as I saw him standing in
yonder bay-window, and near him the king, his arms around the neck of
High-Chancellor More, and listening to his discourse with a kind of
reverential devotion. And when the king had gone, I walked up to Thomas
More and congratulated him on the high and world-renowned favor in which
he stood with the king. 'The king really loves you,' said I. 'Yes,'
replied he, with his quiet, sad smile, 'yes, the king truly loves me.
But that would not for one moment hinder him from giving my head for
a valuable diamond, a beautiful woman, or a hand's breadth of land
in France.' [Footnote: Leti, vol. i, p 194.] He was right, and for a
beautiful woman, the head of this sage had to fall, of whom the most
Christian emperor and king, Charles V., said: 'Had I been the master
of such a servant, of whose ability and greatness we have had so much
experience for many years; had I possessed an adviser so wise and
earnest as Thomas More was, I would rather have lost the best city of my
realm, than so worthy a servant and counsellor.' [Footnote: Tytler, p.
354.]

"No, Jane, be that your first and most sacred rule, never to trust
the king, and never reckon on the duration of his affection and the
manifestations of his favor. For, in the perfidy of his heart, it often
pleases him to load with tokens of his favor those whose destruction he
has already resolved upon, to adorn and decorate with orders and jewels
to-day those whom to-morrow he is going to put to death. It flatters his
self-complacency, like the lion, to play a little with the puppy he
is about to devour. Thus did he with Cromwell, for many years his
counsellor and friend, who had committed no other crime than that of
having first exhibited to the king the portrait of the ugly Anne of
Cleves, whom Holbein had turned into a beauty. But the king took good
care not to be angry with Cromwell, or to reproach him for it. Much
more--in recognition of his great services, he raised him to the earldom
of Essex, decorated him with the Order of the Garter and appointed him
lord chamberlain; and then, when Cromwell felt perfectly secure and
proudly basked in the sunshine of royal favor, then all at once the king
had him arrested and dragged to the tower, in order to accuse him of
high treason. [Footnote: Ibid, p. 423.] And so Cromwell was executed,
because Anne of Cleves did not please the king, and because Hans Holbein
had flattered her picture.

"But now we have had enoug