, as we find her acknowledging in language of exaggerated
gratitude;[188] and, perhaps the most painful feature in all her earlier
history lies in the contrast between the servility with which she addressed
the cardinal so long as he was in power, and the bitterness with which the
Bishop of Bayonne (and, in fact, all contemporary witnesses) tells us, that
she pressed upon his decline. Wolsey himself spoke of her under the title
of "the night-crow,"[189] as the person to whom he owed all which was most
cruel in his treatment; as "the enemy that never slept, but studied and
continually imagined, both sleeping and waking, his utter
destruction."[190]

Taking these things together, and there is nothing to be placed beside them
of a definitely pleasing kind, except beauty and accomplishments, we form,
with the assistance of her pictures, a tolerable conception of this lady; a
conception of her as a woman not indeed questionable, but as one whose
antecedents might lead consistently to a future either of evil or of good;
and whose character removes the surprise which we might be inclined to feel
at the position with respect to Queen Catherine in which she consented to
be placed. A harsh critic would describe her, on this evidence, as a
self-indulgent coquette, indifferent to the obligations of gratitude, and
something careless of the truth. From the letter referring to her,
preserved by Cromwell, it appears that she had broken a definite promise at
a time when such promises were legally binding, and that she had really
done so was confirmed by her subsequent confession. The breach of such
promises by a woman who could not be expected to understand the grounds on
which the law held them to be sacred, implies no more than levity, and
levity of this kind has been found compatible with many high qualities.
Levity, however, it does undoubtedly imply, and the symptom, if a light
one, must be allowed the weight which is due to it.

It is a miserable duty to be compelled to search for these indications of
human infirmities; above all when they are the infirmities of a lady whose
faults, let them have been what they would, were so fearfully and terribly
expiated; and, if there were nothing else at issue but poor questions of
petty scandal, it were better far that they perished in forgetfulness, and
passed away out of mind and memory for ever. The fortunes of Anne Boleyn
were unhappily linked with those of men to whom the greatest work e