"This, gentlemen and ladies," said the attendant, as they went in, "was Queen Mary's bed chamber. The door where we are coming in was the main or principal entrance to it. This is the bed and bedstead, just as they were left when Queen Mary vacated the apartment. That door,"--pointing to a corner of the room diagonally opposite to where the company had entered,--"leads to the little boudoir[G] where Rizzio was killed, and that opening in the wall by the side of it, under the tapestry, is the place where Darnley and the other assassins came up by the private stair." [G] A boudoir is a small private apartment, fitted up for a lady, where she receives her intimate and confidential friends. A view of the room, and of the various objects which the attendant showing them thus pointed out to the company, may be seen in the engraving on the opposite page. The bedstead is seen on the right. It is surmounted by a heavy cornice, richly carved and gilded. This cornice, and the embroidered curtains that hang from it, must have been very magnificent in their day, though now they are faded and tattered by age. The coverings of the bed are also greatly decayed. Only a little shred of the blanket now remains, and that is laid upon the bolster. The rest of it has been gradually carried away by visitors, who for a long time were accustomed to pull off little shreds of it to take with them, as souvenirs of their visit. These depredations are, however, now no longer allowed. That part of the room is now enclosed by a cord, fastened to iron rods fixed in the floor, so that visitors cannot approach the bed. They are watched, too, very closely, wherever they go, to prevent their taking any thing away. They are not allowed to sit down in any of the chairs. The door in the corner of the room to the left leads into the little boudoir, or cabinet, where Rizzio was murdered. You can see a little way into this room, in the picture. Mr. George and the boys went into it. There was a table on the back side of it, with the armor, and also the gloves, and one of the boots which Darnley wore, lying upon it. The attendant took up a breast-plate, which formed a part of the armor, and let the boys lift it. It was very heavy. There was an indentation in the front of it, where it had been struck by a bullet. The boot, too, was prodigiously thick and heavy. The heel was not less than three inches high. There was a fireplace in this room, and over it was an altar-piece; a sort of picture in stone, which Mary used in her oratory, according to the custom of the Catholics. It had been broken to pieces and put together again. It was said that John Knox broke it, to show his abhorrence of Popery, but that the pieces were saved, and it was afterwards mended. There was also in this room a square stone, shaped like a block, about two feet long, sawed off from the end of a beam of timber. This was the stone that Mary knelt upon when she was crowned Queen of Scotland.