Paris, he strikes the note of distrust. “He wishes him God’s blessing, but how he inclines himself to deserve it he knows not.” None of his son’s three letters, he complains, makes any mention of the expense he is incurring. He urges him at once to begin to translate French; and then says, “Fare ye well. Write every time somewhat to my wife.” To Windebank the anxious father is more outspoken. How are they spending their time, he asks, and heartily prays that Thomas may serve God with fear and reverence. But Thomas seems to have done nothing of the sort; for, in nearly every letter, Windebank urges Sir William to repeat his injunctions about prayer to his son. But the scapegrace paid little heed. As soon as they arrived in Paris, Thomas sold his horse for forty crowns, and kept the money for his own spending. Throgmorton was soon tired of him, and advised that he should be sent to Orleans or elsewhere, away from the heat and distractions of Paris; but Thomas was well satisfied where he was. “Of study there is little or nothing yet,” he coolly writes to his father, after he had been in Paris for a month. They were still sight-seeing, and he grows almost eloquent in his description of a fight he had seen at court between a lion and three dogs, in which the latter were victorious. They lodged in the house of a gentleman, “a courtier and learned, but of indifferent good religion,” to whom they paid three hundred crowns a month for board and lodging; but this was not by any means all the expense. The heir spent £20 for his winter clothes; he must have a fashionable footcloth for his riding nag. The horses, too, were expensive, and Sir William complained. All gentlemen of estimation here ride, writes Windebank, and if he follow not the manner of the country, he will be less considered: “if all gentlemen ride, it is not meet for Mr. Thomas to go afoot.” The father was accompanying the Queen during the autumn on her progress through Essex, and writes from various country-houses to his son and Windebank, begging the former to study, to pray, to avoid ill company, to take heed of surfeits, late suppers, prodigality, and the like; but apparently to no effect. Thomas wrote rarely and badly, his French did not improve, and he still failed to write to his learned step-mother, greatly to his father’s anger. At length he fell seriously ill, and promised amendment, which for a time seemed hopeful.