[LETTER XLIII.]
I have allowed an unusually long interval to elapse, partly because I was every day expecting Sancerre to leave, and partly because I had no news worth sending.
The King, who had been dodging the plague from place to place, at last stopped at Blois; the plague,[217] however, gave him notice to quit by carrying off one of the ladies of the Queen’s bedchamber, so after all he has returned to Saint-Germain en Laye, where he intends prosecuting his social and legal reforms. I saw him at Blois, whither I went to express to him and the two Queens, his mother and his wife, the grief and sorrow of the Most Christian Queen, your Majesty’s sister, at the death of Alençon.
There was some talk of disturbances in the south of France, but they seem to have subsided.
Don Bernardino de Mendoza, whom I mentioned as travelling from England to Spain by way of Paris, has returned to these parts. He comes to express his master’s grief at the death of Alençon, and also to supersede Tassis[218] as ambassador to France. Tassis has gone to the Netherlands en route for Spain. If laying out large sums be the proof of a good ambassador, Don Bernardino must be the best in the world, for they say he intends spending as much as 16,000 crowns a year. I hope the rest may be in keeping, and that he may prove in every way as good as Tassis.
The Duke of Epernon, who is the King’s second self, is ill with a severe attack of scrofula, a disease which the Kings of France profess to heal by a touch of the hand,[219] so the King has an admirable opportunity of putting his power to the test! I write this because I have nothing else to say. Everything is at a standstill from the frost, but this pause will probably lead to greater movements in the spring.
December 10, 1584.
LETTER XLIV.
Ambassadors have again come from the rebel States of the Netherlands, with very extensive powers, they say, to induce the King to take them under his protection. The result is, to my mind, extremely doubtful. There are men about the King who would fain lead him into war.