Alençon for heir-presumptive of France, the position would be changed;
and once more the queen began to get doubtful about those unfortunate
pock-marks on her lover's face. Once Alençon planned with Henry of
Navarre to escape from his mother's custody and make a dash for England
on his own account, but Catherine held him firmly.

Both the Huguenots and the French king wished for the marriage, but each
party frustrated the other because their objects were different. When
the French ambassador, therefore, asked Elizabeth when Alençon might
come to see her, she refused to name a time, because she knew secretly
that a great Huguenot movement in France was pending, and she wished
Alençon to be there as figurehead at the time--the very thing that the
official French Government wished to avoid. The projected movement was
betrayed and suppressed, and Alençon's life was for a time in danger;
but when Henry III. (Anjou) was seated on the throne, Alençon kept
openly a rival court to that of his brother, and the Huguenots around
the prince were at deadly feud with the minions of the king.

At last the crisis came. Alençon escaped from Paris in disguise, pursued
by his mother, and, joining the Huguenots in arms, defied the king and
the Guises. France was not big enough to hold both brothers in peace,
and Catherine told Alençon that as Elizabeth seemed so ready to help him
and his Huguenots, he ought to reopen the marriage negotiations. But
Alençon was useless to England as a counterbalance to Spain unless
France herself could be pledged as well, and Elizabeth considered it
safest for the time, since that could not be done, to feign a new
cordiality with Philip.

The Catholic party in France was again paramount, and by bribery and
Catherine's diplomacy, Alençon and his friends were bought over. For the