scaffold. The scaffold! Look, Jane. When the king approached me and
confessed his love and offered me his hand, suddenly there rose
before me a fearful picture. It was no more the king whom I saw
before me, but the hangman; and it seemed to me that I saw three
corpses lying at his feet, and with a loud scream I sank senseless
before him. When I revived, the king was holding me in his arms. The
shock of this unexpected good fortune, he thought, had made me
faint. He kissed me and called me his bride; he thought not for a
moment that I could refuse him. And I--despise me, Jane--I was such
a dastard, that I could not summon up courage for a downright
refusal. Yes, I was so craven also, as to be unwilling to die. Ah,
my God, it appeared to me that life at that moment beckoned to me
with thousands of joys, thousands of charms, which I had never
known, and for which my soul thirsted as for the manna in the
wilderness. I would live, live at any cost. I would gain myself a
respite, so that I might once more share happiness, love, and
enjoyment. Look, Jane, men call me ambitious. They say I have given
my hand to Henry because he is king. Ah, they know not how I
shuddered at this royal crown. They know not that in anguish of
heart I besought the king not to bestow his hand upon me, and
thereby rouse all the ladies of his kingdom as foes against me. They
know not that I confessed that I loved him, merely that I might be
able to add that I was ready, out of love to him, to sacrifice my
own happiness to his, and so conjured him to choose a consort worthy
of himself, from the hereditary princesses of Europe. [Footnote: "La
vie d'Elizabeth, Reine d'Angleterre, traduite de l'Italien de
Monsieur Gregoire Leti," vol. ii. Amsterdam, 1694] But Henry
rejected my sacrifice. He wished to make a queen, in order to
possess a wife, who may be his own property--whose blood, as her
lord and master, he can shed. So I am queen. I have accepted my lot,