All the circumstances of the case were such as to make Mary’s marriage a veritable virgin sacrifice.  Louis was an old man, and an old Frenchman at that; full of French notions of morality and immorality; and besides, there were objections that cannot be written, but of which Henry and Mary had been fully informed.  She might as well marry a leper.  Do you wonder she was full of dread and fear, and resisted with the desperation of death?

So Mary, the person most interested, was about the last to learn that the treaty had been signed.

Windsor was nearly eight leagues from London, and at that time was occupied only by the girls and a few old ladies and servants, so that news did not travel fast in that direction from the city.  It is also probable that, even if the report of the treaty and Brandon’s release had reached Windsor, the persons hearing it would have hesitated to repeat it to Mary.  However that may be, she had no knowledge of either until she was informed of the fact that the king and the French ambassador would be at Windsor on a certain day to make the formal request for her hand and to offer the gifts of King Louis.

I had no doubt Mary was in trouble, and felt sure she had been making affairs lively about her.  I knew her suffering was keen, but was glad of it in view of her treatment of Brandon.

A day or two after Brandon’s liberation I had begun to speak to him of the girls, but he interrupted me with a frightful oath:  “Caskoden, you are my friend, but if you ever mention their names again in my hearing you are my friend no longer.  I will curse you.”

I was frightened, so much stronger did his nature show than mine, and I took good care to remain silent on that subject until—­but I am going too fast again; I will tell you of that hereafter.

Upon the morning appointed, the king, Wolsey, de Longueville and myself, with a small retinue, rode over to Windsor, where we found that Mary, anticipating us, had barricaded herself in her bedroom and refused to receive the announcement.  The king went up stairs to coax the fair young besieged through two inches of oak door, and to induce her, if possible, to come down.  We below could plainly hear the king pleading in the voice of a Bashan bull, and it afforded us some amusement behind our hands.  Then his majesty grew angry and threatened to break down the door, but the fair besieged maintained a most persistent and provoking silence throughout it all, and allowed him to carry out his threat without so much as a whimper.  He was thoroughly angry, and called to us to come up to see him “compel obedience from the self-willed hussy,”—­a task the magnitude of which he underrated.

The door was soon broken down, and the king walked in first, with de Longueville and Wolsey next, and the rest of us following in close procession.  But we marched over broken walls to the most laughable defeat ever suffered by besieging army.  Our foe, though small, was altogether too fertile in expedients for us.  There seemed no way to conquer this girl; her resources were so inexhaustible that in the moment of your expected victory success was turned into defeat; nay, more, ridiculous disaster.