nder chain at her neck, and two
rosaries at her girdle: it was thus she entered the great hall where the
scaffold was erected.

It was a platform twelve feet wide, raised about two feet from the
floor, surrounded with barriers and covered with black serge, and on it
were a little chair, a cushion to kneel on, and a block also covered
in black. Just as, having mounted the steps, she set foot on the fatal
boards, the executioner came forward, and; asking forgiveness for the
duty he was about to perform, kneeled, hiding behind him his axe. Mary
saw it, however, and cried--

"Ah! I would rather have been beheaded in the French way, with a
sword!..."

"It is not my fault, madam," said the executioner, "if this last wish
of your Majesty cannot be fulfilled; but, not having been instructed to
bring a sword, and having found this axe here only, I am obliged to use
it. Will that prevent your pardoning me, then?"

"I pardon you, my friend," said Mary, "and in proof of it, here is my
hand to kiss."

The executioner put his lips to the queen's hand, rose and approached
the chair. Mary sat down, and the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury standing
on her left, the sheriff and his officers before her, Amyas Paulet
behind, and outside the barrier the lords, knights, and gentlemen,
numbering nearly two hundred and fifty, Robert Beale for the second time
read the warrant for execution, and as he was beginning the servants
who had been fetched came into the hall and placed themselves behind the
scaffold, the men mounted upon a bench put back against the wall, and
the women kneeling in front of it; and a little spaniel, of which the
queen was very fond, came quietly, as if he feared to be driven away,
and lay down near his mistress.

The queen listened to the reading of the warrant without seeming to
pay much attention, as if it had concerned someone else, and with a
countenance as calm and even as joyous as if it had been a pardon and
not a sentence of death; then, when Beale had ended, and having ended,
cried in a loud voice, "God save Queen Elizabeth!" to which no one made
any response, Mary signed herself with the cross, and, rising without
any change of expression, and, on the contrary, lovelier than ever--

"My lords," said she, "I am a queen-born sovereign princess, and not
subject to law,--a near relation of the Queen of England, and her
rightful heir; for a long time I have been a prisoner in this country,
I have suffered here