“You are a dear, foolish child,” interrupted Catharine—“a child, that in youthful presumption might dare wish to fetch the lightnings down from heaven, and borrow from Jupiter his thunderbolt. Oh, you are still too young and inexperienced to know that fate regards not our murmurs and our sighs, and, despite our reluctance and our refusal, still leads us in its own ways, not our own. You will have to learn that yet, poor child!”
“But I will not!” cried Elizabeth, stamping on the floor with all the pettishness of a child. “I will not ever and eternally be the victim of another’s will; and fate itself shall not have power to make me its slave!”
“Well, we will see now,” said Catharine, smiling. “We will try this time, at least, to contend against fate; and I will assist you if I can.”
“And I will love you for it as my mother and my sister at once,” cried Elizabeth, as with ardor she threw herself into Catharine’s arms. “Yes, I will love you for it; and I will pray God that He may one day give me the opportunity to show my gratitude, and to reward you for your magnanimity and goodness.”
CHAPTER XXVIII. INTRIGUES.
For a few days past the king’s gout had grown worse, and, to his wrath and grief, it confined him as a prisoner to his rolling chair.
The king was, therefore, very naturally gloomy and dejected, and hurled the lightnings of his wrath on all those who enjoyed the melancholy prerogative of being in his presence. His pains, instead of softening his disposition, seemed only to heighten still more his natural ferocity; and often might be heard through the palace of Whitehall the king’s angry growl, and his loud, thundering invectives, which no longer spared any one, nor showed respect for any rank or dignity.
Earl Douglas, Gardiner, and Wriothesley very well knew how to take advantage of this wrathful humor of the king for their purposes, and to afford the cruel monarch, tortured with pain, one satisfaction at least—the satisfaction of making others suffer also.
Never had there been seen in England so many burnt at the stake as in those days of the king’s sickness; never had the prisons been so crowded; never had so much blood flowed as King Henry now caused to be shed. [Footnote: During the king’s reign, and at the instigation of the clergy, twenty-eight hundred persons were burnt and executed, because they would not recognize the religious institutions established by the king as the only right and true ones.—Leti, vol. i, p. 34.] But all this did not yet suffice to appease the blood-thirstiness of the king, and his friends and counsellors, and his priests.