Page 472 (1/2)

Two years had elapsed since Elizabeth's accession to the throne; for

her, two years of pleasure and enjoyment, only troubled here and there

with occasional small clouds of ill-humor--but those clouds overshadowed

only her domestic peace It was not the affairs of state, not the

interests of her people, that troubled and saddened Elizabeth; she asked

not how many of her subjects the ith Sweden had swept away; how

er in the southern provinces of

her realm She had quite other cares and anxieties than those which

concerned only her ministers, not herself What have princes to do with

the happiness of their people

Elizabeth was a consuht only of her own

happiness, only of herself and her own sorrows And it was a very

severe, very incurable sorrow that visited her--a sorrow that often

brought tears of anger into her eyes and curses upon her lips Elizabeth

was jealous--jealous not of this or that woly desired to be the fairest of all women, and constantly

trembled lest some one should come to rob her of the prize of beauty

And were there not, in her own court, woht venture to enter

the lists with her? Was there not, before all, one woman whose aspect

filled the heart of the eeance, of whoer, handsomer, and more