"
"And who tells you that you shall not have it? This love forces on
you no particular husband; it but gives you the proud right, once
disputed, of seeking your husband among the princes of royal blood."
"Oh," cried Elizabeth, with flashing eyes, "if I should ever really
be a queen, I should be prouder to choose a husband whom I might
make a king, than such a one as would make me a queen. [Footnote:
Elizabeth's own words,--Leti, vol. ii, p. 62.] Oh, say yourself,
Catharine, must it not be a high and noble pleasure to confer glory
and greatness on one we love, to raise him in the omnipotence of our
love high above all other men, and to lay our own greatness, our own
glory, humbly at his feet, that he may be adorned therewith and make
his own possession what is ours?"
"By Heaven, you are as proud and ambitious as a man!" said
Catharine, smiling. "Your father's own daughter! So thought Henry
when he gave his hand to Anne Boleyn; so thought he when he exalted
me to be his queen. But it behooves him thus to think and act, for
he is a man."
"He thought thus, because he loved--not because he was a man."
"And you, too, Elizabeth--do you, too, think thus because you love?"
"Yes, I love!" exclaimed Elizabeth, as with an impulsive movement
she threw herself into Catharine's arms, and hid her blushing face
in the queen's bosom. "Yes, I love! I love like my father--
regardless of my rank, of my birth; but feeling only that my lover
is of equally high birth in the nobility of his sentiment, in his
genius and noble mind; that he is my superior in all the great and
fine qualities which should adorn a man, and yet are conferred on so
few.
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