conspicuous throughout the remainder of her life. "In the settlement of your daughter’s establishment, it is my opinion that there should not be anything that is either superfluous or mean, for meanness is the thing which, of all others, she hates most in the world." In a letter written to her mother on the occasion of her first communion, Mary uttered a prayer which we who know--what she could not then know--the trials that awaited her, cannot read without being touched by the sad contrast between her first bright hope and the subsequent gloom that settled over her life. "I have come," she said, "to Meudon to Madame my grandmother, in order to keep the feast of Easter, because she and my uncle--Monsieur the Cardinal--wish that I should take the Sacrament. I pray to God very humbly to give me grace that I may make a good beginning." On Sunday, the 4th of April, 1558, the fair Scottish queen, who was now in her sixteenth year, was married to the young Dauphin, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. All Paris was astir in its festive garments. Scotland and France vied in adding to the splendour of the feast; the choicest music swelled along the high arches of the grand old cathedral; the streets of the gay capital re-echoed with the popular demonstrations; nor need we doubt that the martial strains of the Highland pipes mingled with the livelier tones of the French fife and drum. According to a chronicler of the event, it was the universal opinion of the multitude that, "if Scotland be a possession of value, she who is queen of that realm is far more precious, for if she had neither crown nor sceptre, her single person, in her divine beauty, would be worth a kingdom."