Mary Stuart eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 262 pages of information about Mary Stuart.

Mary Stuart eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 262 pages of information about Mary Stuart.

“None of the inhabitants visited me, which makes me think they are all in his interests; besides, they speak of him very favourably, as well as of his son.  The king sent for Joachim yesterday, and asked him why I did not lodge with him, adding that my presence would soon cure him, and asked me also with what object I had come:  if it were to be reconciled with him; if you were here; if I had taken Paris and Gilbert as secretaries, and if I were still resolved to dismiss Joseph?  I do not know who has given him such accurate information.  There is nothing, down to the marriage of Sebastian, with which he has not made himself acquainted.  I have asked him the meaning of one of his letters, in which he complains of the cruelty of certain people.  He replied that he was—­stricken, but that my presence caused him so much joy that he thought he should die of it.  He reproached me several times for being dreamy; I left him to go to supper; he begged me to return:  I went back.  Then he told me the story of his illness, and that he wished to make a will leaving me everything, adding that I was a little the cause of his trouble, and that he attributed it to my coldness.  ‘You ask me,’ added he, ’who are the people of whom I complain:  it is of you, cruel one, of you, whom I have never been able to appease by my tears and my repentance.  I know that I have offended you, but not on the matter that you reproach me with:  I have also offended some of your subjects, but that you have forgiven me.  I am young, and you say that I always relapse into my faults; but cannot a young man like me, destitute of experience, gain it also, break his promises, repent directly, and in time improve?  If you will forgive me yet once more, I will promise to offend you never again.  All the favour I ask of you is that we should live together like husband and wife, to have but one bed and one board:  if you are inflexible, I shall never rise again from here.  I entreat you, tell me your decision:  God alone knows what I suffer, and that because I occupy myself with you only, because I love and adore only you.  If I have offended you sometimes, you must bear the reproach; for when someone offends me, if it were granted me to complain to you, I should not confide my griefs to others; but when we are on bad terms, I am obliged to keep them to myself, and that maddens me.’

“He then urged me strongly to stay with him and lodge in his house; but I excused myself, and replied that he ought to be purged, and that he could not be, conveniently, at Glasgow; then he told me that he knew I had brought a letter for him, but that he would have preferred to make the journey with me.  He believed, I think, that I meant to send him to some prison:  I replied that I should take him to Craigmiller, that he would find doctors there, that I should remain near him, and that we should be within reach of seeing my son.  He has answered that he will go where I wish to take him, provided that I grant him what he has asked.  He does not, however, wish to be seen by anyone.

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Project Gutenberg
Mary Stuart from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.