Mundt worked hard, but there were many obstacles in the way. Wurtemburg was in no hurry. The mourning for the late Emperor, and the plague which raged in Germany, delayed matters for months. Once in the interval Cecil wrote to ask Mundt whether it was true that the Archduke’s neck was awry. Mundt could not deny the impeachment, but softened it like a courtier. “Alexander the Great had his neck bent towards the left side; would that our man may be his imitator in magnanimity and bravery. His body is elegant and middle size, more well grown and robust than the Spanish Prince.”[201] In the autumn Elizabeth sent an envoy to condole with the new Emperor on the death of his father, and simultaneously lost no opportunity of drawing closer to Spain. She coquetted with Guzman, ostentatiously in the face of the French Ambassador. She spoke sentimentally of old times, when her brother-in-law Philip was in England. She was curious to know whether Don Carlos was grown, and manly; and then apparently to force the Ambassador’s hand, she sighed that every one disdained her, and that she heard Don Carlos was to marry the Queen of Scots. Guzman earnestly said that the Prince had been ill, and that such a thing was quite out of the question; which was perfectly true. The Queen’s real object then came out. “Why,” she said, “the gossips in London were saying that the Ambassador had been sent by the King of Spain to offer his son Don Carlos to me!” All this rather undignified courting of Spain succeeded very soon in arousing the jealousy of France, as it was intended to do. De Foix, the French Ambassador, had kept Catharine de Medici well informed of affairs in England. Catharine was already getting alarmed at being bound hand and foot to the Guises, the Catholics, and Philip. The plan of marrying Mary Stuart to Don Carlos, or his cousin, the Archduke, and the rallying of Leicester to Spain and the Catholics, threatened to dwarf the influence of France, and make Spain irresistible. So the Queen-mother began to hint to Sir Thomas Smith, the Ambassador, that a marriage would be desirable between her son Charles IX., aged fifteen, and Queen Elizabeth, aged thirty-one. Some such suggestion had been made by Condé to Smith during the negotiations which preceded the evacuation of Havre, but it had not been regarded seriously. It was probably no more serious now, but it was the trump card of both Queens, and it served its purpose.