On this point we have a very curious piece of evidence. On June 22, 1609, Ottavio Baldi wrote, from Venice, to James, now King of England. His letter was forwarded by Sir Henry Wotton. Baldi says that he has received from Sir Robert Douglas, and is sending to the King by his nephew—a Cambridge student—‘a strange relique out of this country.’ He obtained it thus: Sir Robert Douglas, while at home in Scotland, had ‘heard speech’ of ‘a certain emblem or impresa,’ left by Gowrie in Padua. Meeting a Scot in Padua, Douglas asked where this emblem now was, and he was directed to the school of a teacher of dancing. There the emblem hung, ‘among other devices and remembrances of his scholars.’ Douglas had a copy of the emblem made; and immediately ‘acquainted me with the quality of the thing,’ says Baldi. ‘We agreed together, that it should be fit, if possible, to obtain the very original itself, and to leave in the room thereof the copy that he had already taken, which he did effect by well handling the matter. ‘Thus hath your Majesty now a view, _in umbra_, of those detestable thoughts which afterwards appeared _in facto_, according to the said Earl’s own _mot_. For what other sense or allusion can the reaching at a crown with a sword in a stretched posture, and the impersonating of his device in a blackamore, yield to any intelligent and honest beholder?’ {247} From Baldi’s letter we learn that, in the device left by Gowrie at Padua, the figure pointing a sword at the crown was a negro, thus varying from the figure in Workman’s MS., and that in the illuminated copy emblazoned in 1597, and possessed in 1716 by Crawfurd. Next, we learn that Sir Robert Douglas had heard talk of this emblem in Scotland, before he left for Italy. Lastly, a _mot_ on the subject by the Earl himself was reported, to the effect that the device set forth ‘in a shadow,’ what was intended to be executed ‘in very deed.’