Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/56

 "Lord Seymour, second husband of her step-mother, Queen Catherine Parr. Catherine, I gather, was in the secret; otherwise she wouldn't have allowed Seymour to carry on with 'Elizabeth' as he did. And he had about a yard of whiskers on his face at that. There was Leicester, this big chap here with the goatee. She had him beheaded, not because he knew anything against her, or about her real sex, but because he had the reputation of knowing things. The Virgin Queen made her alleged lover a head shorter, just to show that she didn't care what she did. Henry and Francis, the French Valois brothers, Dukes of something or other, were likewise large, sinister looking fellows. These, too, she used, man fashion, like boobs, and as no other crowned harridan ever used a lover. Think of Catharine (of Russia) and of Josephine and Marie Louise—to be loved by those ladies was real fun, a treat." Mark lowered his voice to add: "I read somewhere that Catharine allowed the brothers Orloff no less than fifty thousand roubles pajama money—fifty thousand! One can buy a powerful lot of nighties for that much money, even at the Louvre, across the way."

"There's the Britannica," continued Mark, jumping up. He found a paragraph under the caption of "Elizabeth" that tickled him immensely. "Read this, and call me a liar if you dare."

The paragraph states that there was "some physical defect" in Elizabeth's make-up, that 52