"Queen, take this parchment back again; return it to my father, and tell him that I thank him for his provident goodness, but will decline the brilliant lot which this act offers me.

I love freedom so much, that even a royal crown cannot allure me when I am to receive it with my hands bound and my heart not free." "Poor child!" sighed Catharine, "you know not, then, that the royal crown always binds us in fetters and compresses our heart in iron clamps?
Ah, you want to be free, and yet a queen! Oh, believe me, Elizabeth, none are less free than sovereigns! No one has less the right and the power to live according to the dictates of his heart than a prince." "Then," exclaimed Elizabeth, with flashing eyes, "then I renounce the melancholy fortune of being, perchance, one day queen.

Then I do not subscribe to this law, which wants to guide my heart and limit my will.
What! shall the daughter of King Henry of England allow her ways to be traced out by a miserable strip of parchment?
and shall a sheet of paper be able to intrude itself between me and my heart?
I am a royal princess; and why will they compel me to give my hand only to a king's son?
Ay, you are right; it is not my father that has made this law, for my father's proud soul has never been willing to submit to any such constraint of miserable etiquette.

He has loved where he pleased; and no Parliament--no law--has been able to hinder him in this respect.

I will be my father's own daughter.