-mother or the King until Coligny and Montmorenci had been sounded as to the best mode of procedure. De Foix went so far as to say that Anjou was religious mad, whereupon Smith replied that if he thought the Duke was really obstinate about it he “would soon turn tail,” and thus save his mistress’s honour. It is very evident that Smith had no belief in Anjou’s devotion, for he tells Cecil that his “religion was really fixed on Mdlle. Chateauneuf, and now in another place.” Smith had his first audience with the Queen-mother on the 6th of January. The King and the rest of them, he says, were busy dancing, when the Queen-mother took him apart into her chamber and opened the colloquy by saying that the only obstacle to the match was still the question of religion, as Anjou was so bigoted as to think that he would be damned if he yielded the point. Smith then asked whether, in the event of Elizabeth giving way on this, the match would be carried through. “Well,” replied Catharine, “that is the principal point, but still there are other questions which will have to be settled touching the honour and dignity of the Prince. Yet she assured the English envoy there was nothing they ever desired so much in their lives as the marriage, and they had not the slightest desire to break off. To this Smith replied that if they _did_ want to break off the religious question would be the most honourable point of difference. Catharine assured him again of their sincerity, but deplored that Anjou was so “assotted.” What more can he desire, asked Smith, than that which the Queen was now willing to concede; namely, that he should have free exercise of his religion, “only excepting such parts of the mass as were against God’s words”? If he did not have full mass he thought he would inevitably be damned, said Catharine. The English envoy only gave way step by step. Suppose, he asked, the Duke were allowed to hear private mass in his own little chapel, would that do for him? No, replied the Queen-mother, he must have full, open, public mass; he was so devout that he heard three or four masses a day, and fasted so rigidly at Lent that “he began to look lean and evil-coloured,” whereupon, she said, she was angry with him, and told him she would rather he were a Huguenot than thus hurt his health. No, she continued, he will not have mass in a corner, but “with all the ceremonies of the Romish Church, with priests and singers and the rest.” “Why, Madame,” quoth Smith, “then he may require also the four orders of friars, monks, canons, pilgrimages, pardons, oil, cream, relics, and all such