At the tender age of five Mary was sent to France and placed in a convent. Her education was afterward continued at court under the direction of her uncle, the Cardinal de Lorraine. By ten she had become well versed in French, Latin, and Italian, and at one time, according to Brantôme, she gave a discourse on literature and the liberal arts--so flourishing at the time--before the king and his court. Ronsard was her tutor in versification, which became one of her favourite pursuits. Mary Stuart's charms were many. She was tall and finely formed, with auburn hair shining like an aureole above her intellectual forehead, and with a skin of such dazzling whiteness--a trite saying, but one which is used by Brantôme--"that it outrivalled the whiteness of her veil." In the spring of 1558, when she was but sixteen, Mary Stuart was married to the Dauphin, the weak, sickly François II., himself but a youth. He was, however, sincerely and deeply fond of his young wife. Unexpectedly, through the death of Henri II. at the hands of Montgomery at that ever debatable tournament, François II. ascended the throne of France, and Mary Stuart saw herself exalted to the dizzy height which she had not so soon expected. She became the queen of two kingdoms, and, had the future been more propitious, the whole map of Europe might have been changed. Disease had marked the unstable François for its own, and within a year he passed from the throne to the grave, leaving his young queen a widow and an orphan. Shortly afterward "_la reine blanche_" returned to her native Scotland, bidding France that long, last, sad adieu so often quoted: "Farewell, beloved France, to thee! Best native land, The cherished strand That nursed my tender infancy! Farewell my childhood's happy day! The bark, which bears me thus away, Bears but the poorer moiety hence, The nobler half remains with thee, I leave it to thy confidence, But to remind thee still of me!" The young sovereigns had had a most stately suite of apartments prepared for them at Amboise, the lofty windows reaching from floor to ceiling and overlooking the river and the vast terrace where was so soon to be enacted that bloody drama to which they were to be made unwilling witnesses. This gallery was wainscoted with old oak and hung with rich leathers, and the lofty ceiling was emblazoned with heraldic emblems and monograms, as was the fashion of the day. Brocades and tapestries, set in great gold frames, lined the walls, and, in a boudoir or retiring-room beyond, still definitely to be recognized, was a remarkable series of embroidered wall decorations, a tapestry of flowers and fruits with an arabesque border of white and gold, truly a queenly apartment, and one that well became the luxurious and dainty Mary, who came from Scotland to marry the youthful François.