Less than six months after her marriage Marie, wholly disgusted, consoled herself with an Italian, David Riccio, a man thirty-two years of age, equally well fitted for business or pleasure, who advised her and served her as secretary, and was gifted with a musical talent well suited to commend him to women in other ways. The feeble Darnley confided his jealousy to the discontented lords and gentlemen, and they, in the interests of their faction, prodded his vengeance and offered to serve it with their sword. Ministers and Presbyterian pastors took part in the affair. The whole was plotted and managed with perfect unanimity as a chastisement of Heaven, and, what is more, by help of deeds and formal agreements which simulated legality. The queen and her favourite, apparently before they had any suspicions, were taken in a net. David Riccio was seized by the conspirators while supping in Marie’s cabinet (March 9, 1566), Darnley being present, and from there he was dragged into the next room and stabbed. Marie, at this date, was six months pregnant by her husband. On that day, outraged in honour and embittered in feeling, she conceived for Darnley a deeper contempt mingled with horror, and swore to avenge herself on the murderers. For this purpose she bided her time, she dissimulated; for the first time in her life she controlled herself and restrained her actions. She became politic--as the nature is of passionate women--only in the interests of her passion and her vengeance. Here is the gravest and the most irreparable incident of her life. Even after we have fully represented to ourselves what the average morality of the sixteenth century, with all the treachery and atrocities it tolerated, was, we are scarcely prepared for this. Marie Stuart’s first desire was to revenge herself on the lords and gentlemen who had lent their daggers to Darnley, rather than on her weak and timid husband. To reach her end she reconciled herself with the latter and detached him from the conspirators, his accomplices. She forced him to disavow them, thus degrading and sinking him in his own estimation. At this point she remained as long as a new passion was not added to her supreme contempt. Meantime her child was born (June 19), and she made Darnley the father of a son who resembled both parents on their worst sides, the future James I. of England, that soul of a casuist in a king. But by this time a new passion was budding in the open heart of Marie Stuart. He whom she now chose had neither Darnley’s feebleness nor the salon graces of a Riccio; he was the Earl of Bothwell, a man of thirty, ugly, but martial in aspect, brave, bold, violent, and capable of daring all things. To him it was that this flexible and tender will was henceforth to cling for its support. Marie Stuart has found her master; and him she will obey in all things, without scruple, without remorse, as happens always in distracted passion.