I cannot conclude without telling you the extreme pain and anxiety I feel at the distressing news which has been reported here, that some new trouble has befallen the Queen, my mistress. Time will not permit me to tell you more.[105] It may be supposed that what the faithful maid of honour had heard was connected with Babington's conspiracy and its fateful failure. FOOTNOTES: for MARY SETON [97] P. 42. [98] _Inventories_, p. lii. [99] Miss Strickland's _Lives of the Queens of Scotland_, vol. vii, pp. 266, 271, 441. [100] G. Chalmers' _Life of Queen Mary_, vol. i, pp. 443-4. [101] Labanoff, op. cit., t. vii, p. 123; t. iii, p. 116; t. iv, p. 215. [102] T. v, p. 98. [103] The original is written in French. [104] Labanoff, op. cit., t. iv, pp. 341-4, 377-81, 389, 390, 401, 402. [105] _Calendar of State Papers relating to Scotland_, vol. ii, p. 1014. THE SONG OF MARY STUART An Undetected Forgery Those who are acquainted with Brantôme's delightful collection of biographical sketches of Illustrious Ladies, will remember that one of the most noteworthy of them is devoted to Marie Stuart. In it, amongst many other interesting details, he states that the Queen used to compose verses, and that he had seen some "that were fine and well done, and in no wise similar to those which have been laid to her account, on the subject of her love for the Earl of Bothwell, and which are too coarse and ill-polished to have been of her making". In another passage he says that Mary "made a song herself upon her sorrows"; and he quotes it.[106] For close on two centuries and a half the "_Chanson de Marie Stuart_", as given by him, has been reproduced in biographies of the Queen of Scots, and has found its way into numberless albums and anthologies. That it should have been accepted without hesitation on Brantôme's authority is hardly surprising. Of those who have written from personal acquaintance with Mary, few were in a better position than was the French chronicler to know the truth about her. He remembered her from her very childhood. He was familiar with all the circumstances of her training and education at Saint-Germain. He had witnessed the precocious development of the talents which excited the admiration of the courtiers that gathered about Henry II and Catharine de' Medici. He did not lose sight of her when, at a later date, her marriage with the heir to the crown of France gave her a household of her own in the stately residence of Villers-Côterets. He witnessed the enthusiasm which greeted her as Queen-Consort, as well as the deep and universal sympathy which her early bereavement called forth; and when the "White Queen", the dowager of seventeen, left the country of her affection to undertake the heavy task of governing her northern kingdom, he was amongst those who accompanied her on her fateful journey. In the circumstances, it did not