But Mary--for what reason we are not informed, but probably from her aversion to strife and bloodshed--declined the invitation of the Catholic Earl, and decided to return to Scotland under the patronage of neither the circumcised "Saints" of the Congregation, nor the uncircumcised Philistines of the Gordon country, but as a messenger of peace who would unite all parties in the bonds of mutual forbearance, and would seek her support in the undivided loyalty of the realm. So far she had won all hearts, and had met no man but would have thought it a privilege to be permitted to devote his life to her service. May we not suspect that she hoped her personal influence, which had hitherto known victory only, would soften the animosity of rebel lords and religious fanatics? At any rate she prepared to depart for Scotland. "All the bravest and noblest gentlemen of France assembled themselves around the fairest of Queens and women," to give her a last proof of their love and respect. Among the Scottish nobles who formed part of her cortege on her way to Calais, was he who, a few years later, became the evil genius of her life--the brave and reckless Earl of Bothwell. In the following soliloquy, the unfortunate Earl, outlawed and pining away in a Danish prison, has been made to express his impressions of the young widow when he first knew her in France:-- "O Mary, Mary, even now, Seared as I am to shame, The blood grows thick around my heart At utterance of thy name! I see her as in by-gone days, A widow, yet a child, Within the fields of sunny France, When heaven and fortune smiled. * * * * * O lovelier than the fairest flower That ever bloomed on green, Was she, the darling of the land, The young and spotless queen. The sweet, sweet smile upon her lips, Her eyes so kind and clear, The magic of her gentle voice, That even now I hear! And nobles knelt, and princes bent, Before her as she came; A queen by gift of nature she, More than a queen in name."[#] [#] "Bothwell," by William Edmondstoune Aytoun. On the 15th of August, 1561, having bid farewell to her uncles, the Cardinal and the Duke of Guise, to her other relatives and the large number of friends and admirers who accompanied her to the water’s edge, she embarked at Calais and turned with a heavy heart to her new home, where her mother, only a few months before, had been denied a grave; where the death of her husband had been made the subject of rude jibes, and where she herself had been denounced by the leader of the new religion, as another Jezebel. France may be said in the meantime to have been in mourning; and the words of the poet Ronsard, poetry though they be, express a feeling that was common to the nation.