On the 21st of March Walsingham, who had now returned to his post, was walking with Smith in the park at Blois, when by accident or design they met the Queen-mother. A quaint account of the interview with her is given in a letter from Smith to Cecil dated the following day. They were speaking of the Duke of Norfolk’s conspiracy, when the Queen-mother seized the opportunity of once more trying to urge the suit of her youngest son. “I would,” she said, “that the Queen were quiet from all these broils; doe you (Smith) know nothing how she can fancie the marriage with my son the Duke of Alençon?” “Madam,” said Smith, “you know me of old; I can affirm nothing except I have some good ground. Why, if she be disposed to marrie, I do not see where she shall marrie so well; and yet, saith she, I may as a mother be justly accounted partial, but as for those which I have heard named, as the Emperor’s son or Don John, they be both lesser than my son is, and of less stature by a good deal, and if she should marrie it were pity any more time were lost. Madam, quoth I, if it pleased God that she were married and had a child, all these braggs and all these treasons would soon be appalled, and on condition that she had a child by M. d’Alençon, for my part I care not if ye had the Queen of Scotland here, for you would then take as good care of her as we do.” Catharine de Medici confirmed this view, and said that there was no reason why they should not have several children. “And if the Queen,” she said, “could have fancied my son Anjou, why not this one, of the same house, father and mother, and as vigorous and lusty as he, and rather more? And now he beginneth to have a beard come forth, for that I told him the last day that I was angry with it, for I was now afraid he would not be so high as his brethren. Yea, Madam, I said, a man doth commonly grow in height to his years, the beard maketh nothing. Nay, said she, he is not so little; he is as high as you, or very near. For that, Madam, quoth I, I for my part make small account, if the Queen’s Majesty can fancie him, for Pepin the short did not reach his wife’s girdle and yet had Charlemagne. It is true, said she, that it is heart and courage and activity that is to be looked for in a man. But have you no word of your Queen’s affection that way? Can you give me no comfort?” But Smith was not to be drawn out of his reserve without special instructions from England, and these did not come; so that although the conversation continued in the same strain for a long time, Catherine could get nothing definite in the way of encouragement to Alençon.