This Letter is, in most parts, entirely unlike the two Glasgow letters in style. They are simple and direct: this is obscure and affected. As Laing had not the transcript of the original French (a transcript probably erroneous in places) before him, his attempts to reconstruct the French are unsuccessful. He is more happy in noting that the phrase _vous m’en dischargeres votre cœur_, occurs twice in Mary’s letters to Elizabeth[361] (_e.g._ August 13, 1568). But to ‘unpack the heart’ is, of course, a natural and usual expression. If Darnley is meant by the bird in the cage, the metaphor is oddly combined with the comparison (a stock one) of Mary to a turtle dove. Possibly the phrase ‘I do _not_ ask that you keep promise with me to-morrow,’ is meant to be understood ‘I do not ask you to keep promise except that we may meet,’ as Laing supposes. But (1) the sense cannot be got out of the French, (2) it does not help the interpretation of the accusers if, after all, Mary is only contriving an excuse for a meeting between herself and Bothwell. The obscure passage about the turtle dove need not be borrowed from Ronsard, as Laing thinks: it is a commonplace. The phrase which I render ‘what I cannot do, my letter [would do] heartily, if it were not that I fear you are asleep,’ the Scots translates ‘This letter will do with ane gude hart, that thing quhilk I cannot do myself gif it be not that I have feir that ze ar in sleiping.’ The French is ‘ce que je ne puis faire ma lettre de bon cœur si ce nestoit que je ay peur que soyes endormy.’ Laing, reconstructing the French, says, ‘Ce que je ne saurois faire moi-même; that is, instigate Lord Robert to commit the murder.’ The end of the phrase he takes ‘in its figurative sense, _d’un homme endormi_; slow, or negligent.’ Thus we are to understand ‘what I cannot do, my letter would do heartily--that is excite you to instigate my brother to kill my husband, if I were not afraid that you were slow or negligent.’ This is mere nonsense. The writer means, apparently, ‘what I cannot do, my letter would gladly do--that is salute you--if I were not afraid that you are already asleep, the night being so far advanced.’ She is sorry if her letter arrives to disturb his sleep.