AN AUDIENCE WITH QUEEN ELIZABETH.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3105, 10 June 1881, Page 4

AN AUDIENCE WITH QUEEN ELIZABETH.

Among the archives at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris is a curious document. It is an account by Hurault de Maisse of a mission upon which he went as ambassador to the English Court in 1597. His first interview with Elizabeth took place on the Bth of December in that year, and is described with graphic minuteness. One of the Court carriages came for the ambassador of Henry IV., and conducted him to the Thames, where a boat was awaiting him, which immediately put off and deposted him at the entrance to Whitehall. He was then conducted by the Lord Chamberlain through a dark corridor —the obscurity of which evidently made an impression on his mmd — to a private apartment, in which was the Q.ueen. Her Majesty was sitting in a low chair at the top of the room, alone and retired at a distance from the crowds of lords and ladies at the lower part of the chamber. When he had made his reverence, she advanced five or six paces to meet him, and took both his hands, after he, on his part, had humbly kissed the lower part of her dress. She then excused herself for not having received him before, by alleging an inflamation on the right side of her face. "She also made me her excuses," adds tho ambassador " for being found in her nightdress, and began to reproach her attendants Baying, " What will this gentleman think to see me dressed in this guise ? I am truly grieved that they should see me in this state !" The gown in question was a close fitting dress of white and carnation, with a profusion of silver gauze. "It had open sleeves lined with reel taffeta, and was girt with other little sleeves which hung down as far as the ground, and which she kept tying and untying from time to time. She had the front of her robe or mantle open, and often as if she felt tho heat, separated with her hand the sides of the said mantle. She had on her head a garland of rubbies and pearls, and underneath a great thick wig of a reddish colour with an infinity of gold and silver curl-papers, and a few pearls which hung clown over her forehead."