with every defilement in its visionary stage.  She was a possible Astarte in a real Diana.  She was, in the insolence of high birth, tempting and inaccessible.  Nevertheless, she might find it amusing to plan a fall for herself.  She dwelt in a halo of glory, half wishing to descend from it, and perhaps feeling curious to know what a fall was like.  She was a little too heavy for her cloud.  To err is a diversion.  Princely unconstraint has the privilege of experiment, and what is frailty in a plebeian is only frolic in a duchess.  Josiana was in everything—­in birth, in beauty, in irony, in brilliancy—­almost a queen.  She had felt a moment’s enthusiasm for Louis de Bouffles, who used to break horseshoes between his fingers.  She regretted that Hercules was dead.  She lived in some undefined expectation of a voluptuous and supreme ideal.

Morally, Josiana brought to one’s mind the line—­

  “Un beau torse de femme en hydre se termine.”

Hers was a noble neck, a splendid bosom, heaving harmoniously over a royal heart, a glance full of life and light, a countenance pure and haughty, and who knows? below the surface was there not, in a semi-transparent and misty depth, an undulating, supernatural prolongation, perchance deformed and dragon-like—­a proud virtue ending in vice in the depth of dreams.

II.

With all that she was a prude.

It was the fashion.

Remember Elizabeth.

Elizabeth was of a type that prevailed in England for three centuries—­the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth.  Elizabeth was more than English—­she was Anglican.  Hence the deep respect of the Episcopalian Church for that queen—­respect resented by the Church of Rome, which counterbalanced it with a dash of excommunication.  In the mouth of Sixtus V., when anathematizing Elizabeth, malediction turned to madrigal. “Un gran cervello di principessa,” he says.  Mary Stuart, less concerned with the church and more with the woman part of the question, had little respect for her sister Elizabeth, and wrote to her as queen to queen and coquette to prude:  “Your disinclination to marriage arises from your not wishing to lose the liberty of being made love to.”  Mary Stuart played with the fan, Elizabeth with the axe.  An uneven match.  They were rivals, besides, in literature.  Mary Stuart composed French verses; Elizabeth translated Horace.  The ugly Elizabeth decreed herself beautiful; liked quatrains and acrostics; had the keys of towns presented to her by cupids; bit her lips after the Italian fashion, rolled her eyes after the Spanish; had in her wardrobe three thousand dresses and costumes, of which several were for the character of Minerva and Amphitrite; esteemed the Irish for the width of their shoulders; covered her farthingale with braids and spangles; loved roses; cursed, swore, and stamped; struck her maids of honour with her clenched fists; used to send Dudley to the devil; beat Burleigh, the Chancellor, who would cry—­poor old fool! spat on Matthew; collared Hatton; boxed the ears of Essex; showed her legs to Bassompierre; and was a virgin.