the help of one of his pages, James V had
escaped from Falkland, and had reached Stirling, whose governor was in
his interests. Scarcely was he safe in the castle than he made
proclamation that any Douglas who should approach within a dozen miles of
it would be prosecuted for high treason. This was not all: he obtained a
decree from Parliament, declaring them guilty of felony, and condemning
them to exile; they remained proscribed, then, during the king's
lifetime, and returned to Scotland only upon his death. The result was
that, although they had been recalled about the throne, and though,
thanks to the past influence of Murray, who, one remembers, was a Douglas
on the mother's side, they filled the most important posts there, they
had not forgiven to the daughter the enmity borne them by the father.

This was why James Douglas, chancellor as he was, and consequently
entrusted with the execution of the laws, put himself at the head of a
conspiracy which had for its aim the violation of all laws; human and
divine.

Douglas's first idea had been to treat Rizzio as the favourites of James
III had been treated at the Bridge of Lauder--that is to say, to make a
show of having a trial and to hang him afterwards. But such a death did
not suffice for Darnley's vengeance; as above everything he wished to
punish the queen in Rizzio's person, he exacted that the murder should
take place in her presence.

Douglas associated with himself Lord Ruthven, an idle and dissolute
sybarite, who under the circumstances promised to push his devotion so
far as to wear a cuirass; then, sure of this important accomplice, he
busied himself with finding other agents.

However, the plot was not woven with such secrecy but that something of
it transpired; and Rizzio received several warnings that he despised.
Sir James Melville, among others, tried every means to make him
understand the perils a stranger ran who enjoyed such absolute confidence
in a wild, jealous court like that of Scotland. Rizzio received these
hints as if resolved not to apply them to himself; and Sir James
Melville, satisfied that he had done enough to ease his conscience, did
not insist further. Then a French priest, who had a reputation as a
clever astrologer, got himself admitted to Rizzio, and warned him that
the stars predicted that he was in deadly peril, and that he should
beware of a certain bastard above all. Rizzio replied that from the day
when he had been h