this action you have done your duty, and satisfied the demands which your love for your mistress and your spouse, indispensably required from you, what think you is now my duty towards you?" The woman replied with the same intrepidity, "I will tell your Majesty frankly my opinion, provided you will please to let me know whether you put this question in the quality of a queen or that of a judge?" To which her majesty answering in that of a queen, then said she, "you ought to grant me a pardon."—"But what assurance or security can you give me, that you will not make the like attempt upon some other occasion?" Margaret replied, "Madam, a favour which is given under such restraints is no more a favour, and in so doing your majesty would act against me as a judge." The queen, turning to some of her council then present, said, "I have been thirty years a queen, but do not remember ever to have had such a lecture read to me before;" and immediately granted her a full pardon, against the opinion of the president of her council, and at her request, a safe conduct out of the kingdom.
LAMIA, an Athenian Courtezan, flourished about 300 B. C.
She was a celebrated player on the flute, in which character she first appeared in the world. She was the mistress of Ptolemy, king of Egypt; and, being taken from him in a naval engagement by Demetrius Poliorcetes, became his, though she was much older than this prince, whose affections she secured by her luxury even more than by her wit. He furnished her with immoderate wealth, and then loved her for the enjoyments she knew how to procure with it.
