The misfortunes of Mary Stuart formed the subject of one of the series of “Les Crimes Célèbres.” In the opening words of this chapter, Dumas has said, “Of all the names predestined to misfortune in France, it is the name of Henri. Henri I. was poisoned, Henri II. was killed (maliciously, so some one has said) in a tournament, Henri III. and Henri IV. were assassinated.” In Scotland it is the name of Stuart.
The chronicle concerns France only with respect to the farewell of Mary, after having lost her mother and her spouse in the same year (1561). She journeyed to Scotland by Calais, accompanied by the Cardinals de Guise and de Lorraine, her uncles, by the Duc and Duchesse de Guise, the Duc d’Aumale, and M. de Nemours.
Here took place that heartrending farewell, which poets and painters, as well as historians and novelists, have done so much to perpetuate. “Adieu, France!” she sobbed. “Adieu, France!” And for five hours she continued to weep and sob, “Adieu, France! Adieu, France!” For the rest, the well-known historical figures are made use of by Dumas,—Darnley, Rizzio, Huntley, and Hamilton,—but the action does not, of course, return to France.
Not far south of Calais is Arras, whence came the Robespierre who was to set France aflame.
“The ancestors of the Robespierres,” says Dumas, “formed a part of those Irish colonists who came to France to inhabit our seminaries and monasteries. There they received from the Jesuits the good educations they were accustomed to give to their pupils. From father to son they were notaries; one branch of the family, that from which this great man descends, established himself at Arras, a great centre, as you know, of noblesse and the church.
“There were in this town two seigneurs, or, rather, two kings; one was the Abbé of St. Waast, the other was the Bishop of Arras, whose palace threw one-half the town into shade.”
The former palace of the Bishop of Arras is to-day the local musée. It is an extensive establishment, and it flanks an atrocious Renaissance cathedral of no appealing charm whatever, and, indeed, the one-time bishop’s palace does not look as though it was ever a very splendid establishment.
Still farther to the southward of Calais is the feudal Castle of Pierrefonds, so beloved of Porthos in “Vingt Ans Après.” It is, and has ever been since its erection in 1390 by Louis d’Orleans, the brother of Charles VI., one of the most highly impregnable and luxurious châteaux of all France.
CASTLE OF PIERREFONDS