Page:Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies Volume II.djvu/247

Rh her way to borrow other extraordinary ones. 'Tis very true, as I have heard some of her ladies declare, that whenas she was to bed apart and hid, and her curtains close drawn, she would kneel there devoutly in her shift and make prayer to God by the space of an hour and a half, beating and tormenting her breast in her zeal of devotion.

This habit had never been noted at all till after the death of King Charles her husband. But one night after she had gone to bed and all her women were retired, one of those which did sleep in her chamber, hearing her sighing, did bethink her to peep between the curtains, and saw her in the posture described, so praying and beseeching God, which practice she did continue well nigh every evening. At length the said bedchamber-woman, who was on very familiar terms with her, did venture to remonstrate one day with her on the ground she was hurting her health. The Queen was angered against the woman for her discovery and advice, and fain almost to deny the thing, and did straitly charge her to breathe never a word about it. Wherefore for that evening she did desist; but in the night she did fully make up for it, supposing her women would not observe it. But they saw her, and found how it was, by the reflexion of her chamber-light of wax, the which she did keep burning by her bedside next the wall, for to read in her Book of Hours and pray God at whiles, using for this pious purpose the same space where other Queens and Princesses do keep their table of refection. Suchlike prayers do little resemble those of hypocrites, which wishing to appear religious before the world, do make their orisons and devotions publicly, and