but it is hardly to be wondered at that Leicester should think himself
injured by being kept perpetually in the dark.

Elizabeth was very impatient at not receiving direct letters from Parma,
and her anxiety on the subject explains much of her caprice during the
quarrel about the governor-generalahip. Many persons in the Netherlands
thought those violent scenes a farce, and a farce that had been arranged
with Leicester beforehand. In this they were mistaken; for an
examination of the secret correspondence of the period reveals the
motives--which to contemporaries were hidden--of many strange
transactions. The Queen was, no doubt, extremely anxious, and with
cause, at the tempest slowly gathering over her head; but the more the
dangers thickened, the more was her own official language to those in
high places befitting the sovereign of England.

She expressed her surprise to Farnese that he had not written to her on
the subject of the Grafigni and Bodman affair. The first, she said, was
justified in all which he had narrated, save in his assertion that she
had sent him. The other had not obtained audience, because he had not
come provided with any credentials, direct or indirect. Having now
understood from Andrea de Loo and the Seigneur de Champagny that Parma
had the power to conclude a peace, which he seemed very much to desire,
she observed that it was not necessary for him to be so chary in
explaining the basis of the proposed negotiations. It was better to
enter into a straightforward path, than by ambiguous words to spin out
to great length matters which princes should at once conclude.

"Do not suppose," said the Queen, "that I am seeking what belongs to
others. God forbid. I seek only that which is mine own. But be
sure that I will take good heed of the sword which threatens me with