THE CHATELAR STORY
is told by Mr. Froude in his characteristic way, and, while acquitting Mary Stuart of blame, "she had probably nothing worse to accuse herself of than thoughtlessness," (vol. vii. p. 506,) manages to leave a stain upon her character. He prefaces the story with the statement that "she was selfish in her politics and sensual in her passions." Serious historians generally use language with some reference to its value; but one epithet costs Mr. Froude no more effort than another, although there is not a shadow of pretext thus far in his own version of Mary's history to justify so foul an outrage as the use here of this word "sensual." We pass on. Chatelar was a young Huguenot gentleman, a nephew of the noble Bayard, gifted and highly accomplished. He had accompanied his patron D'Amville to Scotland, and returned with him to France. D'Amville was a suitor for Mary's hand, and, after some time, dispatched Chatelar to Scotland with missives for the queen. Randolph was present when Chatelar arrived, and describes D'Amville's letter as of "three whole sheets of paper." Yet Mr. Froude, perfectly aware of all this, writes,
"He went back to France, but he could not remain there. The moth was recalled to the flame whose warmth was life and death to it."
The remainder is of a piece with this. Supernaturally penetrating in reading Mary Stuart's most hidden thoughts, Mr. Froude is blind to the vulgar envy of the parvenu Randolph, who, writing to Cecil, (Froude, vol. vii. p. 505, note,) has the mendacious impudence to speak of Chatelar as "so unworthy a creature and abject a varlet."
Of the rules that govern the admission of evidence in ordinary courts of law, Mr. Froude does not appear to have any knowledge, and at every page he manifests a total unconsciousness of the most rudimentary test to be applied to the testimony of a witness in or out of court. It is to see whether the witness has not some powerful motive to praise or to blame. Thus, when he desires to establish a high character for "the stainless Murray," he gives us the testimony of—his employers Elizabeth and Cecil! In telling us what Mary Stuart was, he most freely uses the hired pamphleteer Buchanan, although ashamed—as well he may be—to name his authority.[179] So also in the case before us, although the mean envy excited in Randolph by the accomplished and nobly-born young Frenchman is perfectly clear, Mr. Froude gives us the English envoy's dispatches as testimony not to be questioned.