LEGENDSOFSCOTLAND.

“Fired by an object so sublime,What could I choose but strive to climb?And as I strove I fell.At least ’tis love, when hope is gone,Through shame and ruin to love on.”—Anon.

Thelast flush of day had not yet faded from the west, although the summer moon was riding above the verge of the eastern horizon, in a flood of mellow glory, with the diamond-spark of Lucifer glittering in solitary brightness at her side. It was one of those enchanting evenings which, peculiar to the southern lands of Europe, visit, but at far and fleeting intervals, the sterner clime of Britain. Not Italy, however, could herself have boasted a more delicious twilight than this, which now was waning into night, above the rude magnificence of Scotland’s capital. The fantastic dwellings of the city, ridge above ridge, loomed broadly to the left, partially veiled by those wreaths of vapor, which have been the origin of its provincial name; while, far above the misty indistinctness of the town, the glorious castle towered aloft upon its craggy throne, displaying a hundred fronts of massive shadow, and as many salient angles jutting abruptly into sight. The lovely vale of the King’s park, with its velvet turf and shadowy foliage, shone outin quiet lustre from beneath the dark-gray buttresses of Arthur’s seat; while from the trim alleys and pleached evergreens, which at that day formed a belt of lawn, and shrubbery, and royal garden, around the venerable pile of Holyrood, the rich song of the throstle—the nightingale of Scotland—came in repeated bursts upon the ear.

Delightful as such an evening must naturally be to all who have hearts awake to the influence of sweet sounds and lovely sights, how inexpressibly soothing must it seem to one who, languishing beneath the ungenial atmosphere of a northern region, and sighing for the bluer skies and softer breezes of his fatherland, feels himself at once transported, by the unusual aspect of the heavens, to the distant home of his regrets! It was, perhaps, some fancied similarity to the nights in which he had been wont to court the favor of the high-born dames of France with voice and instrument, that had awakened the melody of some foreign cavalier, more suitable perchance to the light murmurs of the Seine than to the distant booming of the seas that lash the coasts of Scotland. Such, however, was the illusion produced by the unwonted softness of the hour, that the tinkling of a lute and the full, manly voice of the singer did not at the moment seem so inconsistent to the spirit of the country and of the times as in truth it was. The words were French, and the air, though sweet, so melancholy, that it left a vague sensation of pain upon the listener—as though none but a heart diseased could give birth to notes so plaintive. “Pensez à moi! pensez à moi!—noble dame—Pensez à moi!”—the burden of the strain swelled clearly audible in the deepest tones of feeling, although the intermediate words were lost amid the accompaniment of the silver strings. Never, perhaps, since the unfortunate Chatelain de Concy first chanted his extemporaneous farewell to the lady of his heart, had his simple words been sung with taste or execution more appropriate to their subject.In truth, it was impossible to listen to the lay without feeling a conviction that the heart of the minstrel was in his song. There were, moreover, moments in which a practised ear might have discovered variations, not in the tune only, but in the words, as the singer exerted his unrivalled powers to adapt the text, which he had chosen, to his own peculiar circumstances; nor would it have required more than a common degree of fancy to have traced the sounds, “O Reine Marie!” mingling with the proper refrain of the chant, although it would have been less easy to distinguish whether the fervent expression with which the words were invested was applied to an object of mortal idolatry or of immortal adoration. It would seem, however, that there were listeners near, to whom this doubt had not so much as once occurred; for in a shadowy bower, not far distant from the spot where the concealed musician sang, there stood a group of ladies, drinking with breathless eagerness every note that issued from his lips. Foremost in place, as first in rank, was one whose charms have been said and sung, not by the poet and the romancer only, but by the muse of history herself, who almost seems to have dipped her graver pencil in the hues of fiction when describing Mary Stuart of Scotland. Her form, rather below than above the middle stature of the female form, was fashioned with such perfect elegance, that it was equally calculated to exhibit the extremes of grace and majesty. Her ringlets of the deepest auburn, glancing in the light with a glossy, golden lustre, and melting into shadows of dark chestnut; the statue-like contour of her Grecian head; her eyes, on which no man had ever gazed with impunity to his heart—more languid and at the same time far more brilliant than those of created beauty; her mouth, whose wreathed smile might have almost tempted angels to descend and worship; her swan-like neck of dazzling whiteness; and, above all, the glorious blending of feminine ease with regal dignity—of condescensionand affability toward the meanest of her fellow-men, with the exalted consciousness of all that was due, not to her rank, but to herself—combined to render her perhaps the loveliest, as after-events proved her beyond a doubt the most unfortunate, of queens or women. Sorrow at this time had scarcely cast a shadow on that transparent brow; or, if an occasional recollection of the ill-fated Francis did leave a trace behind, it was a sadness of that gentle and spiritualized description which is, perhaps, a more attractive expression to be marked in the features of a lovely woman, than the full blaze of happiness and self-enjoyment. Simple almost to plainness in her attire, the queen of Scotland moved before her four attendant Maries, ten thousand times more lovely from the contrast of her unadornment to the gorgeous dresses of those noble dames, who had been selected to be near her person, with especial regard, not to exalted rank alone, or to the distinctive name, which they bore in common with their royal mistress, but to intellect, and beauty, and all those accomplishments which, general as they are in our day, were then at least as highly valued for their rarity, as for their intrinsic merits. A robe of sable velvet, with the closely-fittedcorsagepeculiar to the age in which she lived, a falling ruff from the fairest looms of Flanders, and the picturesque head-gear which has ever borne her name, with its double tressure of pearls, and a single string of the same precious jewels around her neck, completed Mary’s dress, while rustling trains of many-colored satin, guarded with costly laces and stomachers studded with gems, bracelets, and carcanets, and chains of goldsmith’s work, gleamed on the persons of her ladies. Still the demeanor of the little group was more in accordance to the simplicity of the mistress than to the splendor of the others. No rigid etiquette was there; none of that high and haughty ceremonial which, in the courtly festivals of the rival queen of England, froze up the feelings even of those trustedfew who bore with the caprices, in seeking for the favors, of Elizabeth. The titles of grace and majesty were lisped indeed by the lips of the fair damsels, but the character of their remarks, the polished raillery, the light laugh, and the freedom of intercourse, were rather those of the younger members of a family toward an elder sister, than of a court-circle toward a powerful queen. As the last notes of the song died away, she who was nearest to Mary’s person whispered in a sportive tone, “Your grace has heard that lute before—”

“In France, Carmichael,” answered Mary, with a breath so deeply drawn as almost to resemble a sigh, “in our beautiful France; when, when shall I look upon that lovely land again.”

While she was yet speaking the music recommenced. A dash of impatience was mingled with the plaintive sweetness of the strain, and the words “pensez à moi” swept past their ears with all the energy of disappointed feelings.

“It is the voice—”

“Of the sieur de Chastelar,” interrupted the queen; “we would thank the gentleman for his minstrelsey. Seyton,ma mignonne, hie thee across yon woodbine-maze, and summon this night-warbler to our presence.”

With an arch smile the lively girl bounded forward, and was for an instant lost among the foliage of the garden.

“Dost thou remember, Carmichael,” said the queen, whose thoughts had been reflected by the well-remembered strains—“dost thou remember our sylvan festivals in the lovely groves of Versailles, with hound and hawk for noonday pastime, and the lute, the song, and the unfettered dance upon the green sward, beneath moons unclouded by the hazy gloom of this dark Scotland’s?”

“And does your grace remember,” laughed the other in reply, “a certainfêtein which the palm of minstrelsey was awarded by your royal hand to a masked hunter of the forest? Yetwas his bearing somewhat gentle for a ranger of the green-wood, and his hand was passing white to have handled the tough bow-string? Does your grace’s memory serve to recall the air whose executions gained that prize of harmony? Methinks it did run somewhat thus,”—and she warbled the same notes which had formed the burthen of the serenade.

Whether some distant recollections conjured up the mantling color to the cheeks of Mary, or whether she dreaded the misconstruction of the serenader, on his hearing his own tender words repeated in a voice of female melody, it was with brow, neck and bosom of the deepest crimson that she turned to MaryCarmichael—

“Peace, silly minion!” she said, with momentary dignity; “wouldst have it said that Mary of Scotland is so light of bearing as to trill love-ditties in reply to unseen ballad-mongers? Nay, weep not neither, Marie; if I spoke somewhat shortly, ’twas that the gentleman was even then approaching. Cheer up, my girl; thou hast, we know it well, a kind, a gentle, and a trusty heart, though nature has coupled the gift to that of a thoughtless head and random tongue. Take not on thus, or I shall blame myself in that I checked thee, though surely not unkindly. Mary of Stuart loves better far to look upon a smiling lip than a wet eye, even if it be a stranger’s—much less that of one whom she loves—as I love thee, Carmichael.”

There was, perhaps, no circumstance more remarkable than the power which, at every period of her momentous life, Mary appears to have possessed of winning, as it were at a glance, the affections of all who came in contact with her. The deep devotion, not of the barons and the military chiefs alone, who bled in defence of her cause, but of the ladies, the pages, the chamberlains of her court, nay, of the very grooms and servitors, with whom she could have held no intercourse beyond asmile or inclination of the head, in return for their lowly obeisance, was ever ready for the proof, when circumstances might demand its exercise. Not shown by outward acts of heroism only, or by those deeds which men are wont to perform, no less at the instigation of their wishes for renown, or of rivalry with some more famed competitor, this devotion was constantly manifested in the eagerness of all around her to execute even the most menial duties to Mary’s satisfaction; in the promptness to anticipate her slightest wish; in the lively joy which one kind word from her could awaken, as if by magic, on every brow; and, above all, in the utter despondency which seemed to sink down upon those whom she might deem it necessary to check, even with the slightest remonstrance. In the present instance the sensitive girl, to whom the queen had uttered her commands in the nervous quickness of excitement, rather than with any feeling of harshness or offended pride, felt, it was evident, more bitterness of grief at the rebuke of one whom she loved no less than she revered, than she would have experienced beneath the pressure of some real calamity. As quickly, however, as the sense of sorrow had been excited, did it pass away, before the returning smiles, the soft caresses, and the winning manners of the most fascinating of women the most amiable of superiors.

Scarcely had the tears of Mary Carmichael ceased to flow, when the footsteps, which for some moments previously had been heard approaching, sounded close at hand; the branches of the embowering shrubbery were gently put asunder, and the lady Seyton stood again before the queen, attended by a gentleman of noble aspect, and whose very gesture was fraught with that easy and graceful politeness which, perhaps, showed even more to advantage in that iron age and warlike country, displayed, as it often was, in contrast to the rude demeanor and stern simplicity of the warrior lords of Scotland, than in hisnative France.

The sieur de Chastelar was at this time in the very prime of youthful manhood, and might have been some few years, and but few, the senior of the lovely being before whose presence he bent in adoration humbler, and more fervently expressed, than the reverence due from a mere subject to a mortal queen. Tall and fairly-proportioned, with a countenance in which almost feminine softness of expression was blended, with an aspect of the eye and lip, which proved the vicinity of bolder and more manly qualities, slumbering but not extinct, he seemed at the first glance a man most eminently qualified to win a female heart. And who, that looked upon the broad and massive brow, and the quick glance of that eye, fraught with intelligence, could doubt but that the mind within was equal to the more perishable beauties of the form in which it was encompassed? And when to all this was added, that the sieur de Chastelar had already won a name in his green youth that ranked with those of gray-haired veterans in the lists of glory; that in all manly exercises, as in all softer accomplishments, he owned no superior; that the most skilful master of defence, the far-famedVicentio Saviola, confessed De Chastelar his equal in the quickness of eye, the readiness of hand and foot which had combined to render him the most distinguished swordsman of the day; that the wildest and most untameable chargers that ever were compelled to undergo themanége, might as well have striven to shake off a portion of themselves, as to dismount De Chasteler by any display of violence and power; that his hand could draw the cloth-yard arrow to the head, and speed it to its aim as truly as the fleetest archer that ever twanged a bow in Sherwood; that he moved in the stately measure of the pavon, or the liveliergalliarde, with that grace peculiar to his nation; that, in the richness of his voice, his execution and taste on lute or guitar, he might have vied with the sons of Italy herself;in short, that all perfections which were deemed most requisite to form a gentleman were united in De Chastelar, what female heart, that was not proof to all the allurements of love or fancy, could hope to make an adequate resistance? Young, handsome, romantic, ardent in his hopes, enthusiastic almost to madness in his affections, he had been captivated years before in the gay salons of the French capitol, by the beauty and irresistible fascinations of the princess.

In the intercourse of French society, which even in the times of theMedici, as it has been in all succeeding ages, was far more liberal in its distinctions, and less restricted by the formalities of etiquette, than in any other court, a thousand opportunities had occurred, by which the youthful cavalier had profited to rivet the attention of the princess; at everycarouselhe bore her colors; in every masque he introduced some delicate allusion, some soft flattery, palpable to her alone; in every contest of musical skill, which yet survived in Paris, the sole remnant of the troubadours, some covert traces of his passion might be discovered, if not by every ear, at least by that of Mary. Intoxicated as she was, at this stage of her life, by the adulation of all, by the consciousness of beauty, power, and rank, far above all her fellows, the queen of Scotland owed much of her misery in after-years to the unclouded brilliancy of her youthful prospects, and to the wide distinction between the manners of that court, in which her happiest hours were spent; and of her northern subjects, by whom hergaieté de cour, her love for society less formal than the routine of courts, and her predilections for all innocent amusements, were ever looked upon in the light of grave derelictions from decorum and morality.

That she had regarded the gallant boy, whose accomplishments were so constantly before her eyes, with favorable inclinations was not to be doubted; and that at times she had lavished upon him marks of her good will in rather too profuse adegree, was no less true; but whether this line of conduct was dictated merely by a natural impulse, which ever leads us to distinguish those whom we approve from the common herd of our acquaintance, or by a warmer feeling, can never now be ascertained. It mattered not, however, to the youth, from which cause the conduct of the lovely princess was derived; it was enough for him that she had marked his attentions, that she had deigned to look upon him with favorable eyes, that she might at some future period learn to love.

Not long, however, was it permitted to him to indulge in those fair but fallacious dreams; the marriage of the Scottish princess with the royal Francis was ere long publicly announced, the ceremonies of the betrothal, and lastly of the wedding itself, were solemnized with all the pomp and splendor of the mightiest realm in Europe, and the aspirations of the united nations ascended in behalf of Francis and his lovely bride.

It was then, for the first time, that Mary was rendered fully aware of the misery which her unthinking freedom had entailed upon the ardent nature of De Chastelar; it was then, for the first time, that she learned how deep and powerful had been the passion which he had nourished in his heart of hearts—that she was awakened to a consciousness that she was loved, not wisely, but too well. Heretofore she had believed, that the eagerness of the gay and gallant Frenchman to display his equestrian skill, his musical accomplishments, before her presence, and as it were in her behalf, and the devotedness with which he turned all his powers to a single object, were rather to be attributed to a desire of gaining general approbation as a gentle cavalier, a slave to beauty, and a favored servant of earth’s loveliest lady, than to a passion, the romance of which, considering the wide distinction of their sphere, would have amounted to actual insanity. Now she perceived, to her deep regret, that the arrow had been shot home, and that the barbhad taken hold too firmly to be disengaged by a sudden effort, how vehement soever. She saw, in the pale cheek and hollow eye, that he had cherished hopes which reason and reality must bid him discard, at once and for ever; but which he yet had not the fortitude to tear up by the roots, and cast into oblivion. For a time he had wandered about, a spectre of his former person, among the festivities and happiness of all around him, paler every day, and more abstracted in his mien; then he had exiled himself at once from rejoicings in which he could have no share, and had buried his hopes, his anxieties, his misery, in the loneliness of his own secluded chamber.

Thus had passed weeks and months; and when at length he had come forth again to join the world and all its vanities, he was, as it seemed to all, a wiser and a sadder man. The queen, ever kind and affectionate in her disposition, imagining that he had struggled with the demon which possessed him, and cast his hopeless love behind him, met his return to the courtly circle with her wonted condescension. On his preferring his request to be installed her chamberlain, willing to mark her high sense of his imagined integrity, in thus manfully shaking off his weakness, she granted his request; and trusting that his own acuteness would readily perceive the distinction between royal favor to a trusted servant and feminine affections to a preferred lover, assumed nothing of formality or etiquette, more than had characterized their former days of unrestricted intercourse. Her own first trial followed; the first year of her nuptials had not yet flown, when the gallant Francis, the earliest, the worthy object of her young love, sickened with a disease which from its very commencement permitted but slight hopes of his recovery. Then came the wretchedness of anxiety, hoping all things, yet too well aware that all was hopeless; the watchings by his feverish bed, when watching,it was too obvious, could be of no avail; the agony when the announcement that all was over, long foreseen, but never to be endured, burst on her mind; the long, heart-rending sorrow, the repinings after pleasures that were never to return; and, last of all, the cold, stern carelessness of despair. She awoke at length from her lethargy of wo; awoke to leave the lovely climate which she had learned almost to deem her own; to be torn from the friends whom she had loved, and the society of which she had been the brightest gem, to return to a country which, though it was the country of her birth, had never conjured up to her imagination any pictures save of a gloomy hue and melancholy nature.

A few who had served her in the sunny land of France adhered to her with unshaken resolution, despising all inconveniences, setting at naught all dangers, save that separation from a mistress, whom, to have attended once, was to love for ever. Among those few was De Chastelar. The alteration in her condition had undoubtedly suggested to the widowed queen the necessity of an alteration in her conduct toward De Chastelar, particularly when it was added, that familiarity between a creature so young and lovely as herself and a gentleman so noble, even in his melancholy, as the chamberlain, would have at once excited the indignation of her stern and rigid subjects. In these circumstances it would perhaps have been a wiser, though not a more considerate plan, to have confided the cause of her embarrassment to the causer of it, and to have requested his absence from her court. It was not, however, in Mary’s nature to give pain, if she could possibly avoid it, to the meanest animal, much less to a friend valued and esteemed, as he who was the innocent cause of her anxiety. She adopted, therefore, what, being always the most easy, is ever the most dangerous, an intermediate course. In public De Chastelar received no marks of approbation from the queen, much less ofregard from the woman; but in her hours of retirement, when surrounded by the ladies of her court, the most of whom had followed her footsteps northward from gay Paris, she delighted to efface from his mind the recollections of neglect before the eyes of the censorious Scots, by a delicacy of attention, and a warmth of friendship, which, while it fully answered her end of soothing his wounded feelings, led him to cherish ideas most fatal in the end to his own happiness, and to that of the fair being whom he so adored. It was with a heightened color and throbbing breast that Mary turned to address her unconfessed lover, yet there was no flutter in the clear, soft voice with which she spoke.

“We would thank,” she said, “the sieur de Chastelar for the delightful sounds by which he has rendered our walk on this sweet evening even more agreeable than the mild air and cloudless heaven could have done without his minstrelsey. Yet ’twas a mournful strain, De Chastelar,” she continued, “and one which, if we err not, flows from a wounded heart. Would that we knew the object of so true a servant’s worship, that we might whisper our royal pleasure in her ear, that she should list the suit of one whom we regard so highly. Is she in truth so obdurate, this fair of thine, De Chastelar? she must be hard of heart to slight so gallant a cavalier.”

“Not so, your grace,” replied the astonished lover, in a voice scarcely less sonorous than the music he had made so lately. “She to whom all my vows are paid, she who has ever owned the passionate aspirations of a devoted heart, is as pre-eminently raised in all the sweet and amiable sentiments of the mind as is unrivalled beauty above all mortal beings.”

For an instant the queen was dumb; she had hoped, by affecting ignorance of his sentiments, that she should have been enabled to make him comprehend the madness, the utter inutility of his passion, and she felt that she had failed; thatwords had been addressed to her, which, however she might feign to others that she had not perceived their bearing, he must be well aware she could not possibly have failed to understand. It was with an altered mien and with an air of cold and haughty dignity, that she again addressed him as she passed onward toward the palace.

“We wish thee, then, fair sir, a better fortune hereafter, and until then good night.” Without uttering a syllable in reply, he bowed himself almost to the earth; nor did he raise his head again until the form he loved to look upon had vanished from his sight: then slowly lifting his eyes he gazed wistfully after her, dashed his hand violently upon his brow, and turning aside rushed hastily from the spot.

An hour had scarcely elapsed before the lights were extinguished throughout the vaulted halls of Holyrood; the guards were posted for the night, the officers had gone their rounds, the ladies of the royal circle were dismissed, and all was darkness and silence. In Mary’s chamber a single lamp was burning in a small recess, before a beautifully-executed painting of the virgin, but light was not sufficient to penetrate the obscurity which reigned in the many angles and alcoves of that irregular apartment, although the moonbeams were admitted through the open casement.

Her garb of ceremony laid aside, her lovely shape scantily veiled by a single robe of spotless linen, her auburn tresses flowing in unrestrained luxuriance almost to her feet, if she had been a creature of perfect human beauty, when viewed in all the pomp of royal pageantry, she now appeared a being of supernatural loveliness. Her small white feet, unsandalled, glided over the rich carpet with a grace which a slight degree of fancy might have deemed the motion peculiar to the inhabitants of another world. For an instant, ere she turned to her repose, she leaned against the carved mullions of the window,and gazed pensively, and it might be sadly, upon the garden, where she had so lately parted from the unhappy youth, whose life was thus embittered by that very feeling which, above all others, should have been its consolation. Withdrawing her eyes from the moonlit scene, she knelt before the lamp and the shrine which it illuminated, and her whispered orisons arose pure as the source from which they flowed; the prayers of a weak and humble mortal, penitent for every trivial error, breathing all confidence to Him who alone can protect or pardon; the prayers of a queen for her numerous children, and last, and holiest of all, a woman’s prayers for her unfortunate admirer. Yes, she prayed for Chastelar, that strength might be given to him from on high, to bear the crosses of a miserable life, and that by Divine mercy the hopeless love might be uprooted from his breast. The words burst passionately from her lips, her whole frame quivered with the excess of her emotion, and the big tears fell like rain from her uplifted eyes. While she was yet in the very flood of passion a sigh was breathed, so clearly audible, that the conviction flashed like lightning on her soul, that this most secret prayer was listened to by other ears than those of heavenly ministers. Terror, acute terror took possession of her mind, banishing, by its superior violence, every less engrossing idea. She snatched the lamp from its niche, waved it slowly around the chamber, and there, in the most hallowed spot of her widowed chamber, a spy upon her unguarded moments, stood a dark figure. Even in that moment of astonishment and fear, as if by instinct, the beautiful instinct of purely female modesty, she snatched a velvet mantle from the seat on which it had been cast aside, and veiled her person even before she spoke—“O God! it is De Chastelar!”

“Sweet queen,” replied the intruder, “bright, beautiful ruler of my destinies, pardon—”

“What ho!” she screamed, in notes of dread intensity, “à moi, à moi mes Français. My guards! Seyton! Carmichael! Fleming! will ye leave your queen alone! alone with treachery and black dishonor! Villain! slave!” she cried, turning her flashing eyes upon him, her whole form swelling as it were with all the fury of injured innocence, “didst thou dare to think that Mary—Mary, the wife of Francis—the anointed queen of Scotland, would brook thine infamous addresses? Nay, kneel not, or I spurn thee! What ho! will no one aid in mine extremity?”

“Fear naught from me,” faltered the wretched Chastelar, but with a voice like that of some inspired Pythoness she broke in—“Fear! thinkst thou that I could fear a thing, an abject coward thing like thee? a wretch that would exult in the infamy of one whom he pretends to love? Fear thee! by heavens! if I could have feared, contempt must have forbidden it.”

“Nay, Mary, hear me! hear me but one word, if that word cost my life—”

“Thy life! hadst thou ten thousand lives, they would be but a feather in the scale against thy monstrous villany. What ho!” again she cried, stamping with impotent anger at the delay of her attendants, “treason! my guards! treason!”

At length the passages rang with the hurried footsteps of the startled inmates of the palace; with torch and spear, and brandished blades, they rushed into the apartment; page, sentinel, and chamberlain, ladies with dishevelled hair, and faces blanched with terror. The queen stood erect in the centre of the room, pointing, with one white arm bare to the shoulder, toward the wretched culprit, who, with folded arms, and head erect, awaited his doom in unresisting silence. His naked rapier, with which alone he might have foiled the united efforts of his enemies, lay at his feet; his brow was white as sculptured marble, and no less rigid, but his eyes glared wildly, and his lips quivered as though he would havespoken.

The queen, still furious at the wrong which he had done her fame, marked the expression. “Silence!” she cried—“degraded! wouldst thou meanly beg thy forfeit life? Wert thou my father, thou shouldst die to-morrow! Hence with the villain! Bid Maitland execute the warrant. Ourself—ourself will sign it—away! Chastelar dies at daybreak!”

“’Tis well,” replied he, calmly, “it is well—the lips I love the best pronounce my doom, and I die happy, since I die for Mary. Wouldst thou but pity the offender, while thou dost doom the offence, De Chastelar would not exchange his shortened span of life, and violent death, for the brightest crown in Christendom. My limbs may die—my love will live for ever! Lead on, minions; I am more glad to die than ye to slay! Mary, beautiful Mary, think—think hereafter upon Chastelar!”

The guards passed onward; last of the group, unfettered and unmoved, De Chastelar stalked after them. Once, ere he stooped beneath the low-browed portal, he paused, placed both hands on his heart, bowed lowly, and then pointed upward, as he chanted once again the words, “Pensez à moi, noble dame, pensez à moi.” As he vanished from her presence she waved her hand impatiently to be left alone—and all night long she traversed and re-traversed the floor of her chamber, in paroxysms of the fiercest despair. The warrant was brought to her—silently, sternly, she traced her signature beneath it; not a sign of sympathy was on her pallid features, not a tremor shook her frame; she was passionless, majestic, and unmoved. The secretary left the chamber on his fatal errand, and Mary was again a woman. Prostrate upon her couch she lay, sobbing and weeping as though her very soul was bursting from her bosom, defying all consolation, spurning every offer at remedy. “’Tis done!” she would say, “’tis done! I have preserved myfame, and murdered mine only friend!”

The morning dawned slowly, and the heavy bells of all the churches clanged the death-peal of De Chastelar. The tramp of the cavalry defiling from the palace-gates struck on her heart as though each hoof dashed on her bosom. An hour passed away, the minute-bells still tolling; the roar of a culverin swept heavily downward from the castle, and all was over. He had died as he had lived, undaunted—as he had lived, devoted! “Mary, divine Mary,” were his latest words, “I love in death, as I loved in life, thee, and thee only.” The axe drank his blood, and the queen of Scotland had not a truer servant left behind than he, whom, for a moment’s frenzy, she was compelled to slay. Yet was his last wish satisfied; for though the queen might not relent, the woman did forgive; and in many a mournful hour did Mary think on Chastelar.

Bru.Do you know them?Luc.No, sir; their hats are plucked about their brows,And half their faces buried in their cloaks,That by no means I may discover themBy any marks of favor.—Julius Cæsar.

Theshadows of an early evening, in the ungenial month of March, were already gathering among the narrow streets andwyndsof the Scottish metropolis. There was a melancholy air of solitude about the grim and dusky edifices, which towered to the height of twelve or thirteen stories against the gray horizon. No lights streamed from the casements, no voices sounded in loud revelry or chastened merriment from the dwellings of the gloomy quarter in which the scene of our narrative is laid. The cheerless aspect of the night, together with the drizzling rain, which fell in silent copiousness, had banished every human being from the streets; and, except the smoke which eddied from the dilapidated chimneys, and was instantly beat down to earth by the violence of the shower, there was no sign of any other inhabitants, than the famished dogs which were snarling over the relics of some thrice-picked bone. Suddenly the sharp clatter of hoofs, in rapid motion over the broken pavement, rose above the splashing of the flooded gutters, betokening the approach of men; and ere a minute had elapsed two horsemen, gallantly mounted, rode hotly up the street. The foremost bestriding, with the careless ease of an accomplished rider, a jennet, whose thin jaws, expanded nostril, and flashing eye, no less than the deerlike springiness of its gait, and its unrivalled symmetry, proclaimed it sprung from the best blood of the desert, was of a figure that could not be looked upon, however slightly, without awakening a sense ofinterest, perhaps of admiration, in all beholders.

His countenance, of an oval form, and of a darker hue than the blue-eyed sons of northern latitudes are wont to exhibit—the full and somewhat wild expression of his dark eye, the melancholy smile which played upon his curling lip, pencilled mustache, and the peaked beard—contributing to form a face that Antonio Vandyke would have loved to paint, and after ages to admire, when invested with the life of his rich coloring. His dress of russet velvet slashed with satin, his feathered cap, with its gay fanfaronaEand enamelled medal, his jeweled rapier, and the bright spurs in his falling buskins, were well adapted to the agile limbs and slender, though symmetrical proportions of the horseman.

ETheFanfaronawas a richly-fashioned chain of goldsmith’s work, not worn about the neck, but twisted in two or more circuits around the rim of the cap, or bonnet, and terminating in a heavy medal. It was probably of Spanish origin, but was much in vogue in the courts of Mary and Elizabeth.

The second rider was a boy, whose black and scarlet liveries—the well-known colors of all servitors of the Scottish crown—were but imperfectly hidden by the frieze cloak which had been cast over them, evidently for the purposes of concealment, rather than of comfort; yet he, too, like the gallant whom he followed—if any faith was to be placed in the evidence of raven hair and olive complexion—owed his birth to some more southern clime.

After winding rapidly through several dim and unfrequented lanes, the leading horseman, checking his speed, gazed around him with a doubtful and bewildered eye.

“Madre di Dio,” he exclaimed at length, “what a night is here; a thousand curses on this learned fool, that he must dwell in such a den of thieves as this; or rather a thousand curses on the blind and heretical Scots, that drive a man of wisdom, beyond their shallow comprehension, to bed with the very outcasts of society. Pietro, what ho!” and he raised hisvoice above the key in which he had pitched his soliloquy, “knowest thou the dwelling of this sage—this Johan Damietta? methought that I had noted the spot, yet have these sordid lanes banished the recollection.Presto, time fails already.”

Without uttering a syllable in reply, the page sprung from his horse, and pointed to the doorway of a mansion, dilapidated even more than those in its vicinity, yet bearing in its site the marks of having been constructed in former days for the residence of some proud baron. Nor even now—although all the appliances of comfort were utterly neglected, although the casements were void of glass, and the chimneys sent up no volumes from a cheerful hearth—were the external defences of the pile forgotten; heavy bars of iron crossed and recrossed the deep-set embrasure which once had held the windows, and the oaken gate was clenched with many a massive nail and plate of rusted iron. The cavalier alighted, cast the rein to his servitor, and with the single word “Prudence,” ascended the stone steps, and struck thrice at measured intervals upon the wicket with his rapier’s hilt. The door flew open, but without the agency, as it appeared, of any living being, and, as the visiter entered, was closed again behind him with a heavy crash.

A narrow passage was before him, scarcely rendered visible by the flickering light of a cresset suspended from the ceiling, and nourished, as it seemed, with spirit, rather than with the richer food of oil. Uncertain, however, as was the illumination, it served to show a second door, even more strongly constructed than the first, fronting the intruder at the distance of some ten paces; while the wall, perforated with loops for musketry, or more probably, if the remote antiquity of the building were considered, for arrows, proved that the hostile intruder had effected but little in forcing his way through the outwardentrance. It would be wrong, in the description of this difficult passage, to omit the mention of certain orifices, or slits, extending in length from the floor even to the ceiling of the side-walls, but not exceeding a single inch in width, as they may tend perhaps to cast some light upon an invention of the darkest ages of Scottish history, the reality of which has been considered doubtful by acute antiquarians. From the upper extremity of these slits protruded on either side the blades of six enormous swords, which, being placed alternately, and worked by some concealed machinery, must inevitably hew to atoms, when once set in motion, any obstacle to their appalling sway. This was the dreaded swordmill first discovered by the wizard baron Soulis, and thence invested with superstitious error, which was needless, at the least, when the actual horrors of the engine were considered. It is, however, probable, that these gigantic relics of an earlier age were no longer capable of being rendered available at the period of which we write; at all events they hung in rusty blackness, suspended like the sword of Damocles above the head of the intruder, rendering his position awful, at least, if not in reality insecure.

Notwithstanding the warlike and turbulent character of Scotland during the reign of Mary, there was nevertheless enough of the uncommon in the defences of this dark and dangerous entrance to have riveted the attention of a man less anxiously engaged than was the foreign cavalier. Apparently undismayed by the wild contrivances around him, the gallant strode forward to repeat his signal on the inner wicket, when a broad glare of crimson light, produced by some chemical preparation, considered in that dark age supernatural, was shot into his very face from an aperture above, clearly displaying to some concealed observer the form and features of his visiter.

“Ha!” cried a voice so shrill and grating as to produce a painful impression on the nerves of the hearer. “Thou artcome hither, Sir Italian; enter, then—enter in the name of Albunazar!—enter, the hour is propitious, and thou art waited for!”

The door revolved noiselessly on its hinges, and a few steps brought the Italian to the chamber of the sage. It was a small and central cell, without the slightest visible communication with the outward air. Books of strange characters and instruments of singular device were scattered on the floor, the tables, and the seats; astrolabes, globes of the terrestrial and celestial world, crucibles, and vials of rare and potent mixtures, lay beside discolored bones, reptiles, and loathsome things from tropical climes, some stuffed, and others carefully preserved in spirit. A huge furnace glimmered in the corner, covered with vessels containing, doubtless, alembics of unearthly power; a large black cat—to which inoffensive animal wild notions of infernal origin were then attached—and a gigantic owl, perched on a fleshless skull, completed the ornaments of this receptacle of superstitious quackery, which was rendered as light as day by the aid of some composition, burning in a lamp so brilliantly as to dazzle the firmest eye. In the midst of this confused assemblage of things, useless and revolting alike to reason and humanity, the master-spirit of his tribe was seated—a small old man, whose massive forehead, pencilled with the deep lines of thought, would have betokened a profound and powerful mind, had not the quick flash of the small and deeply-seated eye belied, by its crafty and malignant glances, all symptoms of a noble nature.

“Hail, Signor David!” he said, but without raising his eyes from the retort over which he was poring. “Hail! methought that thou didst hold the wisdom of the sage mere quackery! Ha! out upon such changeful, feather-pated knaves, who scoff before men at that which they respect—ay, which they tremble at in private!—tremble! well mayst thou tremble—for thydoom is fixed! See,” he cried, in a fearfully unnatural tone, as he raised the metallic rod with which he had been stirring the contents of the glass vessel, and exhibited it dripping with some crimson-colored liquid—“see! it is gore—thy gore, Signor David!—ha, ha, ha!” and he laughed with fiendish glee at the evident discomposure of his guest.

“Nay, nay, good father—” he began, when the other cut him offabruptly—

“‘Good father!’—ha, ha, ha! Good devil! Fool, dost think that thou canst change the destinies that were eternal, before so vain a thing as thou wast in existence, by thine unmeaning flatteries? I spit upon such courtesies! ‘Good father!’ listen to my words, and mark if I be good. Thou hast risen by meanness, and flattery, and cringing, and vice; thou hast disgraced thy rise by insolence and folly—weak, drivelling folly; and thou shalt fall—ha, ha, ha!—fall like a dog! Look to thyself!—‘Good father!’ Begone, or thou shalt hear more, and that which thou wilt like even less than this—begone!”

“I meant not to offend thee,” replied the astonished courtier, “and I pray thee be not distempered. I have broken in on thy retirement to witness that unearthly skill of which men speak, and I would ask of thee in courtesy mine horoscope, that I may so report thee—”

“Thou! thou report me, David Rizzio! the wire-pinching, sonned-jingling, base-born scullion, report of Johan Damietta! Get thee away! I know thee! Begone—nay, if thou wilt have it, listen: bloody shall be thine end, and base. A bastard foeman is in thy house of life. Tremble at the name—”

“Rather,” interrupted the Italian, enraged at the language of the conjurer, “rather let that bastard tremble at the name of Rizzio; and thou, old man, I leave thee as I came, undaunted by thy threats, and unconvinced by thy jugglery.”

“To-night! to-night!” hissed the old man, in notes of horrible malignity—“to-night shalt thou know if Damietta be a juggler! If thou wouldst live—for I would have thee live, poor worm—fly from the hatred of the Scottish nobles!—away!”

“Know’st thou,” asked Rizzio, tauntingly, “a Scottish proverb—if not, I will instruct thee—framed, if I read it rightly, to express the character of their own factious brawlers? ‘The bark is aye waur than the bite.’ Adieu, old man! to-morrow thou shalt learn if Rizzio fears or thee or thy most doughty brawlers.”

“Ha, ha, ha!—to-morrow! mark that—to-morrow!” and a yell of laughter burst from every corner of the chamber; the mixture in the retort exploded with a stunning crash, the lights were extinguished, and, without being aware of the manner of his exit, the royal secretary found himself beyond the outer gate of the wizard’s dwelling, with a throbbing pulse and swimming brain, but still, to do him justice, undismayed by that which his naturally incredulous and sneering turn of mind, rather than any clear conviction of the truth, led him to consider as a mere imposture.

Without replying a syllable to the inquiries of the terrified page, who had heard the frightful sounds within, he flung himself into his saddle, plunged the rowels into the flanks of the jennet until she reared and plunged with terror, and dashed homeward at a fearful rate through alleys now as dark as midnight. Nor did he draw his bridle till he had passed the guarded portals of the palace, and galloped into the inmost court of Holyrood: there indeed he checked his courser with a violence which almost hurled her on her haunches, sprang from her back, and, without looking round, hurried into the most private entrance, and disappeared.

Scarcely had he passed through the gateway, and ere yet the page had left the courtyard with the horses, when the sentinel,who had permitted the well-known secretary of the queen to pass unquestioned, brought down his partisan to the charge, and challenged, as a tall figure, whose clanging step announced him to be sheathed in armor cap-à-pie, muffled in a dark mantle, with a hood like that worn by the Romish priesthood drawn close around his head, approached him.

“Stand, ho! the word—”

“Another word, and thou never speakest more!” replied the other, in a hoarse, rapid whisper, offering a petronel, cocked, and his finger on the trigger, at the very throat of the astonished soldier; “the king requires no password!”

“The king?” replied the sentinel, doubtfully, “the king?—I know not, nor would I willingly offend; but thou art not, methinks, his majesty.”

“Take that, thou fool, to settle all thy doubts!” cried the other, in the same deep whisper as before; while, casting his weapon into the air, he caught it by the muzzle as it turned over, and sunk the loaded butt deep into the forehead of the unwary sentinel. The whole was scarcely the work of an instant; and ere the heavy body could fall to earth, the ready hand of the assailant had caught it, and suffered it to drop so gently as to create no sound. In another moment he was joined by three or four other persons similarly disguised, and followed by a powerful guard of spearmen. A heavy watch of these was posted at the principal gateway, and knots of others were disposed around the court at every private entrance, with orders to let none pass on any pretext whatsoever. “Warn them to stand back twice! the third time kill!” was the muttered order of the chief actor in the previous tragedy. “So far, my liege, all’s well!” he continued, turning with an air of some respect to another of the muffled figures, of a port somewhat less commanding than his own huge proportions; “and Morton must, ere this, have seized all the remaining avenues.”While he was yet speaking, a slight bustle was heard at a distance, and in a second’s space they were joined by him of whom they spoke.

“How goes the business, Morton?” said the first speaker.

“All well!—the gates are ours, and not a soul disturbed; the villain sentinels laid down their arms at once, and are even now in ward! Let us be doing: a deed like this permits of no delay!”

“On, friends! Be silent, and be certain!”

And one by one they filed through the same portal by which the Italian had, so short a time before, sped to the presence of his royal mistress.

In the meantime, unconscious of the fearful tragedy that was even then in preparation, the lovely queen, with her most trusted servants, the devoted David, and the noble countess of Argyle, had retired from the strict ceremonies of the court circle to the privacy of her own apartments.

In a small ante-chamber, scarcely twelve feet in width, communicating with the solitary chamber of the queen—solitary, for the notorious profligacy and insolent neglect of Darnley had left her an almost widowed wife—the board was spread, glittering with gold and crystal, and covered with the delicacies of the evening meal.

The beautiful queen, freed from the galling chains of ceremony, her robes of state thrown by, and attired in the elegant simplicity of a private lady, sat there—her lovely features beaming with condescension and with unaffected pleasure, conversing joyously with those whom she had selected from her court as worthiest of her especial favor. Bitterly, cruelly had she been deceived in the character of him whom she had in truth made a king; for whose gratification she had almost exceeded the rights of her prerogative, and given deep offence to her haughty and suspicious nobles; having discovered, whentoo late, that, while possessed of all the graces and accomplishments that constitute an elegant and agreeable admirer, Henry Darnley was deficient, miserably deficient, in all that can render a man eligible as a friend and husband. Deserted, neglected, outraged in a woman’s tenderest point, almost before the first month of her nuptials had elapsed, the flattering dream had passed away which had promised years of happy, peaceful communion with one loved and loving partner. Ever preferring the society of any other fair one to that of the lovely being to whom he should have been bound by every tie of love and gratitude, the king had early left his disconsolate bride to pine in total seclusion, or to seek for recreation in the society of those whose qualities of mind, if not their rank, might render them fit companions for her solitude; and she, poor victim of a brutal husband, and unhappy mistress of a turbulent and warlike nation, fell blindly but most innocently into the snare of her unrelenting enemies.

Of all who were around her person, Rizzio alone was such by habits, education, and accomplishments, as could lend attraction to the circle of a gay and youthful queen. Accustomed, from her earliest youth, to the elegant and polished manners of the French nobility, the rude and illiterate barons—with whom the highest grade of knowledge was the marshalling of a host for the battle-field, and the highest merit the fighting in the front rank when marshalled—could appear to her in no other light than that of brutal and uneducated savages. What wonder, then, that a youth well skilled as David Rizzio in all the arts and elegances most suitable to a noble cavalier, handsome withal and courteous, attentive even to adoration to her slightest wish, and ever contrasting his cultivated mind with the untutored rudeness of the warrior-lords of Scotland, should have been admitted to a degree of intimacy by his forsaken mistress, innocent, undoubtedly, and pardonable, even should we be disposedto admit that it was imprudent?

Two menials in the royal livery waited upon that noble company, but without the servile reverence which was exacted at the public festivals of royalty. The fair Argyle, who, in any other presence than that of her unrivalled mistress, would have been second to none in loveliness, jested and smiled with Mary more in the manner of a beloved companion than that of an attendant to a queen. But on the brow of David there was a deep and heavy gloom; and when he answered to the persiflage and polished railleries of the queen or that young countess, although his words were gay, and at times almost tender, the tones of his voice were grave almost to sadness.

“What has befallen our worthy secretary?” said Mary, after many fruitless efforts to inspire him with livelier feelings. “Thou art no more the gay and gallant Signor David of other days than thou resemblest the stern and steel-clad—”

Even as she spoke, it seemed as though her words had conjured up an apparition: for a figure, sheathed in steel from crest to spur, strode, with a step that faltered even amid its pride, from out the shadows of her private chamber into the full glare of the lamps. The vizor was raised, and the pale brow and haggard eye, the uncombed beard, and the corpse-like hue of the whole visage, better beseemed the character of some foul spirit released from its peculiar place, than of a noble baron in the presence of his queen. A loud shriek from the terrified Argyle first called the attention of Mary to the strange intruder. But David sat with his eye glaring, in a horrible mixture of personal apprehension and superstitious dread, upon the person of his deadliest foeman.

“Arise, David, thou minion! arise, and quit the presence to which thou art a foul and plague-like blot!” cried the deep voice of Ruthven, ere a word had yet found its way to the lipsof the indignant queen.

“Sir Patrick Ruthven—if our eyes deceive us not,” she said at length, erecting her noble figure to its utmost, and bending upon him a glance which, hardened as he was in crime and cruelty, he could no more have met with his than the vile raven have gazed upon the noonday sun—“Sir Patrick Ruthven, we would learn what means this insolent intrusion?”

“It means, fair madam,” replied Darnley—who now followed his savage instrument, accompanied by his no less fierce accomplices, the base-born Douglas, the brutal Ker of Fawdonside, in bearing and in manners fitted rather for the guardhouse than the court, and the most thorough ruffian of the party, Patrick de Balantyne—“it means that your vile minion’s race is run!”

“Ha! comes the blow from thee?—I might indeed have deemed it so,” she replied, calmly but scornfully. “What is your grace’s pleasure?” and she smiled in beautiful contempt.

“My pleasure is that he—yon base Italian, yon destroyer of my honor, and of yours—of your honor, madam, if you know such a word—shall perish!”

“Never, Henry Darnley! mine own life sooner!” And she confronted him with flashing eyes and heightened color, her whole frame quivering with resolve and indignation. “Thinkst thou to put a stain like this upon the honor of a queen, and that queen, too, thine own much-injured wife? Out, out upon thee, for a heartless, coward thing! A man, a brute, hath some affection, hath some touch of love for those who have loved him, as I have once loved thee; of gratitude toward those who have elevated him—not, no! not as I have elevated thee—for never yet did woman lavish honor, power, kingdom, upon mortal man, as I have lavished them on thee! Away, insolent and ungrateful, hence! Thinkst thou to do murder, foul murder, in the presence of a woman, of a wife—a wife soon, wretch that sheis, to be the mother of a child—of thy child, Henry? Hence, and I will forgive thee all—even this last offence! Banish these murderous ruffians from my presence; spare an honest and a noble servant—one who hath never, never wronged thee or thine! spare him, and I will take thee yet again unto my heart, and love thee, as I have loved thee ever, even when thou hast been most cruel—ever, Henry Darnley, ever!”

The king was moved, his lips quivered, and he would have spoken: all might still have been explained, all might have been forgiven; but it was not so decreed.

“Tush, we but dally,” cried the brutal Ruthven, “we but dally! On, gentlemen, and drag the villain from the presence!”

Foremost himself, he strode to seize the unarmed wretch, who, broken in spirits, and appalled more perhaps by the recollection of the wizard’s doom than by the sordid fear of death, clung to the robe of his adored mistress, poor wretch, as though the altar itself would have been to him a sanctuary against his ruthless murderers.

“Mercy!” shrieked the miserable queen; “mercy, for the love of Him that made you! mercy, Henry—mercy, for my sake, or, if not for mine, mercy for thine unborn infant’s sake! Ruthven—villain, false knight, uncourteous traitor—forego thy hold!” and she struggled madly with the assassins. “To arms!” she screamed in shriller tones, “to arms!—O God! O God! have I no guards, no friends, no husband? Oh, that I had been born a man, and ye should rue this day—ay, and ye shall rue it!”

Ruthven had clutched his victim with a grasp of iron, and, whirling him from his frail tenure, cast him to the attendant murderers. “Spare him!” she shrieked once more; “spare him, and I will bless you! Ay, strike!” she continued in calmer tones, as the ruffian Ker brandished his naked dagger at her throat; “and thou, too, fire—fire upon thy mistress and thyqueen!” Maddened by her resistance, and fearful that the citizens might rise in her behalf, Balantyne cocked his petronel. “Fire, thou coward! why dost thou pause? I am a woman, true—a queen, a wife—about to be a mother; but what is that to such as thee? Fire, and make your butchery complete!”

But, as the words passed from her lips, the bloody deed was over. Even in the presence of the queen, dirk after dirk was plunged into the unresisting wretch. Long after life was extinguished, the maddened assassins continued to mangle the senseless clay with their bloodthirsty weapons. So long as life remained, and so long as the horrid strife was doubtful, did Mary’s fearful cries for mercy ring upon the ears of those who neither heard nor heeded her. The massacre was ended, and, with a degree of unmanly insensibility that would alone have stamped him the worst and fiercest of his race, Ruthven seated himself before the outraged woman, the insulted queen, and calmly wiped his brow, still reeking with her favorite’s life-blood. “My sickness,” he said, “must pardon me for sitting in your presence. I had arisen from my bed to do this deed, and am now somewhat weary and o’erspent. I pray your highness command your minions to bear yon winecup hither.”

Without regarding for an instant this fresh insult, she dried her streaming eyes. “We have demeaned ourselves to pray for mercy from butchers. Tears are for men! I have one duty left me, and I will fulfil it—one aim to my existence, one study for my ingenuity, and one prayer to my God: my duty, mine aim, my study, and my prayer, shall be, to be avenged!”

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