As I mentioned in the preceding chapter, my young and handsome countryman Pierre de Boscosel de Chastelard had conceived a mad passion for the queen. He had dared to declare this love in the Holyrood Palace. His offence was forgiven.
Imagining, from the fact of his having been pardoned, that he had succeeded in inspiring affection in the heart of his royal mistress, the poor moth must needs flutter again around the flame, which was to be his destruction. The romantic troubadour secretly followed the queen from Edinburgh to Rossend Castle, and, on the night of the 14th of February, 1562, hid himself in her chamber, until she was almost undressed for the night, when he left his hiding-place, and, seizing the queen in his arms, so alarmed her, that she screamed for protection. This woman who, to avenge Rizzio's death, did not hesitate to have a barrel of powder placed under her husband's bed, felt herself insulted. Her cries attracted her attendants, and Murray was ordered by the indignant queen to stab the young madman dead then and there. But Murray preferred to wreak his wrath on Chastelard, whom he hated, by having him hanged. The poor secretary, who had been so favoured by his mistress that all the courtiers were jealous of him, who had so often beguiled her solitude by his poems and his music, went cheerfully to the scaffold. Like Cornelius de Witt, who, a century later, recited Horace's Justum et tenacem while the executioner of The Hague put him to the torture, Chastelard mounted the scaffold calm and smiling, reciting Rousard's Ode to Love.
"I die not without reproach, like my ancestor Bayard," said he; "but, like him, I die without fear."
And then, turning his eyes towards the castle inhabited by Mary Stuart, he cried:
"Adieu, thou cruel but beautiful one, who killest me, but whom I cannot cease to love!"
Rossend Castle is a veritable poem in stone. Do not visit Edinburgh without pushing to Burntisland. The châtelain is justly proud of his romantic home, and does the honours of it with a kind grace that charms the visitor.
CHAPTER XXIX.
Aberdeen, the Granite City.—No sign of the Statue of "you know whom."—All Grey.—The Town and its Suburbs.—Character of the Aberdonian.—Why London could not give an Ovation to a Provost of Aberdeen.—Blue Hill.—Aberdeen Society.—A thoughtful Caretaker.—To this Aberdonian's Disappointment, I do not appear in Tights before the Aberdeen Public.
