"For the rest I think you will certainly have heard that they pulled down my dais, by your order, as they said, and that afterwards they told me that it was not done by your command but by that of some of the Council. I praise God that such cruelty, which could only show malice and affect me after I had made up my mind to die, came not from you. I fear it has been like this in many other things, and that this is the reason why they would not permit me to write to you until they had, as far as they could, taken from me all external mark of dignity and power, telling me I was simply a dead woman, stripped of all dignity. "God be praised for all. I wish that all my papers, without any exception, had been shown to you, so that it might have been said that it was not solely the care of your safety which animated all those who are so prompt in pursuing me. If you grant me this, my last request, give orders that I shall see what you write regarding it, as otherwise they will make me believe what they like; and I desire to know your final reply to my final request. "In conclusion, I pray the God of mercy, the just Judge, that He will deign to enlighten you by His Holy Spirit, and that He will give me the grace to die in perfect charity, as I am preparing myself to do, pardoning all those who are the cause of my death, or who have co-operated in it, and this shall be my prayer till the end. I consider it happy for me that it should come before the persecution which I foresee threatens this island--if God is not more truly feared and revered, and vanity and worldly policy not more wisely curbed. Do not accuse me of presumption if, on the eve of leaving this world, and preparing myself for a better, I remind you that one day you will have to answer for your charge as well as those who are sent before, and that, making no account of my blood or my country, I desire to think of the time when, from the earliest dawn of reason, we were taught to place our soul’s welfare before all temporal matters, which should cede to those of eternity. "Your Sister and Cousin wrongfully imprisoned, MARIE, QUEEN." She wrote again to Elizabeth nearly a month later, but Paulet refused to dispatch her letter. CHAPTER XVI. THE END. What lovely form, in deepest gloom Of prison cave, awaits her doom?-- * * * * * ’Tis Scotia’s basely-injured Queen; ’Tis she who, cherished, would have been The loveliest, brightest, richest gem In Caledonia’s diadem,-- A gem too polished, pure and bright For Scotia’s sons, in Scotia’s night, When evil man and evil times Were stained in basest, blackest crimes.-- _The Royal Exile._