upon him as to control and command her, I leave it to others to think.’ So Randolph, the English Ambassador, wrote as early as May, 1565. She was ‘blinded, transported, carried I know not whither or which way, to her own confusion and destruction:’ words of omen that were fulfilled. [Illustration: Darnley at about the age of 18. Walker & Cockerell. ph. sc.] Whether Elizabeth let Darnley go to Scotland merely for Mary’s entanglement, whether Mary fell in love with the handsome accomplished lad (as Randolph seems to prove) or not, are questions then, and now, disputed. The Lennox Papers, declaring that she was smitten by the arrow of love; and her own conduct, at first, make it highly probable that she entertained for the _gentil hutaudeau_ a passion, or a passionate caprice. Darnley, at least, acted like a new chemical agent in the development of Mary’s character. She had been singularly long-suffering; she had borne the insults and outrages of the extreme Protestants; she had leaned on her brother, Moray, and on Lethington; following or even leading these advisers to the ruin of Huntly, her chief coreligionist. Though constantly professing, openly to Knox, secretly to the Pope, her desire to succour the ancient Church, she was obviously regarded, in Papal circles, as slack in the work. She had been pliant, she had endured the long calculated delays of Elizabeth, as to her marriage, with patience; but, so soon as Darnley crossed her path, she became resolute, even reckless. Despite the opposition, interested, or religious, or based on the pretext of religion, which Moray and his allies offered, Mary wedded Darnley. She found him a petulant, ambitious boy; sullen, suspicious, resentful, swayed by the ambition to be a king in earnest, but too indolent in affairs for the business of a king. At tennis, with Riccio, or while exercising his great horses, his favourite amusement, Darnley was pining to use his jewelled dagger. In the feverish days before the deed it is probable that he kept his courage screwed up by the use of stimulants, to which he was addicted. That he devoted himself to loose promiscuous intrigue injurious to his health, is not established, though, when her child was born, Mary warned Darnley that the babe was ‘only too much his son,’ perhaps with a foreboding of hereditary disease. A satirist called Darnley ‘the leper:’ leprosy being confounded with ‘la grosse vérole.’ Mary, who had fainting fits, was said to be epileptic. Darnley, according to Lennox, represented himself as pure in this regard, nor have we any valid evidence to the contrary. But his word was absolutely worthless.