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found the troubadour’s court of the arts and poesy for which she yearned; left the painters no time to finish portraits of the monarch and his lovely wife in the panoply of royal robes; no time for historians to describe their respective characters; no time for the populace to make close acquaintance with its new rulers or learn to love them. In the long procession of kings and queens of France, the figures of these two children are driven onward like mist wreaths before the wind.
    Francis II, a tainted tree in the forest, was doomed to premature death. In a round and bloated face, timid eyes, weary and reminding us of those of one who has been startled out of sleep, give the dominant expression to his countenance. His strength was further undermined by a sudden and extensive growth in stature such as often occurs at his age. Physicians watched over him sedulously and urgently advised him to take care of himself. But the boy was animated by a foolish dread lest he should be outdone by his willowy, untiring wife, who was passionately devoted to outdoor sports. That he might seem hale and manly he rode hell-for-leather and engaged in other exhausting bodily exercises. But nature could not be cheated. His blood was incurably sluggish, was poisoned by an evil heritage from his grandfather Francis I. Again and again he was laid low by paroxysms of fever. When the weather was inclement, he had to keep indoors, restive and bored, a pitiful shade, surrounded by his train of doctors. So weakly a king aroused more pity than respect among his courtiers; among the common people, on the other hand, it was soon bruited abroad that he was smitten with leprosy and that he bathed in the blood of freshly killed children in the hope of regaining health. The peasants regarded the stricken lad menacingly when he went out riding. At court, those with an eye to the future were beginning to throng round Catherine de’ Medici and Charles, the next heir to the throne. Hands so weak as Francis’ could not long nor firmly grip the reins of power. Now and again, in stiff, awkward writing, the boy would pen his “François” at the foot of decrees, but the real rulers were the Guises, the kin of Mary Stuart, in place of one whose energies must be devoted to keeping his vital spark aglow as long as possible. Such a sick-room companionship, with its perpetual watchfulness over failing health, can scarcely be spoken of as a happy marriage, even if we suppose it to have been a marriage in any true sense of the term. Yet there is nothing to justify the supposition that the union of these youngsters was an unhappy one, for even at this malicious court where gossip was rife, at this court where every amourette was recorded by Brantôme in his Vie des dames galantes, no suspicion seems to have been aroused by Mary Stuart’s behaviour. Long before they were dragged to the altar, Francis of Valois and Mary Stuart had been playmates, and it seems unlikely that the erotic element can have had much part in their companionship after the wedding. Years were still to pass before there was to develop in Mary Queen of Scots the capacity for passionate self-surrender to a lover, and Francis, an ailing boy, was not the type of male to arouse the passion hidden so deep in the enigmatic nature of his wife. Tenderness and clemency of character prompted Mary to care for her husband to the best of her ability. Even if she had not been moved to this by feeling, her reason would have informed her that power and position depended upon the breathing and the heartbeats of this poor, sick body, to safeguard which would be to defend her own happiness. But for real happiness, during her brief span of queenship in France, there was no scope. The storms aroused by the Huguenot movement were causing widespread agitation. After the conspiracy of Amboise, in which the royal pair were personally endangered, Mary had to pay one of the painful tributes called for by