you have drawn some useful lessons from the fate of his wives. You
have learned that it is necessary to possess all the good and all
the bad qualities of woman in order to control this stiff-necked and
tyrannical, this lustful and bigoted, this vain and sensual man,
whom the wrath of God has made King of England. You must, before all
things, be perfect master of the difficult art of coquetry. You must
become a female Proteus--today a Messalina, to-morrow a nun; to-day
one of the _literati_, to-morrow a playful child; you must ever seek
to surprise the king, to keep him on the stretch, to enliven him.
You must never give way to the dangerous feeling of security, for in
fact King Henry's wife is never safe. The axe always hangs over her
head, and you must ever consider your husband as only a fickle
lover, whom you must every day captivate anew."

"You speak as though I were already queen," said Lady Jane, smiling;
"and yet I cannot but think that, in order to come to that, many
difficulties are to be overcome, which may indeed perhaps be
insuperable."

"Insuperable!" exclaimed her father with a shrug of the shoulders.
"With the aid of the holy Church, no hinderance is insuperable.
Only, we must be perfectly acquainted with our end and our means. Do
not despise, then, to sound the character of this king ever and
again, and be certain you will always find in him some new hidden
recess, some surprising peculiarity. We have spoken of him as a
husband and the father of a family, but of his religious and
political standing I have as yet told you nothing. And yet that, my
child, is the principal point in his whole character.

"In the first place, then, Jane, I will tell you a secret. The king,