ld start up and cry that all was lost and himself
accursed.

And it appeared that he and his house were accursed in these days, for
when they were come back to Hampton, they found the small Prince Edward
was very ill. He was swollen all over his little body, so that the
doctors said it was a dropsy. But how, the King cried, could it be a
dropsy in so young a child and one so grave and so nurtured and tended?
Assuredly it must be some marvel wrought by the saints to punish him, or
by the Fiend to tempt him. And so he would rave, and cast tremulous
hands above his head. And he would say that God, to punish him, would
have of him his dearest and best.

And when the Queen urged him, therefore, to make his peace with God, he
would cry out that it was too late. God would make no peace with him.
For if God were minded to have him at peace, wherefore would He not
smoothe the way to this reconciliation with His vicegerent that sat at
Rome in Peter's chair? There was no smoothing of that way--for every day
there arose new difficulties and torments.

The King o' Scots would come into no alliance with him; the King of
France would make no bid for the hand of his daughter Mary; it went ill
with the Emperor in his fighting with the Princes of Almain and the
Schmalkaldners, so that the Emperor would be of the less use as an ally
against France and the Scots.

'Why!' he would cry to the Queen, 'if God in His Heaven would have me
make a peace with Rome, wherefore will He not give victory over a parcel
of Lutheran knaves and swine? Wherefore will He not deliver into my
hands these beggarly Scots and these atheists of France?'

At night the Queen would bring him round to vowing that first he would
make peace with God and trust in His great mercy for a prosperous issue.
But each morning he would be afraid for his sovereignty; a new letter
would come from Norfolk, who had gone on an embassy to his French
friends, believing fully that the King was minded to marry to one of
them his daughter. But the French King was not ready to believe this.
And the King's eyes grew red and enraged; he looked no man in the face,
not even the Queen, but glanced aside into corners, uttered blasphemies,
and said that he--he!--was the head of the Church and would have no
overlord.

The Bishop Gardiner came up from his See in Winchester. But though he
was the head of the Papist party in the realm, the Queen had little
comfort in him. For he was a dark and