The book of Scottish story

by Various

I paced this sad-looking room of rejoicing quite unconscious of the hours that were passing; for I was alone, and in a train of thought which nothing but a hearty shake could have interrupted. Mary, and all her beauty, and talents, and acquirements, continued floating before me. Her world of lovers and admirers, who, for the most part, were sleeping in a bloody bed, seemed rising one by one to my view, and I wandered with them through their hopes, and their fears, and their sorrows, even to the scaffold, as though I had been the ghost of one of them myself, and were possessed of secrets of which there is no living record.

Many of these ill-fated hearts have, by their nobility, or their exploits, or by the caprice of historians, received full meed of applause and pity; many, no doubt, have sunk into oblivion; and some, in addition to their misfortunes, have left their memories to combat with the censure which has been thought due to their presumption;—of these last I have always considered the unfortunate Chatelar to have been the most hardly used, and in the course of my musings I endeavoured to puzzle out something satisfactory to myself upon his dark and distorted history.

The birth of Chatelar, if not noble, was in no common degree honourable, for he was great-nephew to the celebrated Bayard, le Chevalier sans peur et sans tache. It is said that he likewise bore a strong resemblance to him in person, possessing a handsome face and graceful figure; and equally in manly and elegant acquirements, being an expert soldier and an accomplished courtier. In addition to this, says Brantome, who knew him personally, he possessed a most elegant mind, and spoke and wrote, both in prose and poetry, as well as any man in France.

Dangerous indeed are these advantages; and Chatelar’s first meeting with Mary was under circumstances calculated to render them doubly dangerous. Alone, as she conceived herself, cast off from the dearest ties of her heart, the land which she had learnt to consider her native land fading fast from her eyes, and the billows bearing her to the banishment of one with which, as it contained none that she loved, she could feel no sympathy;—in this scene of wailing and tears, the first tones of the poet were stealing upon her ear with the spirit of kindred feelings and kindred pursuits. We are to consider that Mary at this time had obtained but little experience, and was probably not overstocked with prudence, having scarcely attained the age of nineteen years. Not only, are we told, did she listen with complacency and pleasure to Chatelar’s warm and romantic praises of her beauty, but employed her poetic talent in approving and replying to them; putting herself upon a level with her gifted companion, a course which was morally certain to convert his veneration into feelings more nearly allied to his nature. Had he not been blamed for his presumption, it is probable that he would have been condemned for his stoicism; and his luckless passion is by no means a singular proof that where hearts are cast in kindred moulds, it is difficult to recognise extrinsic disparities. Chatelar saw the woman, and forgot the queen; Mary felt the satisfaction, and was blind to the consequences.

It is much to be lamented by the lovers of truth, that none of the poetical pieces which are said to have passed between Mary and Chatelar have been handed down to us. One song would have been a more valuable document in the elucidation of their history than all the annals we possess, and would have taught us at once the degree of encouragement and intimacy which was permitted. Whatever it was, it was such as to rivet the chains which had been so readily and unadvisedly put on; and from the period of their first meeting, we may consider him the most enthusiastic of her lovers.

How long he continued the admiration and the favourite of Holyrood does not, I believe, appear. It could not, however, be any considerable time ere he was compelled to return with his friend and patron, Damville, to France, with full reason to lament his voyage to Scotland, and with, probably, a firm determination to revisit it whenever opportunity should permit. This opportunity his evil stars were not long in bringing about. The projected war of faith between Damville’s party and the Huguenots afforded him a fair pretext for soliciting a dispensation of his services. Of the first he was a servant, of the last he was a disciple. It was therefore contrary to his honour and inclinations to fight against either of them, and, accordingly, in about fifteen months, we find him again at Holyrood.

Mary, it may reasonably be inferred, from her extreme love of France, and unwillingness to leave it, was not very speedily to be reconciled to her change of scene and society; a face, therefore, from the adopted land of her affections, and a tongue capable of gratifying them with the minutest accounts of the beloved objects it contained, must, at this time, have been acquisitions of no small interest. Chatelar, too, had already worked a welcome on his own account.

Few of my readers need be reminded how insensibly and certainly the tongue which speaks of that which is dear to our hearts is stored up with it in the same treasury. The tale and the teller of it,—the leaf and the wave it falls upon,—arrive at the same time at the same destination. Histories, for the most part, insinuate that Mary’s carriage towards Chatelar was merely that of kindness and courtesy; but this, I think, is an inference not warranted by the various facts which they have been unable to repress, and not even the silence of the inveterate John Knox upon this head can convince me that Chatelar had not reason to believe himself beloved.

Let us then imagine, if we can, what was likely to be the intoxication produced in the brain as well as the bosom of a man of an enthusiastic temperament by a free and daily intercourse, during three months, with the fascinations of a creature like Mary. What tales could that old misshapen boudoir—famous only, in common estimation, for the murder of Rizzio and the boot of Darnley—tell of smiles and tears over the fortunes of dear and distant companions of childhood, as narrated by the voice of one to whom, perhaps, they were equally dear! What tales could it tell of mingling music, and mingling poetry, and mingling looks, and vain regrets, and fearful anticipations! Here had the day been passed in listening to the praises of each other, from lips in which praise was a talent and a profession; and here had the twilight stolen upon them when none were by, and none could know how deeply the truth of those praises was acknowledged. Let us imagine all this, and, likewise, how Chatelar was likely to be wrought upon by the utter hopelessness of his case.

Had the object of his passion been upon anything like a level with him,—had there been the most remote possibility of a chance of its attainment,—his subsequent conduct would, most likely, not have been such as to render it a subject for investigation. But Mary must have been as inaccessible to him as the being of another world. The devotion which he felt for her was looked upon by the heads of her court as a species of sacrilege; and he was given to believe, that each had a plan for undermining his happiness and removing him from her favour. If this could not be effected, it was a moral certainty that Mary, in the bloom of her youth and the plentitude of her power, must become to some one of her numerous suitors all which it was impossible that she could ever become to him. Of these two cases, perhaps, the one was as bad as the other, and Chatelar was impelled to an act of desperation, which, in these matter-of-fact days, can scarcely be conceived. On the night of the 12th of February, 1563, he was found concealed in the young queen’s bed-chamber.