leur noces, il n'est pas la coutume de France.
Madam my interpreter, what says she?
Dat it is not be de fashion pour les ladies of
France,--I cannot tell vat is baiser en Anglish.
To kiss.
Your majesty entendre bettre que moi.
It is not a fashion for the maids in France to kiss
before they are married, would she say?
Oui, vraiment.
O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear
Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak
list of a country's fashion: we are the makers of
manners, Kate; and the liberty that follows our
places stops the mouth of all find-faults; as I will
do yours, for upholding the nice fashion of your
country in denying me a kiss: therefore, patiently
and yielding.
You have witchcraft in your lips, Kate: there is
more eloquence in a sugar touch of them than in the
tongues of the French council; and they should
sooner persuade Harry of England than a general
petition of monarchs. Here comes your father.
God save your majesty! my royal cousin, teach you
our princess English?
I would have her learn, my fair cousin, how
perfectly I love her; and that is good English.
Is she not apt?
Our tongue is rough, coz, and my condition is not
smooth; so that, having neither the voice nor the
heart of flattery about me, I cannot so conjure up
the spirit of love in her, that he will appear in
his true likeness.
Pardon the frankness of my mirth, if I answer you
for that. If you would conjure in her, you must
make a circle; if conjure up love in her in his true
likeness, he must appear naked and blind. Can you
blame her then, being a maid yet rosed over with the
virgin crimson of modesty, if she deny the
appearance of a naked blind boy in her naked seeing
self? It were, my lord, a hard condition for a maid
to consign to.
Yet they do wink and yield, as love is blind and enforces.
They are then excused, my lord, when they see not
what they do.
Then, good my lord, teach your cousin to consent winking.
I will wink on her to consent, my lord, if you will
teach her to know my meaning: for maids, well
summered and warm kept, are like flies at
Bartholomew-tide, blind, though they have their
eyes; and then they will endure handling, which
before would not abide looking on.
This moral ties me over to time and a hot summer;
and so I shall catch the fly, your