something sharper than the sharpest words would soon be wanted to protect
England and herself from impending doom. For there was something almost
gigantic in the frivolities with which weeks and months of such precious
time were now squandered. Plenary powers--"commission bastantissima"--
from his sovereign had been announced by Alexander as in his possession;
although the reader has seen that he had no such powers at all. The
mission of Rogers had quieted the envoys at Ostend for a time, and they
waited quietly for the visit of Richardot to Ostend, into which the
promised meeting of all the Spanish commissioners in that city had
dwindled. Meantime there was an exchange of the most friendly amenities
between the English and their mortal enemies. Hardly a day passed that
La Motte, or Renty, or Aremberg, did not send Lord Derby, or Cobham, or
Robert Cecil, a hare, or a pheasant, or a cast of hawks, and they in
return sent barrel upon barrel of Ostend oysters, five or six hundred at
a time. The Englishmen, too; had it in their power to gratify Alexander
himself with English greyhounds, for which he had a special liking.
"You would wonder," wrote Cecil to his father, "how fond he is of English
dogs." There was also much good preaching among other occupations, at
Ostend. "My Lord of Derby's two chaplains," said Cecil, "have seasoned
this town better with sermons than it had been before for a year's
apace." But all this did not expedite the negotiations, nor did the
Duke manifest so much anxiety for colloquies as for greyhounds. So, in
an unlucky hour for himself, another "fond and vain" old gentleman--James
Croft, the comptroller who had already figured, not much to his credit,
in the secret negotiations between the Brussels and English courts--
betook himself, unauthorized and alone; to the Duke at Bruges. Here he
had an interview very similar in character to that in which John Rogers
had been indulged, declared to Farnese that the Queen was most anxious
for peace, and invited him to send a secret envoy to England, who would
instantly have ocular demonstration of the fact. Croft returned as