The torch-light visit.
Reconciliation between Elizabeth and Mary.
Elizabeth's release.
At length, one evening in May, Elizabeth received a summons to go to the palace and visit Mary in her chamber. She was conducted there by torch-light. She had a long interview with the queen, the conversation being partly in English and partly in Spanish. It was not very satisfactory on either side. Elizabeth persisted in asserting her innocence, but in other respects she spoke in a kind and conciliatory manner to the queen. The interview ended in a sort of reconciliation. Mary put a valuable ring upon Elizabeth's finger in token of the renewal of friendship, and soon afterward the long period of restraint and confinement was ended, and the princess returned to her own estate at Hatfield in Hertfordshire, where she lived some time in seclusion, devoting herself, in a great measure, to the study of Latin and Greek, under the instructions of Roger Ascham.
Chapter VI.
Accession to the Throne
1555-1558
Mary's unhappy reign.
Unrequited love.
Mary's sufferings.
If it were the story of Mary instead of that of Elizabeth that we were following, we should have now to pause and draw a very melancholy picture of the scenes which darkened the close of the queen's unfortunate and unhappy history. Mary loved her husband, but she could not secure his love in return. He treated her with supercilious coldness and neglect, and evinced, from time to time, a degree of interest in other ladies which awakened her jealousy and anger. Of all the terrible convulsions to which the human soul is subject, there is not one which agitates it more deeply than the tumult of feeling produced by the mingling of resentment and love. Such a mingling, or, rather, such a conflict, between passions apparently inconsistent with each other, is generally considered not possible by those who have never experienced it. But it is possible. It is possible to be stung with a sense of the ingratitude, and selfishness, and cruelty of an object, which, after all, the heart will persist in clinging to with the fondest affection. Vexation and anger, a burning sense of injury, and desire for revenge, on the one hand, and feelings of love, resistless and uncontrollable, and bearing, in their turn, all before them, alternately get possession of the soul, harrowing and devastating it in their awful conflict, and even sometimes reigning over it, for a time, in a temporary but dreadful calm, like that of two wrestlers who pause a moment, exhausted in a mortal combat, but grappling each other with deadly energy all the time, while they are taking breath for a renewal of the conflict. Queen Mary, in one of these paroxysms, seized a portrait of her husband and tore it into shreds. The reader, who has his or her experience in affairs of the heart yet to come, will say, perhaps, her love for him then must have been all gone. No; it was at its height. We do not tear the portraits of those who are indifferent to us.
Her religious principles.
Progress of Mary's Catholic zeal.
Her moderation at first.