“By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal-shoon.”’
While the grass was growing tall and rank on Chastelâr’s grave, the beauty that had bewildered and destroyed him was unconsciously sowing dissensions and intrigues in half the courts of Europe.
Not only on the southern side of the Tweed did every turbulent noble and ambitious statesman look to Mary Stuart’s marriage as, in one way or other, a stepping-stone to his own aggrandisement, but each of the numerous parties in the state was prepared to put forward and support its candidate for her hand, totally irrespective of the lovely Queen’s personal feelings and predilections. Austria, Savoy, Spain, had also their claimants for the desired alliance; and it would be difficult to calculate the multiplicity of schemes and combinations originating in the desire of possessing the heiress to two kingdoms, and the most fascinating woman of the age.
Perhaps the proposed union with the Crown-Prince of Spain was, of all matrimonial overtures, the most unpopular in Great Britain; and the Protestant party, now completely in the ascendant both in England and Scotland, would have resorted to the strongest measures rather than submit to such an arrangement.
All the engines of an unscrupulous diplomacy were ready to be put in motion for the purpose of thwarting Don Carlos, and over-reaching his emissaries. Nor were Elizabeth and her agents likely to be restrained by any over-refinement of delicacy in a matter which concerned the stability of the English Queen’s power, and the very existence of her government.
In the meantime, Mary and her maidens floated, so to speak, on the surface of all this turbulence and vexation, as the sea-bird floats with unruffled plumage on the restless waves. Their life was indeed one of constant variety and adventure, for their royal Mistress was too thorough a Stuart not to identify herself with all the difficulties and troubles of her kingdom, whilst the bonds of affection which riveted her attendants to her service were but drawn closer every day, by the dangers and hardships they shared in their huntings and progresses and judicial proceedings, through the length and breadth of Scotland.
Nevertheless, winter after winter found them established once more, over their peaceful embroidery, at Holyrood; beautiful and merry and unchanged as ever—all but one.
Mary Hamilton, though she still showed the same unbounded devotion to her mistress, the same sweetness of disposition towards her companions was cruelly altered now.
It is very sad to read in any human face the unerring symptoms of a broken heart; to watch the eye sinking, the cheek falling, and the lines about the mouth deepening day by day; to note the listless step, the morbid craving for solitude, the painful shrinking from all that is bright and beautiful—from a strain of sweet music, a gleam of spring sunshine, or the laugh of a happy child, as the aching eye shrinks from light, and, above all, the dreary smile that seems to protest patiently against the torture, while the sufferer is kind and forgiving still. We are almost tempted to ask, why should there be such sorrow here on earth? But we are satisfied and reassured, recalling a certain pledge that cannot deceive, remembering who it was that declared in mercy and sympathy—‘Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.’