But Burghley might reason and remonstrate, Walsingham might tell her, as he did, that the penuriousness would bring her to ruin, Elizabeth would not open her purse strings until it was almost too late. Alençon had made a dash into Flanders soon after seeing Walsingham in August, and relieved Cambray, and then being absolutely penniless, his brother, in a fright at his boldness, refusing any aid, the Queen was obliged to send him £20,000 to prevent the abandonment of the whole business, and a union with the Guises which he threatened. He returned to France after a few weeks, and then again announced his intention of coming to England to exert his personal influence on the Queen. To stave off the visit several other sums of money were sent to him. Leicester, too, strove his hardest to stop it; but Alençon’s agents and Alençon’s lovelorn epistles were more flattering to the Queen even than Leicester, and the lover came early in November. Although Walsingham had almost arranged a draft treaty of alliance without marriage when he was in Paris, it fell through on the eternal question of the Queen’s “charges” and responsibility, and when Alençon arrived in England the whole matter was as far from settlement as ever. Of the extraordinary cajolery by which the Queen alternately raised Alençon to the pinnacle of hope and plunged him to the depths of despair during his stay with her at Richmond and Whitehall, a full description will be found elsewhere.[460] By her dexterity she bound him personally to her, and made it appear that the only obstacles to the match were those raised by the King of France. From the coming of Alençon it is clear that Leicester alone understood the Queen’s game. The earl was radiant and joyous, which made Sussex distrust the result, notwithstanding appearances. So far as he could Lord Burghley held aloof, although when the Prince came to London he waited upon him with other Councillors formally every morning at nine. When the famous scene was enacted (22nd November) in the gallery at Whitehall, where the Queen boldly kissed her suitor on the lips and publicly pledged herself to marry him,[461] Burghley was confined to his bed with an attack of gout. The Queen sent him an account of what had passed. Mendoza reports that he thereupon exclaimed, “Blessed be the Lord that this business has at last reached a point where the Queen, on her part, has done all she can; it is for the country now alone to carry it out.” The deduction which Mendoza drew from this exclamation was probably the correct one. To him it proved that the whole plan was insincere on the part of Elizabeth, and that the intention was to cause conditions to be imposed by Parliament which the King of France could not accept, and then to throw the responsibility of the breach upon the latter.