important matters, face to face. Philip, however, had latterly been
disinclined for the personal interview with Catharine. As his wife was
most anxious to meet her mother, it was nevertheless finally arranged
that Queen Isabella should make the journey; but he excused himself, on
account of the multiplicity of his affairs, from accompanying her in the
expedition. The Duke of Alva was, accordingly, appointed to attend the
Queen to Bayonne. Both were secretly instructed by Philip to leave
nothing undone in the approaching interview toward obtaining the hearty
co-operation of Catharine de Medici in a general and formally-arranged
scheme for the simultaneous extermination of all heretics in the French
and Spanish dominions. Alva's conduct in this diplomatic commission was
stealthy in the extreme. His letters reveal a subtlety of contrivance
and delicacy of handling such as the world has not generally reckoned
among his characteristics. All his adroitness, as well as the tact of
Queen Isabella, by whose ability Alva declared himself to have been
astounded, proved quite powerless before the steady fencing of the wily
Catharine. The Queen Regent, whose skill the Duke, even while defeated,
acknowledged to his master, continued firm in her design to maintain her
own power by holding the balance between Guise and Montmorency, between
Leaguer and Huguenot. So long as her enemies could be employed in
exterminating each other, she was willing to defer the extermination of
the Huguenots. The great massacre of St. Bartholomew was to sleep for
seven years longer. Alva was, to be sure, much encouraged at first by
the language of the French princes and nobles who were present at
Bayonne. Monluc protested that "they might saw the Queen Dowager in two
before she would become Huguenot." Montpensier exclaimed that "he would
be cut in pieces for Philip's service--that the Spanish monarch was the
only hope for France," and, embracing Alva with fervor, he affirmed that
"if his body were to be opened at that moment, the name of Philip would
be found imprinted upon his heart." The Duke, having no power to proceed