You will hear all this; they have been more gentle since .-- Your affectionate cousin and perfect friend, "MARY, Queen of Scotland, Dowager of France" From this day forward, when she learned the sentence delivered by the commissioners, Mary Stuart no longer preserved any hope; for as she knew Elizabeth's pardon was required to save her, she looked upon herself thenceforward as lost, and only concerned herself with preparing to die well.

Indeed, as it had happened to her sometimes, from the cold and damp in her prisons, to become crippled for some time in all her limbs, she was afraid of being so when they would come to take her, which would prevent her going resolutely to the scaffold, as she was counting on doing.

So, on Saturday the 14th February, she sent for her doctor, Bourgoin, and asked him, moved by a presentiment that her death was at hand, she said, what she must do to prevent the return of the pains which crippled her.

He replied that it would be good for her to medicine herself with fresh herbs.

"Go, then," said the queen, "and ask Sir Amyas Paulet from me permission to seek them in the fields." Bourgoin went to Sir Amyas, who, as he himself was troubled with sciatica, should have understood better than anyone the need of the remedies for which the queen asked.