Gluttony, lust, envy, wrath, covetousness . . . as Anne’s sins are multiplied, so are the curses that strike her womb. She knows very well that she has a plethoric constitution, so ought not to gorge on rich foods when she is with child and her body cannot discharge the excess blood in the usual way; the excess humour that results from this overindulgence can offend the body and cause abortion. She knows this, but she cannot help her eating. She has also been told many times that she and the Prince ought to refrain from venereal embraces when she has a child already in the womb, as the dangers attendant on this are twofold: firstly, there is always the possibility, especially in the earlier and later months (remember the apples?), that the bands which fasten the child to the womb might be fatally loosened; secondly – and it appears that this is what has happened in this case – there is the possibility that the womb, which should remain closed, might come to open in the fervour of libidinous congress, so as to admit the seed which delights it so much, resulting in the conception of a second child, the presence of which will then overburden the womb, causing it to miscarry. The midwives and the physicians alike tend towards this latter explanation, as there were quite certainly two unripe children expelled in the twenty-four hours of Anne’s travail, one of seven months’ growth, and the other, as far as could be judged, of no more than two or three.