Here I am unable to admit the third reproach of Mme. Sand, that of Marie Stuart’s forgetfulness of Bothwell. I see, on the contrary, through all the obstacles, all the perils immediately following this marriage, that Marie had no other idea than that of avoiding separation from her violent and domineering husband. She loved him so madly that she said to whosoever might hear her (April, 1567) that “she would quit France, England, and her own country, and follow him to the ends of the earth in nought but a white petticoat, rather than be parted from him.” And soon after, forced by the lords to tear herself from Bothwell, she reproaches them bitterly, asking but one thing, “that both be put in a vessel and sent away where Fortune led them.” It was only enforced separation, final imprisonment, and the impossibility of communication, which compelled the rupture. It is true that Marie, a prisoner in England, solicited the Parliament of Scotland to annul her marriage with Bothwell, in the hope she then had of marrying the Duke of Norfolk, who played the lover to herself and crown, though she never saw him. But, Bothwell being a fugitive and ruined, can we reproach Marie Stuart for a project from which she hoped for restoration and deliverance? Her passion for Bothwell had been a delirium, which drove her into connivance with crime. That fever calmed, Marie Stuart turned her mind to the resources which presented themselves, among which was the offer of her hand. Her wrong-doing does not lie there; amid so many infidelities and horrors, it would be pushing delicacy much too far to require eternity of sentiment for the remains of an unbridled and bloody passion. That which is due to such passions, when they leave no hatred behind them, that which becomes them best, is oblivion.