e
her countrymen will hold her in high remembrance, since her scheming
and her falsehood are the offenses that one pardons most readily in a
woman.

In the second place, it must be remembered that Elizabeth's courtships
and pretended love-makings were almost always a part of her diplomacy.
When not a part of her diplomacy they were a mere appendage to her
vanity. To seem to be the flower of the English people, and to be
surrounded by the noblest, the bravest, and the most handsome
cavaliers, not only of her own kingdom, but of others--this was,
indeed, a choice morsel of which she was fond of tasting, even though
it meant nothing beyond the moment.

Finally, though at times she could be very cold, and though she made
herself still colder in order that she might play fast and loose with
foreign suitors who played fast and loose with her--the King of Spain,
the Duc d'Alencon, brother of the French king, with an Austrian
archduke, with a magnificent barbarian prince of Muscovy, with Eric of
Sweden, or any other Scandinavian suitor--she felt a woman's need for
some nearer and more tender association to which she might give freer
play and in which she might feel those deeper emotions without the
danger that arises when love is mingled with diplomacy.

Let us first consider a picture of the woman as she really was in order
that we may understand her triple nature--consummate mistress of every
art that statesmen know, and using at every moment her person as a
lure; a vain-glorious queen who seemed to be the prey of boundless
vanity; and, lastly, a woman who had all a woman's passion, and who
could cast suddenly aside the check and balance which restrained her
before the public gaze and could allow herself to give full play to the
emotion that she inherited from the king, her father, who was himself a
marvel of fire and impetuosity. That the daughter of Henry VIII. and
Anne Boleyn should be a gentle, timid maiden would be to make heredity
a farce.

Elizabeth was about twenty-five years of age when she ascended the
throne of England. It is odd that the date of her birth cannot be given
with precision. The intrigues and disturbances of the English court,
and the fact that she was a princess, made her birth a matter of less
account than if there had been no male heir to the throne. At any rate,
when she ascended it, after the deaths of her brother, King Edward VI.,
and her sister, Queen Mary, she was a woman well trained both