Rule one is to begin at the beginning. Eve began it; she added Adam; united they stood: over an apple paring they fell; that’s it—I took a tumble to myself, which is neither slang nor a figure of speech. I had been leaning against the door, and as my spirits grew more heavy, it was more than the door hinged on. We parted company and as I lay upon the floor I felt quite prostrated over it. I lost my dignity and my watch; then I lost my time but not my temper, although I had fallen into a compost of lime and sand left as a trap by one of the palace workmen. “Are you hurt?” inquired a man-of-arms, as I picked myself out of the mortar. “Oh, no,” I answered, the ready tears starting sympathetically. “I’m not hurt but I feel rather mortified!” When I told the man in waiting that I had come to see the queen, he looked doubtful and made a half audible remark about somebody rushing in and about downtrodden angels. It was an unfamiliar quotation and as I had no copy of Bartlett’s handy, I did not take his “posie of other men’s flowers” to myself. Had there been any stairs on which to fight I might have emulated the “gentleman of France,” but I come from another country where elevators have killed romance as well as other things. Another wait. I still smarted from contact with the lime, and feeling a humiliating sense of my own unworthiness, I meekly made myself small. When She entered I began to shrivel until I felt like unleaded agate after being thrown into the “hell box.” Good Queen Bess is every inch a queen, even to her feet. “Sweet and twenty” she was—at one time; I can vouch for the qualifying adjective, if not for the noun, and to be sweet is better than to be queen, for to be queen it is only necessary to be born beneath a canopy embroidered with the regal R. Although I thought of Shakespeare’s phrase, I did not give utterance to the invitation which preceded it; you recollect the line: “Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty.” It isn’t given to every man to be as bold as Shakespeare, even though he may be more alive to present opportunities. Now, according to court etiquette, a subject dare not address his sovereign until he is spoken to, so I simply stood and looked unutterable things. Her gaze fell. The pause was becoming embarrassing. “Well,” she said finally. That wasn’t what I had expected at all. All the books I had ever read about queens had quoted the ruler thusly: “Her Majesty is graciously pleased to incline her ear that she may hear the prayer of her servant.” I noticed that her ears kept their normal position, but I was not inclined to be fastidious: the queen had spoken! My lips being now unlocked, I told who I was. “Oh, to be sure,” Her Grace said, with ready recollection. “You are the novelist who said so many nice things about me in ‘The Virgin Throned in the West.’ You possess the first requisite of a courtier: a knowledge of the gentle art of flattery. Your compliments—”