nto the place and power of her son, the king of France,
under the formidable title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom. Before
this peril she stood alone, without power of action, without defence.
She might have been likened to a phantom, as she stood there in her
mourning garments (which she had not quitted since the death of Henri
II.) so motionless was her pallid face in the grasp of her bitter
reflections. Her black eyes floated in that species of indecision for
which great statesmen are so often blamed, though it comes from the vast
extent of the glance with which they embrace all difficulties,--setting
one against the other, and adding up, as it were, all chances before
deciding on a course. Her ears rang, her blood tingled, and yet she
stood there calm and dignified, all the while measuring in her soul the
depths of the political abyss which lay before her, like the natural
depths which rolled away at her feet. This day was the second of those
terrible days (that of the arrest of the Vidame of Chartres being the
first) which she was destined to meet in so great numbers throughout her
regal life; it also witnessed her last blunder in the school of power.
Though the sceptre seemed escaping from her hands, she wished to seize
it; and she did seize it by a flash of that power of will which was
never relaxed by either the disdain of her father-in-law, Francois I.,
and his court,--where, in spite of her rank of dauphiness, she had been
of no account,--or the constant repulses of her husband, Henri II., and
the terrible opposition of her rival, Diane de Poitiers. A man would
never have fathomed this thwarted queen; but the fair-haired Mary--so
subtle, so clever, so girlish, and already so well-trained--examined her
out of the corners of her eyes as she hummed an Italian air and assumed
a careless countenance. Without being able to guess the storms of
repressed ambition which sent the dew of a cold sweat to the forehead of
the Florentine, the pretty Scotch girl, with her wilful, piquant face,
knew very well that the advancement of her uncle the Duc de Guise to the
lieutenant-generalship of the kingdom was filling the queen-mother with
inward rage. Nothing amused her more than to watch her mother-in-law,
in whom she saw only an intriguing woman of low birth, always ready to
avenge herself. The face of the one was grave and gloomy, and somewhat
terrible, by reason of the livid tones which transform the skin of
Italian women