United States or Equatorial Guinea ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
For now the triumph of absolutism and of Rizzio, as the Papal agent, was complete more so than Moray or Knox knew. France and Spain, long divided, seemed at last to be working together for the faith. And the greatest of European monarchs, though he declined to wed his heir in Scotland, had by no means abandoned the cause there.
Those questing eyes went round the table, settled upon Rizzio, and seemed horribly to smile. Startled, disquieted by this apparition, the Queen half rose, Darnley's hindering arm still flung about her waist. "What's this?" she cried, her voice sharp. And then, as if she guessed intuitively what it might portend, she considered her husband with pale-faced contempt.
Even the favorite room of Queen Mary, in Holyrood Palace, in which she was wont to tea and talk with Rizzio, would be too small and dim for the shop-parlor of a small London tradesman of the present day.
Unfortunately for her honour, Mary, always more the woman than the queen, while, on the contrary, Elizabeth was always more the queen than the woman, had no sooner regained her power than her first royal act was to exhume Rizzio, who had been quietly buried on the threshold of the chapel nearest Holyrood Palace, and to have him removed to the burial-place of the Scottish kings, compromising herself still more by the honours she paid him dead than by the favour she had granted him living.
On the contrary, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, had the most important place there. This was because, since the evening when Bothwell, at Mary's cries, had run to oppose the murder of Rizzio, he had made great way in the queen's favour; to her party he himself appeared to be really attached, to the exclusion of the two others, the king's and the Earl of Murray's.
A smile overspread Ruthven's livid face. The heavy dagger flashed from his belt. "My affair is not with any o' ye, but if ye thrust yersels too close upon my notice " The Queen stepped clear of the table to intervene, lest violence should be done here in her presence. Rizzio, who had risen, stood now beside her, watching all with a white, startled face.
There was in the court one David Rizzio, who had of late obtained a very extraordinary degree of confidence and favor with the queen of Scots.
The queen shuddered; for although her husband was smiling when looking at Rizzio, this smile lead assumed such a strange expression that it was clear that something terrible was about to happen.
Perhaps one of the greatest mistakes of a lifetime in which mistakes were plentiful was the hesitancy of the Queen of Scots in executing upon her husband Darnley the prompt vengeance she had sworn for the murder of David Rizzio.
He was soon hard at work upon 'The Death of Rizzio, adorning his walls with pictures he had brought with him or sent for afterwards from Kendal, such as 'King Lear, 'Elfrida, 'The Death of Lefevre, and a few portraits of friends.
Word Of The Day