Alas for the gallant monarch! Alas for the bold man-at-arms! A splinter from Montgomery’s lance has entered the eye through the unclosed helmet, and penetrated nearly to the brain. Ere twelve days elapse, Catherine de Medicis is a widow. Francis II. has succeeded to the throne, and Mary Stuart is Queen of France. The favour of the Duchess of Valentinois was no passport, we may fairly suppose, to the good graces of the queen-mother; and although Walter Maxwell retained his appointment in the guard, his hopes of advancement perished with the death of his royal patron. Such disappointments, however, though they press heavily on an enthusiastic spirit, are lightly borne by such a temperament as Maxwell’s. His disposition was naturally calm and unimpressionable beyond the average. He possessed the rare quality of seeing things as they were, and not as he wished them to be. Above all, he had that quiet confidence in himself which could wait patiently for an occasion, and seize it without hurry or agitation when it arrived. Moreover, he had been brought up in the stern school, that turns out the most finished pupils, after all. Poverty and hardship give their lessons for nothing; but men remember them better than Latin and Greek. We may be allowed to doubt whether all George Buchanan’s classic lore and pedantic periods were as well worth acquiring as Maxwell’s aptitude to saddle, shoe, and groom his own horse, cook his own rations, burnish his own corslet, and keep his head with his hand. Changes also took place in the Scottish Guard. The Earl of Arran, heir to the house of Hamilton, was appointed to its command, and already that eccentricity began to manifest itself which was fostered, at last, into madness, by the sunshine of Mary’s unconscious smiles. Arran chose to alter the discipline, the accoutrements, and the whole system of the _corps_, and such interference with their old habits was by no means relished by its members. During the short reign of Francis II., Mary Stuart’s sympathies with her countrymen, and knowledge of their customs and prejudices, checked many a proposed innovation that would have created open dissatisfaction; but when she became a dowager Queen, and Charles IX. succeeded to the throne, the archers found themselves curtailed of many of their privileges, and no longer looked upon as what they considered themselves--the _élite_ of the French army. Seeing, however, that, like the famous ‘_gants glacés_’ of a later period, they had earned this position by constantly volunteering for all dangerous duties, they might well be uneasy at the prospect of forfeiting a distinction it had cost so much hard fighting to attain.