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II.
With all that she was a prude.
It was the fashion.
Remember Elizabeth.
Elizabeth was of a type that prevailed in England for three
centuries--the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth. Elizabeth was
more than English--she was Anglican. Hence the deep respect of the
Episcopalian Church for that queen--respect resented by the Church of
Rome, which counterbalanced it with a dash of excommunication. In the
mouth of Sixtus V., when anathematizing Elizabeth, malediction turned to
madrigal. "Un gran cervello di principessa," he says. Mary Stuart,
less concerned with the church and more with the woman part of the
question, had little respect for her sister Elizabeth, and wrote to her
as queen to queen and coquette to prude: "Your disinclination to
marriage arises from your not wishing to lose the liberty of being made
love to." Mary Stuart played with the fan, Elizabeth with the axe. An
uneven match. They were rivals, besides, in literature. Mary Stuart
composed French verses; Elizabeth translated Horace. The ugly Elizabeth
decreed herself beautiful; liked quatrains and acrostics; had the keys
of towns presented to her by cupids; bit her lips after the Italian
fashion, rolled her eyes after the Spanish; had in her wardrobe three
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