f Scots. She eventually noticed him and engaged him as a singer.
He gradually rose higher in her political and personal favour till he
became secretary for French affairs, and conducted himself with such
odious pride and grew so rich and so powerful that at last he was
dragged from the very presence of the queen and slain. And this was in
the year 1566.

CHAPTER IV.

ORLAND DI LASSUS AND HIS REGINA

A contemporary of the Rizzio, so humble as a musician and so soaring in
his intrigues, was the great Roland de Lattre, better known as Orland di
Lassus or Orlandus Lassus, the "Belgian Orpheus," "_le Prince des
Musiciens_." There is as much dispute over the date of his birth as over
the early conditions of his life. But he was born in either 1520 or 1530
at Mons in Hainault, and, according to the old Annales du Hainault, he
changed his name from Roland de Lattre to Orland di Lassus because his
father had been convicted of making spurious coin and, as a "false
moneyer," had to wear a string of his evil utterances round his neck.

Rarely in history has a composer held a more lofty position than that of
this son of a criminal, and even to-day he rivals Palestrina in the
esteem of historians as one of the pillars of his art.

He was in the service of the Duke of Bavaria, who gave him as much
honour as the later King of Bavaria gave Wagner; he stood so high at
court that a year later he won the hand of a maid of honour, Regina
Weckinger. She bore him two daughters and four sons. One of the
daughters was named after her, Regina, and when she grew up married a
court painter. Two of the sons became prominent composers. The mother
was probably beautiful, since an old biographer, Van Ouickelberg,
described her children as _elegantissimi_.

There is every reason to believe that the wedded life of these two was
thoroughly happy, save that Lassus was an indefatigable fiend of work.
As his biographer Delmotte says, "His life indeed had been the most
toilsome that one could think of, and his fecund imagination, always
alert, had _enfante_ a multitude of compositions so great that their
very number astounds us (they exceeded two thousand), and forbids us
almost to believe them the work of one man. This incessant tension of
soul made imperious demands for the distraction of repose; far from
this, he redoubled his work till nature, worn out, refused to Lassus the
aid she had lavished. His mental powers abandoned him abruptly.