at at this
time she had not yet attained her thirtieth year; she was not merely her
rival as queen, then, but as woman. As regards education, she could
sustain comparison with advantage; for if she had less charm of mind, she
had more solidity of judgment: versed in politics, philosophy, history;
rhetoric, poetry and music, besides English, her maternal tongue, she
spoke and wrote to perfection Greek, Latin, French, Italian and Spanish;
but while Elizabeth excelled Mary on this point, in her turn Mary was
more beautiful, and above all more attractive, than her rival. Elizabeth
had, it is true, a majestic and agreeable appearance, bright quick eyes,
a dazzlingly white complexion; but she had red hair, a large
foot,--[Elizabeth bestowed a pair of her shoes on the University of
Oxford; their size would point to their being those of a man of average
stature.]--and a powerful hand, while Mary, on the contrary, with her
beautiful ashy-fair hair,--[Several historians assert that Mary Stuart
had black hair; but Brantome, who had seen it, since, as we have said, he
accompanied her to Scotland, affirms that it was fair. And, so saying,
he (the executioner) took off her headdress, in a contemptuous manner, to
display her hair already white, that while alive, however, she feared not
to show, nor yet to twist and frizz as in the days when it was so
beautiful and so fair.]--her noble open forehead, eyebrows which could be
only blamed for being so regularly arched that they looked as if drawn by
a pencil, eyes continually beaming with the witchery of fire, a nose of
perfect Grecian outline, a mouth so ruby red and gracious that it seemed
that, as a flower opens but to let its perfume escape, so it could not
open but to give passage to gentle words, with a neck white and graceful
as a swan's, hands of alabaster, with a form like a goddess's and a foot
like a child's, Mary was a harmony in which the most ardent enthusiast
for sculptured form could have found nothing to reproach.

This was indeed Mary's great and real crime: one single imperfection in
face or figure, and she would not have died upon the scaffold. Besides,
to Elizabeth, who had never seen her, and who consequently could only
judge by hearsay, this beauty was a great cause of uneasiness and of
jealousy, which she could not even disguise, and which showed itself
unceasingly in eager questions. One day when she was chatting with James
Melville about his mission to her cou