t difference there is between
darkness and light." {225a}

Knox presently had to record a scandal in a higher place, the capture and
execution of the French minor poet, Chastelard, who, armed with sword and
dagger, hid under the Queen's bed in Holyrood; and invaded her room with
great insolence at Burntisland as she was on her way to St. Andrews.
There he was tried, condemned, and executed in the market-place. It
seems fairly certain that Chastelard, who had joined the Queen with
despatches during the expedition against Huntly, was a Huguenot. The
Catholic version, and Lethington's version, of his adventure was that
some intriguing Huguenot lady had set him on to sully Queen Mary's
character; other tales ran that he was to assassinate her, as part of a
great Protestant conspiracy. {225b}

Randolph, who knew as much as any one, thought the Queen far too familiar
with the poet, but did not deem that her virtue was in fault. {225c} Knox
dilates on Mary's familiarities, kisses given in a vulgar dance, dear to
the French society of the period, and concludes that the fatuous poet
"lacked his head, that his tongue should not utter the secrets of our
Queen." {225d}

There had been a bad harvest, and a dearth, because the Queen's luxury
"provoked God" (who is represented as very irritable) "to strike the
staff of bread," and to "give His malediction upon the fruits of the
earth. But oh, alas, who looked, or yet looks, to the very cause of all
our calamities!" {226a}

Some savage peoples are said to sacrifice their kings when the weather is
unpropitious. Knox's theology was of the same kind. The preachers, says
Randolph (February 28), "pray daily . . . that God will either turn the
Queen's heart or grant her short life. Of what charity or spirit this
proceeds, I leave to be discussed by great divines." {226b} The prayers
sound like encouragement to Jehus.

At this date Ruthven was placed, "by Lethington's means only," on the
Privy Council. Moray especially hated Ruthven "for his sorcery"; the
superstitious Moray affected the Queen with this ill opinion of one of
the elect--in the affair of Riccio's murder so useful to the cause of
Knox. "There is not an unworthier in Scotland" than Ruthven, writes
Randolph. {226c} Meanwhile Lethington was in England to negotiate for
peace in France; if he could, to keep an eye on Mary's chances for the
succession, and (says Knox) to obtain leave for Lennox, the chief of the
Stuar