In the meantime, Rizzio was not without some apprehensions for his personal safety. The Scots, though they seldom evince much reluctance to secure their own advancement in foreign countries, are of all nations the most averse to allow strangers to interfere with their affairs at home. Aware that they have little enough for themselves, they cannot bear to see any part of what they consider their birthright given away to aliens, however deserving. Rizzio's abilities, and consequent favour with the Queen, were the means of placing in his hands so much power and wealth, that he incurred the hatred and envy of almost every one about court. In the homely but expressive language of Melville, "some of the nobility would gloom upon him, and some of them would shoulder him and shoot him by, when they entered in the chamber, and found him always speaking with her Majesty." Buchanan, that able but most prejudiced and disingenuous historian, expressing the prevalent sentiments of the day, says that, "the low birth and indigent condition of this man, placed him in a station in which he ought naturally to have remained unknown to posterity; but that which fortune called him to act and to suffer in Scotland, obliges history to descend from its dignity to record his adventures." As if "low birth and indigent condition" have ever been, or will ever be, barriers sufficient to shut out genius and talent from the road to greatness. But Rizzio was in truth far from being of that officious, conceited, and encroaching disposition, which Buchanan has ascribed to him. Sir James Melville, who knew him well, gives quite an opposite impression of his character. He mentions, that not without some fear, Rizzio lamented his state to him, and asked his council how to conduct himself. Sir James told him, that strangers ought to be cautious how they meddled too far in the affairs of foreign countries, for that, though he was her Majesty's Continental secretary, it was suspected a great deal of Scottish business also passed through his hands. "I advised him," says Melville, "when the nobility were present, to give them place, and pray the Queen's Majesty to be content therewith; and shewed him for an example, how I had been in so great favour with the Elector Palatine, that he caused set me at his own table, and the board being drawn, used to confer with me in presence of his whole Court. Whereat divers of them took great indignation against me, which, so soon as I perceived, I requested him to let me sit from his own table with the rest of his gentlemen, and no more to confer with me in their presence, but to send a page for me, any time that he had leisure, to come to him in his chamber; which I obtained, and that way made my master not to be hated, nor myself to be envied; and willed him to do the like, _which he did_, and said unto me afterwards, that the Queen would not suffer him, but would needs have him to use himself in the old