The true scoundrel strikes you from a sling with the first stone he can pick up.  Clever malefactors count on the unexpected, that senseless accomplice of so many crimes.  They grasp the incident and leap on it; there is no better Ars Poetica for this species of talent.  Meanwhile be sure with whom you have to deal.  Survey the ground.

With Barkilphedro the ground was Queen Anne.  Barkilphedro approached the queen, and so close that sometimes he fancied he heard the monologues of her Majesty.  Sometimes he was present unheeded at conversations between the sisters.  Neither did they forbid his sliding in a word.  He profited by this to lessen himself—­a way of inspiring confidence.  Thus one day in the garden at Hampton Court, being behind the duchess, who was behind the queen, he heard Anne, following the fashion, awkwardly enunciating sentiments.

“Animals are happy,” said the queen.  “They run no risk of going to hell.”

“They are there already,” replied Josiana.

This answer, which bluntly substituted philosophy for religion, displeased the queen.  If, perchance, there was depth in the observation, Anne felt shocked.

“My dear,” said she to Josiana, “we talk of hell like a couple of fools.  Ask Barkilphedro all about it.  He ought to know such things.”

“As a devil?” said Josiana.

“As a beast,” replied Barkilphedro, with a bow.

“Madam,” said the queen to Josiana, “he is cleverer than we.”

For a man like Barkilphedro to approach the queen was to obtain a hold on her.  He could say, “I hold her.”  Now, he wanted a means of taking advantage of his power for his own benefit.  He had his foothold in the court.  To be settled there was a fine thing.  No chance could now escape him.  More than once he had made the queen smile maliciously.  This was having a licence to shoot.  But was there any preserved game?  Did this licence to shoot permit him to break the wing or the leg of one like the sister of her Majesty?  The first point to make clear was, did the queen love her sister?  One false step would lose all.  Barkilphedro watched.

Before he plays the player looks at the cards.  What trumps has he?  Barkilphedro began by examining the age of the two women.  Josiana, twenty-three; Anne, forty-one.  So far so good.  He held trumps.  The moment that a woman ceases to count by springs, and begins to count by winters, she becomes cross.  A dull rancour possesses her against the time of which she carries the proofs.  Fresh-blown beauties, perfumes for others, are to such a one but thorns.  Of the roses she feels but the prick.  It seems as if all the freshness is stolen from her, and that beauty decreases in her because it increases in others.

To profit by this secret ill-humour, to dive into the wrinkle on the face of this woman of forty, who was a queen, seemed a good game for Barkilphedro.

Envy excels in exciting jealousy, as a rat draws the crocodile from its hole.