Read Online Mary Stuart by Stefan Zweig - Free Book Online

a deceptive aureole surrounded Mary Stuart as she took her final leave of France, for the French made a point of carrying out in her honour a full ceremonial in all its magnificent ostentation. She, who had been a French king’s bride, who had fallen from her high estate through no fault of her own, and who had been deprived of her position as France’s ruler by a mishap, could not be allowed to leave the land of her adoption unaccompanied and unsung. It must be made abundantly clear to everyone that Mary was not sailing forth under a cloud, as the unhappy widow of a French monarch or as a weak and helpless woman whom her friends had left in the lurch. No, the Queen of Scotland was going home, backed by French honour and French arms. Setting out from Saint-Germain, she made her way to Calais in the company of a vast procession, a cavalcade whose horses were caparisoned with the most elaborate and beautiful harness, trappings inlaid with gold and other precious metals, and whose riders were dressed in the full splendour of which the French Renaissance was capable. The highway leading to the little port was made gay with colour, bright with the polished steel of weapons, loud with the voices of the flower of the French nobility. At the head of the brilliant retinue was a state carriage conveying the Queen’s uncles, the Duke of Guise and the Cardinals of Lorraine and Guise. Mary herself was surrounded by the four girls who had never left her, by noblewomen, pages, poets and musicians. The days of romance and chivalry seemed to be living a second springtime. The train was followed by a succession of chariots bearing costly furniture and other objects that had gone to the making of her homes in France. The crown jewels were transported in a closed shrine. As she had come a queen, welcomed with a pageantry and honour worthy of her rank, so too did she leave the country of her adoption, the country which had won the love of her heart. But on this occasion joy was lacking, that innocent joy which had lit up the eyes of an astonished child; this was the fading afterglow of sunset and not the radiance of dawn.
    The main body of the princely cortège stayed ashore in Calais. Then the cavalcade dispersed, each rider seeking his own home. Away in Paris, sheltered behind the walls of the Louvre, another monarch was awaiting the return of these nobles who were henceforth to serve him, for courtiers may not live in the pomp of yesterday, it being their business to think only of the present and the future. Dignities and position, not the human being who has to shoulder them, are the only things that count so far as a courtier is concerned. These fine fellows will forget Mary Stuart as soon as the wind has filled the sails of her galleon; they will expunge her image from their hearts. The parting was no more to them than a pathetic ritual, belonging to the same category of public pageantry as a coronation or a funeral. Genuine sorrow at Mary Stuart’s melancholy pilgrimage was felt only by the poets, for poets are endowed with keener perceptions and with the twofold gifts of prophecy and remembrance. Those who wept over Mary’s going knew only too acutely that with this young woman, who had wished to create a court of cheerfulness and beauty, the Muses would disappear likewise from French territory; they foresaw days filled with vicissitude and uncertainty for themselves and the French people; they sensed the advent of political and religious disputes and contentions, the struggle with the Huguenots, the disastrous St Bartholomew’s night, squabbles with zealots and quibblers. Gone were the days of chivalry, gone romance, as the maidenly figure disappeared over the waters. The star of poesy, the star of the “Pléiade”, was about to set in a murky sky rendered the gloomier by the prospect of war. Spiritual happiness, pure and unsullied, sailed away with Mary Stuart. As Ronsard put it, in his elegy Au