so aptly applied. We wondered how many times her weary head had passed
its restless nights there, and in the many castles in which she had been
placed during her long imprisonment of nineteen years. Half hidden by
the tapestry there was a small door opening upon a secret stair, and it
was by this that Darnley and his infamous associates ascended when they
went to murder the Queen's unfortunate Italian secretary, Rizzio, in the
Queen's supping-room, which we now visited. There we had to listen to
the recital of this horrible crime: how the Queen had been forcibly
restrained by Darnley, her table overthrown and the viands scattered,
while the blood-thirsty conspirators crowded into the room; how Rizzio
rushed behind the Queen for protection, until one of the assassins
snatched Darnley's dagger from its sheath, and stabbed Rizzio, leaving
the dagger sticking in his body, while the others dragged him furiously
from the room, stabbing him as he went, shrieking for mercy, until he
fell dead at the head of the staircase, pierced by fifty-six wounds;
and how one of the assassins threatened to cut the Queen "into collops"
if she dared to speak to the populace through the window. The bloodstain
on the floor was of course shown us, which the mockers assert is duly
"restored" every winter before the visiting season commences.
Leaving the Palace, we saw Queen Mary's Bath, a quaintly shaped little
building built for her by King James IV, in which she was said to have
bathed herself in white wine--an operation said to have been the secret
of her beauty. During some alterations which were made to it in 1798, a
richly inlaid but wasted dagger was found stuck in the sarking of the
roof, supposedly by the murderers of Rizzio on their escape from the
palace.
[Illustration: CHAPEL ROYAL, HOLYROOD.]
We then visited the now roofless ruins of the Abbey or Chapel Royal
adjoining the Palace. A fine doorway on which some good carving still
remained recalled something of its former beauty and grandeur. There
were quite a number of tombs, and what surprised us most was the large
size of the gravestones, which stood 6 to 7 feet high, and were about 3
feet wide. Those we had been accustomed to in England were much smaller,
but everything in Scotland seemed big, including the people themselves,
and this was no less true of the buildings in Edinburgh. There was a
monument in one corner of the Chapel Royal on which was an inscription
in Latin, of which we read the English translation to be:--