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CHAPTER X.
THE KING'S FOOL.
Two years had passed away since the king's marriage, and still
Catharine Parr had always kept in favor with her husband; still her
enemies were foiled in their attempts to ruin her, and raise the
seventh queen to the throne.
Catharine had ever been cautious, ever discreet. She had always
preserved a cold heart and a cool head. Each morning she had said to
herself that this day might be her last; that some incautious word,
some inconsiderate act, might deprive her of her crown and her life.
For Henry's savage and cruel disposition seemed, like his
corpulency, to increase daily, and it needed only a trifle to
inflame him to the highest pitch of rage, rage which, each time,
fell with fatal stroke on him who aroused it.
A knowledge and consciousness of this had made the queen cautious.
She did not wish to die yet. She still loved life so much. She loved
it because it had as yet afforded her so little delight. She loved
it because she had so much happiness, so much rapture and enjoyment
yet to hope from it. She did not wish to die yet, for she was ever
waiting for that life of which she had a foretaste only in her
dreams, and which her palpitating and swelling heart told her was
ready to awake in her, and, with its sunny, brilliant eyes, arouse
her from the winter sleep of her existence.
It was a bright and beautiful spring day. Catharine wanted to avail
herself of it, to take a ride and forget for one brief hour that she
was a queen.
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