Stuarts

MARY STUART IN FRANCE 25
back was toward the door, I entered within the chamber and stood still at
the door post, and heard her play excellently well ; but she left off so soon as
she turned her about and saw me, and came forward seeming to strike me
with her left hand, and to think shame ; alleging that she used not to play
before men, but when she was solitary, her alone, to eschew melancholy ;
and askit how I came there. I said, as I was walking with my Lord of
Hunsden, as we passed by the chamber door, I heard such melody, which
ravished and drew me within the chamber I wist not how ; excusing my fault
of homeliness, as being brought up in the Court of France, and was now
willing to suffer what kind of punishment would please her to lay upon me
for my offence.
" Then she sat down low upon a cushion, and I upon my knee beside
her ; but she gave me a cushion with her own hand to lay under my knee,
which I refused, but she compelled me ; and called for my Lady Stafford
out of the next chamber, for she was alone there. Then she asked whether
the Queen or she played best. In that I gave her the praise. . . . She
inquired at me whether she or the Queen danced best. I said, the Queen
danced not so high, and disposedly as she did. Then again she wished that
she might see the Queen at some convenient place of meeting. I offered
to convoy her secretly in (to) Scotland by post, clothed like a page disguised,
that she might see the Queen. . . . She said, 'Alas! if she might do it,' " &c.
As we know, she never did do it. Had they come together the fate of Mary
might have been very different, and what a meeting that of the rival Queens
would have been !
Now let us hear the opinion of a writer who has studied the English
Queen closely, particularly with regard to her complicated dealings with Mary.
According, then, to Mr. Hosack, " Elizabeth imposed more successfully upon
mankind than any equally conspicuous personage in history. In the eyes
of the multitude in her day, she was a great and magnanimous sovereign —
the idol of her people and the terror of her enemies. In reality, it is easy
to perceive, through all her cleverness and cunning, that she was not only
the vainest and the meanest, but the most irresolute and vacillating of her
sex. Her capricious and tyrannical treatment of her ministers and attendants,
the domineering tone which she could assume with so much effect towards
foreign ambassadors, and her occasional sallies of coarse wit, were all, to
ordinary observers, so many proofs of her high and courageous spirit. They
in reality veiled, though they could not conceal, a radical weakness in her
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