[#] Melville, the steward here referred to, and Preau had been separated from Mary three weeks before. Melville was permitted to meet his mistress on her way to the scaffold. Preau was denied even this. "Advise me as to the most appropriate prayers, for this night and to-morrow morning, as the time is short and I have no leisure to write; but I will recommend you, as well as the others, and especially your benefices will be spared to you, and I will recommend you to the king. I have no more time. Tell me in writing of all that you shall think best for the good of my soul. I shall send you a last little token." "At two hours after midnight," she wrote a letter to the King of France, and then, worn out with the anxieties and labours of the last twelve hours, laid down to rest. But her women attendants, who watched closely by her bedside, assure us that, though she lay calm and motionless with her hands crossed on her breast, her lips continued to move in prayer, and a joyful expression occasionally rested on her countenance. The royal victim rose early in the morning, and attired herself in her most costly garments.[#] Then she called together her little household, gave to each the present she had prepared the night before, and with comforting words bade them farewell. "I beg you all," she said, "to assist at my death, and to testify to my unalterable devotion to my religion. Be ye witnesses of my last acts and my last words." This done, she retired to her oratory to pray. At eight o’clock the sheriff interrupted her devotions, announcing that the hour had come. The Queen promptly answered the summons, and, although suffering from a rheumatism which prevented her from walking without support, she strove to disguise her suffering and to march to death with as firm a step as possible. At the foot of the stairs leading down from her apartments, her old servant Melville awaited his mistress, and, on her approach, threw himself on his knees before her, and wept. "Ah, madame," he said, "unhappy me, what man on earth was ever before the messenger of so important sorrow and heaviness as I shall be, when I shall report that my good and gracious Queen and Mistress is beheaded in England." [#] "Her robes--the only ones she had reserved of former splendours--were such as were then worn by queens-dowager. The skirt and bodice of black satin were worn over a petticoat of russet-brown velvet; while the long regal mantle, also of black satin, embroidered with gold and trimmed with fur, had long hanging sleeves and a train. The Queen’s head-dress was of white crape, from which fell a long veil of the same delicate material, edged with lace. Round her neck she wore a chain of scented beads with a cross, and at her waist a golden rosary." (_The Tragedy of Fotheringay_, by Hon. Mrs. Maxwell Scott.)