What she did for Bassompierre the Queen of Sheba had done for Solomon;[11] consequently she was right, Holy Writ having created the precedent.  That which is biblical may well be Anglican.  Biblical precedent goes so far as to speak of a child who was called Ebnehaquem or Melilechet—­that is to say, the Wise Man’s son.

Why object to such manners?  Cynicism is at least as good as hypocrisy.

Nowadays England, whose Loyola is named Wesley, casts down her eyes a little at the remembrance of that past age.  She is vexed at the memory, yet proud of it.

These fine ladies, moreover, knew Latin.  From the 16th century this had been accounted a feminine accomplishment.  Lady Jane Grey had carried fashion to the point of knowing Hebrew.  The Duchess Josiana Latinized.  Then (another fine thing) she was secretly a Catholic; after the manner of her uncle, Charles II., rather than her father, James II.  James II. had lost his crown for his Catholicism, and Josiana did not care to risk her peerage.  Thus it was that while a Catholic amongst her intimate friends and the refined of both sexes, she was outwardly a Protestant for the benefit of the riffraff.

This is the pleasant view to take of religion.  You enjoy all the good things belonging to the official Episcopalian church, and later on you die, like Grotius, in the odour of Catholicity, having the glory of a mass being said for you by le Pere Petau.

Although plump and healthy, Josiana was, we repeat, a perfect prude.

At times her sleepy and voluptuous way of dragging out the end of her phrases was like the creeping of a tiger’s paws in the jungle.

The advantage of prudes is that they disorganize the human race.  They deprive it of the honour of their adherence.  Beyond all, keep the human species at a distance.  This is a point of the greatest importance.

When one has not got Olympus, one must take the Hotel de Rambouillet.  Juno resolves herself into Araminta.  A pretension to divinity not admitted creates affectation.  In default of thunderclaps there is impertinence.  The temple shrivels into the boudoir.  Not having the power to be a goddess, she is an idol.

There is besides, in prudery, a certain pedantry which is pleasing to women.  The coquette and the pedant are neighbours.  Their kinship is visible in the fop.  The subtile is derived from the sensual.  Gluttony affects delicacy, a grimace of disgust conceals cupidity.  And then woman feels her weak point guarded by all that casuistry of gallantry which takes the place of scruples in prudes.  It is a line of circumvallation with a ditch.  Every prude puts on an air of repugnance.  It is a protection.  She will consent, but she disdains—­for the present.

Josiana had an uneasy conscience.  She felt such a leaning towards immodesty that she was a prude.  The recoils of pride in the direction opposed to our vices lead us to those of a contrary nature.  It was the excessive effort to be chaste which made her a prude.  To be too much on the defensive points to a secret desire for attack; the shy woman is not strait-laced.  She shut herself up in the arrogance of the exceptional circumstances of her rank, meditating, perhaps, all the while, some sudden lapse from it.