block also covered in black.
Just as, having mounted the steps, she set foot on the fatal boards, the
executioner came forward, and; asking forgiveness for the duty he was
about to perform, kneeled, hiding behind him his axe. Mary saw it,
however, and cried--

"Ah! I would rather have been beheaded in the French way, with a
sword!..."

"It is not my fault, madam," said the executioner, "if this last wish of
your Majesty cannot be fulfilled; but, not having been instructed to
bring a sword, and having found this axe here only, I am obliged to use
it. Will that prevent your pardoning me, then?"

"I pardon you, my friend," said Mary, "and in proof of it, here is my
hand to kiss."

The executioner put his lips to the queen's hand, rose and approached the
chair. Mary sat down, and the Earls of Kent and Shrewsbury standing on
her left, the sheriff and his officers before her, Amyas Paulet behind,
and outside the barrier the lords, knights, and gentlemen, numbering
nearly two hundred and fifty, Robert Beale for the second time read the
warrant for execution, and as he was beginning the servants who had been
fetched came into the hall and placed themselves behind the scaffold, the
men mounted upon a bench put back against the wall, and the women
kneeling in front of it; and a little spaniel, of which the queen was
very fond, came quietly, as if he feared to be driven away, and lay down
near his mistress.

The queen listened to the reading of the warrant without seeming to pay
much attention, as if it had concerned someone else, and with a
countenance as calm and even as joyous as if it had been a pardon and not
a sentence of death; then, when Beale had ended, and having ended, cried
in a loud voice, "God save Queen Elizabeth!" to which no one made any
response, Mary signed herself with the cross, and, rising without any
change of expression, and, on the contrary, lovelier than ever--

"My lords," said she, "I am a queen-born sovereign princess, and not
subject to law,--a near relation of the Queen of England, and her
rightful heir; for a long time I have been a prisoner in this country, I
have suffered here much tribulation and many evils that no one had the
right to inflict, and now, to crown all, I am about to lose my life.
Well, my lords, bear witness that I die in the Catholic faith, thanking
God for letting me die for His holy cause, and protesting, to-day as
every day, in public as in private, that I have never