"Nay, I am thinking of poor David Rizzio," replied the Queen sadly. "'Twas a song of his. But I have heard it elsewhere."
"You loved much to hear this old man sing."
"Oh yes! for the long forgotten memories, the buried hopes, and all the tenderness of his soft French, and softer Italian airs, called up within me—drew me ever away from the bitter present to brood upon the happy past, or to muse upon the dubious future. Oh, thou canst not know how dearly I love music! Music and sunshine—I wish I was a bird! Poor old Rizzio!" she continued, with sparkling eyes. "Though indifferent in person, he was the best in the suite of the Count de Mezezzo, the Savoyard ambassador; and was a gentleman of such attainments as few in Scotland save thyself can boast. How my heart fires within me, when I think of the dark and savage noblesse who destroyed him! So illiterate and unlettered; and yet these base barons, not one of whom could sign his own barbarous name, were the men who broke my gallant father's heart, who debarred my mother the rights of sepulchre, and who have dared to become the spiritual judges of my people, levelling in the dust the church that was founded on a rock, and against which not even the gates of hell were to prevail!"
"For Heaven's sake, madame, hush!—walls have ears."
"Les murielles ont des orielles; it was a saying of ma bon mere, Catharine de Medicis," said the Queen ironically.
"Nothing that is said in Hermitage shall go beyond its walls," replied the Earl, who was pleased to find that the courtiers at the lower end of the room were intently viewing the landscape, or observing a game at Troy between the Lady Argyle and the flippant page, French Paris, who was a great proficient. The whole group was partly concealed by a loose festoon of arras that divided the chamber. "But," continued the Earl, who despised Rizzio as an upstart favourite, and, like all the nobility, regretted his death but little; "the destruction of a royal favourite is nothing new in Scotland. There was the Raid of Lauder brig, where Angus and the nobles hanged half King James's court over the parapet in horse-halters—but I beseech your majesty to think of these things no more."
"True! Few can recall the past with pleasure, and Mary Stuart least of all," replied the Queen, whose melancholy eyes filled again with tears; and then Bothwell knew that she was thinking of the weak and profligate debauchee, on whom, in the first flush of youth and love, she had thrown away her hand and heart, and crown; "so pray, my good lord, let us talk of whatever is most pleasing to yourself."
"Then I must talk of—thee."
"Ah!" rejoined the Queen, with one of those artless and engaging smiles which a pretty woman always assumes on receiving a compliment; "and do you really think often of me?"
"Madame," replied the Earl in a low voice, while his colour came and went, and he could hear his heart beating; "I have thought more than I have ever dared to tell."