When at length it was seen that Anjou would no longer act as a party to the game, but was looking to the possibility of a marriage with Mary Stuart or with a Polish princess, the idea of the marriage of Elizabeth with his youngest brother, the Duke of Alençon, was again very cautiously brought up by Sir Thomas Smith and Killigrew, who were acting as English Ambassadors in France during Walsingham’s illness. Alençon was only a lad as yet, and could be used without loss of dignity as a stalking-horse until the treaty of close alliance was finally agreed upon between the two countries. The inevitable Guido Cavalcanti broached the matter to Burghley in January, as he was coming away from an interview with Elizabeth, and after some conference Burghley himself discussed the matter with the Queen. She was thirty-nine, and the suggested bridegroom was barely seventeen; but she was full of curiosity as to the looks of the suitor, and distrustful about their respective ages. She asked Burghley how tall Alençon was. “About as tall as I am,” replied the Secretary. “About as tall as your grandson, you mean,” snapped her Majesty,[346] and so the colloquy ended for a time. On the 19th April 1572 the draft treaty between England and France was signed at Blois. It provided that aid was to be given unofficially by both nations to the revolted Hollanders; the fleet of Protestant privateers was to be sheltered and encouraged, and Huguenot Henry of Navarre was to marry the King’s sister Margaret. The Protestants and politicians of France had thus for the moment triumphed all along the line; the connection between England and France was closer than it had been for many years, and Elizabeth and Burghley could look back upon a great peril to their nation and their faith manfully met and astutely overcome. The Catholic party in England was now utterly prostrate. The Duke of Norfolk, condemned to death for treason, was respited again and again by the Queen, whilst he abjectly prevaricated, and threw the blame upon others. The Bishop of Ross and Barker, he said, had forsworn him: he never meant to bring a foreign force to England to depose the Queen, and so forth. From the first, Burghley, who had always been Norfolk’s friend, urged the Queen to let the law take its course.[347] He has been bitterly blamed for doing so; but seeing the danger to which Norfolk’s treason had reduced the realm, he would have failed in his duty as a First Minister if he had allowed any weakness or personal consideration to stand in the way of the just punishment for a great crime. Norfolk, though he was the most popular man and greatest noble in the realm, and still has many apologists, had plotted with the enemies of England to bring the country again under foreign tutelage for his own ambition, and it was right that he should suffer.