Page:Daughters of Genius.djvu/364

 356 THE DAUGHTERS OP JAMES II OF ENGLAND. texts. He writes on this subject at great length to his daughter, and it is impossible to doubt that he gave utter- ance to what he really believed and warmly felt. All these letters, I should explain, are written in the French language, which had probably been the language of the family since the time of their ancestor, Mary, Queen of Scots, great-grandmother to James II. Princess Mary kept even her private diary in French, wrote to her sister Anne in French, and probably knew the French language much better than she did the English. In the public library at the Hague there is a splendid English Bible, which was handed to her when she was crowned Queen in Westminster Abbey, on the title-page of which are these words, in her own hand : " This book was given the king and I at our coronation. Marie R." Her French is better than this, and even the spelling is no worse than was common among educated French ladies of that period. She answered the King's letter at inordinate length, and employed all the forms of respect then used towards monarchs, beginning her letter with " Sire," and always addressing her father as " V, M.," which signifies Votre Majeste. She showed a good deal of skill and tact in meeting his arguments, and it is possible that she had the aid of some learned doctor of divinity. Upon the question of the infallibility of the Roman Church, she says : "I have never understood that it has been decided, even by Catholics themselves, whether this infallibility rests in the Pope alone, or in a General Council, or in both together ; and I hope Your Majesty will be willing to permit me to ask where it was when there were three popes at once, each of whom had his Council called General, and when all the popes thundered anathemas against one another ? "