Mary Stuart | Page 5

who were so grieved to
remain.
At last, in half an hour's time, the harbour was left behind; the vessel
was out at sea. Suddenly, Mary heard loud cries behind her: a boat
coming in under press of sail, through her pilot's ignorance had struck
upon a rock in such a manner that it was split open, and after having
trembled and groaned for a moment like someone wounded, began to
be swallowed up, amid the terrified screams of all the crew. Mary,
horror-stricken, pale, dumb, and motionless, watched her gradually sink,
while her unfortunate crew, as the keel disappeared, climbed into the
yards and shrouds, to delay their death-agony a few minutes; finally,
keel, yards, masts, all were engulfed in the ocean's gaping jaws. For a
moment there remained some black specks, which in turn disappeared
one after another; then wave followed upon wave, and the spectators of
this horrible tragedy, seeing the sea calm and solitary as if nothing had
happened, asked themselves if it was not a vision that had appeared to
them and vanished.
"Alas!" cried Mary, falling on a seat and leaning both arms an the
vessel's stern, "what a sad omen for such a sad voyage!" Then, once
more fixing on the receding harbour her eyes, dried for a moment by
terror, and beginning to moisten anew, "Adieu, France!" she murmured,
"adieu, France!" and for five hours she remained thus, weeping and

murmuring, "Adieu, France! adieu, France!"
Darkness fell while she was still lamenting; and then, as the view was
blotted out and she was summoned to supper, "It is indeed now, dear
France," said she, rising, "that I really lose you, since jealous night
heaps mourning upon mourning, casting a black veil before my sight.
Adieu then, one last time, dear France; for never shall I see you more."
With these words, she went below, saying that she was the very
opposite of Dido, who, after the departure of AEneas, had done nothing
but look at the waves, while she, Mary, could not take her eyes off the
land. Then everyone gathered round her to try to divert and console her.
But she, growing sadder, and not being able to respond, so overcome
was she with tears, could hardly eat; and, having had a bed got ready on
the stern deck, she sent for the steersman, and ordered him if he still
saw land at daybreak, to come and wake her immediately. On this point
Mary was favoured; for the wind having dropped, when daybreak came
the vessel was still within sight of France.
It was a great joy when, awakened by the steersman, who had not
forgotten the order he had received, Mary raised herself on her couch,
and through the window that she had had opened, saw once more the
beloved shore. But at five o'clock in the morning, the wind having
freshened, the vessel rapidly drew farther away, so that soon the land
completely disappeared. Then Mary fell back upon her bed, pale as
death, murmuring yet once again--"Adieu, France! I shall see thee no
more."
Indeed, the happiest years of her life had just passed away in this
France that she so much regretted. Born amid the first religious troubles,
near the bedside of her dying father, the cradle mourning was to stretch
for her to the grave, and her stay in France had been a ray of sunshine
in her night. Slandered from her birth, the report was so generally
spread abroad that she was malformed, and that she could not live to
grow up, that one day her mother, Mary of Guise, tired of these false
rumours, undressed her and showed her naked to the English
ambassador, who had come, on the part of Henry VIII, to ask her in
marriage for the Prince of Wales, himself only five years old. Crowned

at nine months by Cardinal Beaton, archbishop of St. Andrews, she was
immediately hidden by her mother, who was afraid of treacherous
dealing in the King of England, in Stirling Castle. Two years later, not
finding even this fortress safe enough, she removed her to an island in
the middle of the Lake of Menteith, where a priory, the only building in
the place, provided an asylum for the royal child and for four young
girls born in the same year as herself, having like her the sweet name
which is an anagram of the word "aimer," and who, quitting her neither
in her good nor in her evil fortune, were called the "Queen's Marys".
They were Mary Livingston, Mary Fleming, Mary Seyton, and Mary
Beaton. Mary stayed in this priory till Parliament, having approved her
marriage with the French dauphin, son of Henry II, she was taken to
Dumbarton Castle, to await the moment of departure.