CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
*MARY STUART--1587*
CHAPTER I
Some royal names are predestined to misfortune: in France, there is the
name "Henry". Henry I was poisoned, Henry II was killed in a tournament,
Henry III and Henry IV were assassinated. As to Henry V, for whom the
past is so fatal already, God alone knows what the future has in store
for him.
In Scotland, the unlucky name is "Stuart". Robert I, founder of the
race, died at twenty-eight of a lingering illness. Robert II, the most
fortunate of the family, was obliged to pass a part of his life, not
merely in retirement, but also in the dark, on account of inflammation
of the eyes, which made them blood-red. Robert III succumbed to grief,
the death of one son and the captivity of other. James I was stabbed by
Graham in the abbey of the Black Monks of Perth. James II was killed at
the siege of Roxburgh, by a splinter from a burst cannon. James III was
assassinated by an unknown hand in a mill, where he had taken refuge
during the battle of Sauchie. James IV, wounded by two arrows and a blow
from a halberd, fell amidst his nobles on the battlefield of Flodden.
James V died of grief at the loss of his two sons, and of remorse for
the execution of Hamilton. James VI, destined to unite on his head the
two crowns of Scotland and England, son of a father who had been
assassinated, led a melancholy and timorous existence, between the
scaffold of his mother, Mary Stuart, and that of his son, Charles I.
Charles II spent a portion of his life in exile. James II died in it.
The Chevalier Saint-George, after having been proclaimed King of
Scotland as James VIII, and of England and Ireland as James III, was
forced to flee, without having been able to give his arms even the
lustre of a defeat. His son, Charles Edward, after the skirmish at Derby
and the battle of Culloden, hunted from mountain to mountain, pursued
from rock to rock, swimming from shore to shore, picked up half naked by
a French vessel, betook himself to Florence to die there, without the
European courts having ever consented to recognise him as a sovereign.
Finally, his brother, Henry Benedict, the last heir of the Stuarts,
having lived on a pension of three thousand pounds sterling, granted him
by George III, died completely forgotten, bequeathing to the House of
Hanover all the crown jewels which James II had carried off when he
passed over to the Continent in 1688--a tardy but complete recognition
of the legitimacy of the family which had succeeded his.
In the midst of this unlucky race, Mary Stuart was the favourite of
misfortune. As Brantome has said of her, "Whoever desires to write about
this illustrious queen of Scotland has, in her, two very, large
subjects, the one her life, the other her death," Brantome had known her
on one of the most mournful occasions of her life--at the moment when
she was quitting France for Scotland.
It was on the 9th of August, 1561, after having lost her mother and her
husband in the same year, that Mary Stuart, Dowager of France and Queen
of Scotland at nineteen, escorted by her uncles, Cardinals Guise and
Lorraine, by the Duke and Duchess of Guise, by the Duc d'Aumale and M.
de Nemours, arrived at Calais, where two galleys were waiting to take
her to Scotland, one commanded by M. de Mevillon and the other by
Captain Albize. She remained six days in the town. At last, on the 15th
of the month, after the saddest adieus to her family, accompanied by
Messieurs d'Aumale, d'Elboeuf, and Damville, with many nobles, among
whom were Brantome and Chatelard, she embarked in M. Mevillon's galley,
which was immediately ordered to put out to sea, which it did with the
aid of oars, there not being sufficient wind to make use of the sails.
Mary Stuart was then in the full bloom of her beauty, beauty even more
brilliant in its mourning garb--a beauty so wonderful that it shed
around her a charm which no one whom she wished to please could escape,
and which was fatal to almost everyone. About this time, too, someone
made her the subject of a song, which, as even her rivals confessed,
contained no more than the truth. It was, so it was said, by M. de
Maison-Fleur, a cavalier equally accomplished in arms and letters: Here
it is:--
"In robes of whiteness, lo, Full sad and mournfully, Went pacing to and
fro Beauty's divinity; A shaft in hand she bore From Cupid's cruel
store, And he, who fluttered round, Bore, o'er his blindfold eyes And
o'er his head uncrowned, A veil of mournful guise, Whereon the words
were wrought: 'You perish or are caught.'"
Yes, at this moment, Mary Stuart, in her deep mourning of white, was
more lovely than ever; for great tears were trickling down her cheeks,
as, weaving a handkerchief, standing on the quarterdeck, she who was so
grieved to set out, bowed farewell to those who were so grieved to
remain.
At last, in half an hour's time, the harbour was left behind; the vessel
was out at sea. Suddenly, Mary heard loud cries behind her: a boat
coming in under press of sail, through her pilot's ignorance had struck
upon a rock in such a manner that it was split open, and after having
trembled and groaned for a moment like someone wounded, began to be
swallowed up, amid the terrified screams of all the crew. Mary,
horror-stricken, pale, dumb, and motionless, watched her gradually sink,
while her unfortunate crew, as the keel disappeared, climbed into the
yards and shrouds, to delay their death-agony a few minutes; finally,
keel, yards, masts, all were engulfed in the ocean's gaping jaws. For a
moment there remained some black specks, which in turn disappeared one
after another; then wave followed upon wave, and the spectators of this
horrible tragedy, seeing the sea calm and solitary as if nothing had
happened, asked themselves if it was not a vision that had appeared to
them and vanished.
"Alas!" cried Mary, falling on a seat and leaning both arms an the
vessel's stern, "what a sad omen for such a sad voyage!" Then, once more
fixing on the receding harbour her eyes, dried for a moment by terror,
and beginning to moisten anew, "Adieu, France!" she murmured, "adieu,
France!" and for five hours she remained thus, weeping and murmuring,
"Adieu, France! adieu, France!"
Darkness fell while she was still lamenting; and then, as the view was
blotted out and she was summoned to supper, "It is indeed now, dear
France," said she, rising, "that I really lose you, since jealous night
heaps mourning upon mourning, casting a black veil before my sight.
Adieu then, one last time, dear France; for never shall I see you more."
With these words, she went below, saying that she was the very opposite
of Dido, who, after the departure of AEneas, had done nothing but look
at the waves, while she, Mary, could not take her eyes off the land.
Then everyone gathered round her to try to divert and console her. But
she, growing sadder, and not being able to respond, so overcome was she
with tears, could hardly eat; and, having had a bed got ready on the
stern deck, she sent for the steersman, and ordered him if he still saw
land at daybreak, to come and wake her immediately. On this point Mary
was favoured; for the wind having dropped, when daybreak came the vessel
was still within sight of France.
It was a great joy when, awakened by the steersman, who had not
forgotten the order he had received, Mary raised herself on her couch,
and through the window that she had had opened, saw once more the
beloved shore. But at five o'clock in the morning, the wind having
freshened, the vessel rapidly drew farther away, so that soon the land
completely disappeared. Then Mary fell back upon her bed, pale as death,
murmuring yet once again--"Adieu, France! I shall see thee no more."
Indeed, the happiest years of her life had just passed away in this
France that she so much regretted. Born amid the first religious
troubles, near the bedside of her dying father, the cradle mourning was
to stretch for her to the grave, and her stay in France had been a ray
of sunshine in her night. Slandered from her birth, the report was so
generally spread abroad that she was malformed, and that she could not
live to grow up, that one day her mother, Mary of Guise, tired of these
false rumours, undressed her and showed her naked to the English
ambassador, who had come, on the part of Henry VIII, to ask her in
marriage for the Prince of Wales, himself only five years old. Crowned
at nine months by Cardinal Beaton, archbishop of St. Andrews, she was
immediately hidden by her mother, who was afraid of treacherous dealing
in the King of England, in Stirling Castle. Two years later, not finding
even this fortress safe enough, she removed her to an island in the
middle of the Lake of Menteith, where a priory, the only building in the
place, provided an asylum for the royal child and for four young girls
born in the same year as herself, having like her the sweet name which
is an anagram of the word "aimer," and who, quitting her neither in her
good nor in her evil fortune, were called the "Queen's Marys". They were
Mary Livingston, Mary Fleming, Mary Seyton, and Mary Beaton. Mary stayed
in this priory till Parliament, having approved her marriage with the
French dauphin, son of Henry II, she was taken to Dumbarton Castle, to
await the moment of departure. There she was entrusted to M. de Breze,
sent by Henry II to fetch her. Having set out in the French galleys
anchored at the mouth of the Clyde, Mary, after having been hotly
pursued by the English fleet, entered Brest harbour, 15th August, 1548,
one year after the death of Francis! Besides the queen's four Marys, the
vessels also brought to France three of her natural brothers, among whom
was the Prior of St. Andrews, James Stuart, who was later to abjure the
Catholic faith, and with the title of Regent, and under the name of the
Earl of Murray, to become so fatal to poor Mary. From Brest, Mary went
to St. Germain-en-Laye, where Henry II, who had just ascended the
throne, overwhelmed her with caresses, and then sent her to a convent
where the heiresses of the noblest French houses were brought up. There
Mary's happy qualities developed. Born with a woman's heart and a man's
head, Mary not only acquired all the accomplishments which constituted
the education of a future queen, but also that real knowledge which is
the object of the truly learned.
Thus, at fourteen, in the Louvre, before Henry II, Catherine de Medici,
and the whole court, she delivered a discourse in Latin of her own
composition, in which she maintained that it becomes women to cultivate
letters, and that it is unjust and tyrannical to deprive flowery of
their perfumes, by banishing young girls from all but domestic cares.
One can imagine in what manner a future queen, sustaining such a thesis,
was likely to be welcomed in the most lettered and pedantic court in
Europe. Between the literature of Rabelais and Marot verging on their
decline, and that of Ronsard and Montaigne reaching their zenith, Mary
became a queen of poetry, only too happy never to have to wear another
crown than that which Ronsard, Dubellay, Maison-Fleur, and Brantome
placed daily on her head. But she was predestined. In the midst of those
fetes which a waning chivalry was trying to revive came the fatal joust
of Tournelles: Henry II, struck by a splinter of a lance for want of a
visor, slept before his time with his ancestors, and Mary Stuart
ascended the throne of France, where, from mourning for Henry, she
passed to that for her mother, and from mourning for her mother to that
for her husband. Mary felt this last loss both as woman and as poet; her
heart burst forth into bitter tears and plaintive harmonies. Here are
some lines that she composed at this time:
"Into my song of woe,
Sung to a low sad air,
My cruel grief I throw,
For loss beyond compare;
In bitter sighs and tears
Go by my fairest years.
Was ever grief like mine
Imposed by destiny?
Did ever lady pine,
In high estate, like me,
Of whom both heart and eye
Within the coffin lie?
Who, in the tender spring
And blossom of my youth,
Taste all the sorrowing
Of life's extremest ruth,
And take delight in nought
Save in regretful thought.
All that was sweet and gay
Is now a pain to see;
The sunniness of day
Is black as night to me;
All that was my delight
Is hidden from my sight.
My heart and eye, indeed,
One face, one image know,
The which this mournful weed
On my sad face doth show,
Dyed with the violet's tone
That is the lover's own.
Tormented by my ill,
I go from place to place,
But wander as I will
My woes can nought efface;
My most of bad and good
I find in solitude.
But wheresoe'er I stay,
In meadow or in copse,
Whether at break of day
Or when the twilight drops,
My heart goes sighing on,
Desiring one that's gone.
If sometimes to the skies
My weary gaze I lift,
His gently shining eyes
Look from the cloudy drift,
Or stooping o'er the wave
I see him in the grave.
Or when my bed I seek,
And sleep begins to steal,
Again I hear him speak,
Again his touch I feel;
In work or leisure,
he is ever near to me.
No other thing I see,
However fair displayed,
By which my heart will be
A tributary made,
Not having the perfection
Of that, my lost affection.
Here make an end, my verse,
Of this thy sad lament,
Whose burden shall rehearse
Pure love of true intent,
Which separation's stress
Will never render less."
"It was then," says Brantome, "that it was delightful to see her; for
the whiteness of her countenance and of her veil contended together; but
finally the artificial white yielded, and the snow-like pallor of her
face vanquished the other. For it was thus," he adds, "that from the
moment she became a widow, I always saw her with her pale hue, as long
as I had the honour of seeing her in France, and Scotland, where she had
to go in eighteen months' time, to her very great regret, after her
widowhood, to pacify her kingdom, greatly divided by religious troubles.
Alas! she had neither the wish nor the will for it, and I have often
heard her say so, with a fear of this journey like death; for she
preferred a hundred times to dwell in France as a dowager queen, and to
content herself with Touraine and Poitou for her jointure, than to go
and reign over there in her wild country; but her uncles, at least some
of them, not all, advised her, and even urged her to it, and deeply
repented their error."
Mary was obedient, as we have seen, and she began her journey under such
auspices that when she lost sight of land she was like to die. Then it
was that the poetry of her soul found expression in these famous lines:
"Farewell, delightful land of France,
My motherland,
The best beloved!
Foster-nurse of my young years!
Farewell, France, and farewell my happy days!
The ship that separates our loves
Has borne away but half of me;
One part is left thee and is throe,
And I confide it to thy tenderness,
That thou may'st hold in mind the other part."'
_[Translator's note.-It has not been found possible to make a rhymed
version of these lines without sacrificing the simplicity which is their
chief charm.]_
This part of herself that Mary left in France was the body of the young
king, who had taken with him all poor Mary's happiness into his tomb.
Mary had but one hope remaining, that the sight of the English fleet
would compel her little squadron to turn back; but she had to fulfil her
destiny. This same day, a fog, a very unusual occurrence in summer-time,
extended all over the Channel, and caused her to escape the fleet; for
it was such a dense fog that one could not see from stern to mast. It
lasted the whole of Sunday, the day after the departure, and did not
lift till the following day, Monday, at eight o'clock in the morning.
The little flotilla, which all this time had been sailing haphazard, had
got among so many reefs that if the fog had lasted some minutes longer
the galley would certainly have grounded on some rock, and would have
perished like the vessel that had been seen engulfed on leaving port.
But, thanks to the fog's clearing, the pilot recognised the Scottish
coast, and, steering his four boats with great skill through all the
dangers, on the 20th August he put in at Leith, where no preparation had
been made for the queen's reception. Nevertheless, scarcely had she
arrived there than the chief persons of the town met together and came
to felicitate her. Meanwhile, they hastily collected some wretched nags,
with harness all falling in pieces, to conduct the queen to Edinburgh.
At sight of this, Mary could not help weeping again; for she thought of
the splendid palfreys and hackneys of her French knights and ladies, and
at this first view Scotland appeared to her in all its poverty. Next day
it was to appear to her in all its wildness.
After having passed one night at Holyrood Palace, "during which," says
Brantome, "five to six hundred rascals from the town, instead of letting
her sleep, came to give her a wild morning greeting on wretched fiddles
and little rebecks," she expressed a wish to hear mass. Unfortunately,
the people of Edinburgh belonged almost entirely to the Reformed
religion; so that, furious at the queen's giving such a proof of
papistry at her first appearance, they entered the church by force,
armed with knives, sticks and stones, with the intention of putting to
death the poor priest, her chaplain. He left the altar, and took refuge
near the queen, while Mary's brother, the Prior of St. Andrews, who was
more inclined from this time forward to be a soldier than an
ecclesiastic, seized a sword, and, placing himself between the people
and the queen, declared that he would kill with his own hand the first
man who should take another step. This firmness, combined with the
queen's imposing and dignified air, checked the zeal of the Reformers.
As we have said, Mary had arrived in the midst of all the heat of the
first religious wars. A zealous Catholic, like all her family on the
maternal side, she inspired the Huguenots with the gravest fears:
besides, a rumour had got about that Mary, instead of landing at Leith,
as she had been obliged by the fog, was to land at Aberdeen. There, it
was said, she would have found the Earl of Huntly, one of the peers who
had remained loyal to the Catholic faith, and who, next to the family of
Hamilton, was, the nearest and most powerful ally of the royal house.
Seconded by him and by twenty thousand soldiers from the north, she
would then have marched upon Edinburgh, and have re-established the
Catholic faith throughout Scotland. Events were not slow to prove that
this accusation was false.
As we have stated, Mary was much attached to the Prior of St. Andrews, a
son of James V and of a noble descendant of the Earls of Mar, who had
been very handsome in her youth, and who, in spite of the well-known
love for her of James V, and the child who had resulted, had none the
less wedded Lord Douglas of Lochleven, by whom she had had two other
sons, the elder named William and the younger George, who were thus
half-brothers of the regent. Now, scarcely had she reascended the throne
than Mary had restored to the Prior of St. Andrews the title of Earl of
Mar, that of his maternal ancestors, and as that of the Earl of Murray
had lapsed since the death of the famous Thomas Randolph, Mary, in her
sisterly friendship for James Stuart, hastened to add, this title to
those which she had already bestowed upon him.
But here difficulties and complications arose; for the new Earl of
Murray, with his character, was not a man to content himself with a
barren title, while the estates which were crown property since the
extinction of the male branch of the old earls, had been gradually
encroached upon by powerful neighbours, among whom was the famous Earl
of Huntly, whom we have already mentioned: the result was that, as the
queen judged that in this quarter her orders would probably encounter
opposition, under pretext of visiting her possessions in the north, she
placed herself at the head of a small army, commanded by her brother,
the Earl of Mar and Murray.
The Earl of Huntly was the less duped by the apparent pretext of this
expedition, in that his son, John Cordon, for some abuse of his powers,
had just been condemned to a temporary imprisonment. He,
notwithstanding, made every possible submission to the queen, sending
messengers in advance to invite her to rest in his castle; and following
up the messengers in person, to renew his invitation viva voce.
Unfortunately, at the very moment when he was about to join the queen,
the governor of Inverness, who was entirely devoted to him, was refusing
to allow Mary to enter this castle, which was a royal one. It is true
that Murray, aware that it does not do to hesitate in the face of such
rebellions, had already had him executed for high treason.
This new act of firmness showed Huntly that the young queen was not
disposed to allow the Scottish lords a resumption of the almost
sovereign power humbled by her father; so that, in spite of the
extremely kind reception she accorded him, as he learned while in camp
that his son, having escaped from prison, had just put himself at the
head of his vassals, he was afraid that he should be thought, as
doubtless he was, a party to the rising, and he set out the same night
to assume command of his troops, his mind made up, as Mary only had with
her seven to eight thousand men, to risk a battle, giving out, however,
as Buccleuch had done in his attempt to snatch James V from the hands of
the Douglases, that it was not at the queen he was aiming, but solely at
the regent, who kept her under his tutelage and perverted her good
intentions.
Murray, who knew that often the entire peace of a reign depends on the
firmness one displays at its beginning, immediately summoned all the
northern barons whose estates bordered on his, to march against Huntly.
All obeyed, for the house of Cordon was already so powerful that each
feared it might become still more so; but, however, it was clear that if
there was hatred for the subject there was no great affection for the
queen, and that the greater number came without fixed intentions and
with the idea of being led by circumstances.
The two armies encountered near Aberdeen. Murray at once posted the
troops he had brought from Edinburgh, and of which he was sure, on the
top of rising ground, and drew up in tiers on the hill slope all his
northern allies. Huntly advanced resolutely upon them, and attacked his
neighbours the Highlanders, who after a short resistance retired in
disorder. His men immediately threw away their lances, and, drawing
their swords, crying, "Cordon, Cordon!" pursued the fugitives, and
believed they had already gained the battle, when they suddenly ran
right against the main body of Murray's army, which remained motionless
as a rampart of iron, and which, with its long lances, had the advantage
of its adversaries, who were armed only with their claymores. It was
then the turn of the Cordons to draw back, seeing which, the northern
clans rallied and returned to the fight, each soldier having a sprig of
heather in his cap that his comrades might recognise him. This
unexpected movement determined the day: the Highlanders ran down the
hillside like a torrent, dragging along with them everyone who could
have wished to oppose their passage. Then Murray seeing that the moment
had come for changing the defeat into a rout, charged with his entire
cavalry: Huntly, who was very stout and very heavily armed, fell and was
crushed beneath the horses' feet; John Cordon, taken prisoner in his
flight, was executed at Aberdeen three days afterwards; finally, his
brother, too young to undergo the same fate at this time, was shut up in
a dungeon and executed later, the day he reached the age of sixteen.
Mary had been present at the battle, and the calm and courage she
displayed had made a lively impression on her wild defenders, who all
along the road had heard her say that she would have liked to be a man,
to pass her days on horseback, her nights under a tent, to wear a coat
of mail, a helmet, a buckler, and at her side a broadsword.
Mary made her entry into Edinburgh amid general enthusiasm; for this
expedition against the Earl of Huntly, who was a Catholic, had been very
popular among the inhabitants, who had no very clear idea of the real
motives which had caused her to undertake it: They were of the Reformed
faith, the earl was a papist, there was an enemy the less; that is all
they thought about. Now, therefore; the Scotch, amid their acclamations,
whether viva voce or by written demands, expressed the wish that their
queen, who was without issue by Francis II, should re-marry: Mary agreed
to this, and, yielding to the prudent advice of those about her, she
decided to consult upon this marriage Elizabeth, whose heir she was, in
her title of granddaughter of Henry VII, in the event of the Queen of
England's dying without posterity. Unfortunately, she had not always
acted with like circumspection; for at the death of Mary Tudor, known as
Bloody Mary, she had laid claim to the throne of Henry VIII, and,
relying on the illegitimacy of Elizabeth's birth, had with the dauphin
assumed sovereignty over Scotland, England, and Ireland, and had had
coins struck with this new title, and plate engraved with these new
armorial bearings.
Elizabeth was nine years older than Mary--that is to say, that at this
time she had not yet attained her thirtieth year; she was not merely her
rival as queen, then, but as woman. As regards education, she could
sustain comparison with advantage; for if she had less charm of mind,
she had more solidity of judgment: versed in politics, philosophy,
history; rhetoric, poetry and music, besides English, her maternal
tongue, she spoke and wrote to perfection Greek, Latin, French, Italian
and Spanish; but while Elizabeth excelled Mary on this point, in her
turn Mary was more beautiful, and above all more attractive, than her
rival. Elizabeth had, it is true, a majestic and agreeable appearance,
bright quick eyes, a dazzlingly white complexion; but she had red hair,
a large foot,--[Elizabeth bestowed a pair of her shoes on the University
of Oxford; their size would point to their being those of a man of
average stature.]--and a powerful hand, while Mary, on the contrary,
with her beautiful ashy-fair hair,--[Several historians assert that Mary
Stuart had black hair; but Brantome, who had seen it, since, as we have
said, he accompanied her to Scotland, affirms that it was fair. And, so
saying, he (the executioner) took off her headdress, in a contemptuous
manner, to display her hair already white, that while alive, however,
she feared not to show, nor yet to twist and frizz as in the days when
it was so beautiful and so fair.]--her noble open forehead, eyebrows
which could be only blamed for being so regularly arched that they
looked as if drawn by a pencil, eyes continually beaming with the
witchery of fire, a nose of perfect Grecian outline, a mouth so ruby red
and gracious that it seemed that, as a flower opens but to let its
perfume escape, so it could not open but to give passage to gentle
words, with a neck white and graceful as a swan's, hands of alabaster,
with a form like a goddess's and a foot like a child's, Mary was a
harmony in which the most ardent enthusiast for sculptured form could
have found nothing to reproach.
This was indeed Mary's great and real crime: one single imperfection in
face or figure, and she would not have died upon the scaffold. Besides,
to Elizabeth, who had never seen her, and who consequently could only
judge by hearsay, this beauty was a great cause of uneasiness and of
jealousy, which she could not even disguise, and which showed itself
unceasingly in eager questions. One day when she was chatting with James
Melville about his mission to her court, Mary's offer to be guided by
Elizabeth in her choice of a husband,--a choice which the queen of
England had seemed at first to wish to see fixed on the Earl of
Leicester,--she led the Scotch ambassador into a cabinet, where she
showed him several portraits with labels in her own handwriting: the
first was one of the Earl of Leicester. As this nobleman was precisely
the suitor chosen by Elizabeth, Melville asked the queen to give it him
to show to his mistress; but Elizabeth refused, saying that it was the
only one she had. Melville then replied, smiling, that being in
possession of the original she might well part with the copy; but
Elizabeth would on no account consent. This little discussion ended, she
showed him the portrait of Mary Stuart, which she kissed very tenderly,
expressing to Melville a great wish to see his mistress. "That is very
easy, madam," he replied: "keep your room, on the pretext that you are
indisposed, and set out incognito for Scotland, as King James V set out
for France when he wanted to see Madeleine de Valois, whom he afterwards
married."
"Alas!" replied Elizabeth, "I would like to do so, but it is not so easy
as you think. Nevertheless, tell your queen that I love her tenderly,
and that I wish we could live more in friendship than we have done up to
the present". Then passing to a subject which she seemed to have wanted
to broach for a long time, "Melville," she continued, "tell me frankly,
is my sister as beautiful as they say?"
"She has that reputation," replied Melville; "but I cannot give your
Majesty any idea of her beauty, having no point of comparison."
"I will give you one," the queen said. "Is she more beautiful than I?"
"Madam," replied Melville, "you are the most beautiful woman in England,
and Mary Stuart is the most beautiful woman in Scotland."
"Then which of the two is the taller?" asked Elizabeth, who was not
entirely satisfied by this answer, clever as it was.
"My mistress, madam," responded Melville; "I am obliged to confess it."
"Then she is too tall," Elizabeth said sharply, "for I am tall enough.
And what are her favourite amusements?" she continued.
"Madam," Melville replied, "hunting, riding, performing on the lute and
the harpsichord."
"Is she skilled upon the latter?" Elizabeth inquired. "Oh yes, madam,"
answered Melville; "skilled enough for a queen."
There the conversation stopped; but as Elizabeth was herself an
excellent musician, she commanded Lord Hunsdon to bring Melville to her
at a time when she was at her harpischord, so that he could hear her
without her seeming to have the air of playing for him. In fact, the
same day, Hunsdon, agreeably to her instructions, led the ambassador
into a gallery separated from the queen's apartment merely by tapestry,
so that his guide having raised it, Melville at his leisure could hear
Elizabeth, who did not turn round until she had finished the piece,
which, however, she was playing with much skill. When she saw Melville,
she pretended to fly into a passion, and even wanted to strike him; but
her anger calmed down by little and little at the ambassador's
compliments, and ceased altogether when he admitted that Mary Stuart was
not her equal. But this was not all: proud of her triumph, Elizabeth
desired also that Melville should see her dance. Accordingly, she kept
back her despatches for two days that he might be present at a ball that
she was giving. These despatches, as we have said, contained the wish
that Mary Stuart should espouse Leicester; but this proposal could not
be taken seriously. Leicester, whose personal worth was besides
sufficiently mediocre, was of birth too inferior to aspire to the hand
of the daughter of so many kings; thus Mary replied that such an
alliance would not become her. Meanwhile, something strange and tragic
came to pass.