when, though as ‘Louis de Bourbon’ he refused to do anything to shake the power of the throne, he would not submit to be patronized by the mean fawning Mazarin.  Not that the hard-hearted Conde would have listened to his wife and mother, even if he had loved them as Coriolanus did, or that his arrogance did not degenerate into wonderful meanness at last, such as Coriolanus would have scorned; but the parallel was very amusing, and gave me a great interest in Conde.  And did you ever observe what a great likeness there is in the characters of the two apostates, Julian and Frederick the Great?’

’Then you like history for the sake of comparing the characters mentioned in it?’ said Anne.

‘I think so,’ said Elizabeth; ’and that is the reason I hate abridgements, the mere bare bones of history.  I cannot bear dry facts, such as that Charles the Fifth beat Francis the First, at Pavia, in a war for the duchy of Milan, and nothing more told about them.  I am always ready to say, as the Grand Seignior did about some such great battle among the Christians, that I do not care whether the dog bites the hog, or the hog bites the dog.’

‘What a kind interest in your fellow-creatures you display!’ said Anne.  ’I think one reason why I like history is because I am searching out all the characters who come up to my notion of perfect chivalry, or rather of Christian perfection.  I am making a book of true knights.  I copy their portraits when I can find them, and write the names of those whose likenesses I cannot get.  I paint their armorial bearings over them when I can find out what they are, and I have a great red cross in the first page.’

‘And I will tell you of something else to put at the beginning,’ said Elizabeth, ’a branch of laurel entwined with the beautiful white bind-weed.  One of our laurels was covered with wreaths of it last year, and I thought it was a beautiful emblem of a pure-hearted hero.  The glaring sun, which withers the fair white spotless flower, is like worldly prosperity spoiling the pure simple mind; and you know how often it is despised and torn away from the laurel to which it is so bright an ornament.’

‘Yes,’ said Anne, ’it clings more safely and fearlessly round the simplest and most despised of plants.  And would you call the little pink bindweed childish innocence?’

‘No, I do not think I should,’ said Elizabeth, ’it is not sufficiently stainless.  But then innocence, from not seeing or knowing what is wrong, is not like the guilelessness which can use the world as not abusing it.’

’Yet Adam and Eve fell when they gained the knowledge of good and evil,’ said Anne.

‘Yes, because they gained their knowledge by doing evil,’ said Elizabeth, ’but you must allow that what is tried and not found wanting is superior to what has failed only because it has had no trial.  St. John’s Day is placed nearer Christmas than that of the Holy Innocents.’