Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/481

 1584.] EXPULSION OF MENDOZA. 465 they count the merest folly. They can discourse of these things like the best of the philosophers, but in their deeds they are like the Athenians, who know what is good but will not do it. To our sorrow, they will not look beyond the points of their shoes. They care nothing for the future and less for the past/ There was but one way, M. Fontenay sadly con- cluded, in which his mistress could recover the devotion of the Scottish nation. She must buy it. Every one was poor, every one was extravagant, and every one was corrupt. The King himself was so impoverished, that though he had but a handful of servants, he could neither pay nor feed them. lie was deep in debt, and lived by borrowing, yet he was so thoughtless, that if his French cousins sent him money he gave it or flung it away. l For the first time in these letters Mary Stuart was presented with an authentic picture of her son. She had dreamt of him, through the weary years of her im- prisonment, as her coming champion and avenger. She had slaved, she had intrigued, she had brought her kinsmen in France to espouse his cause. His image had been the one bright spot in the gloomy circle of her thoughts, and this was the end. Here he stood before her drawn by no enemy's pen, but by the hand of her own devoted servant, coarse, ugly, vulgar, un- couth, inflated with vanity and selfishness, and careless whether she lived or died. It must have been a terrible 1 Fontenay d. la Reyne d'Escosse, 515 Aout : MSS. MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. VOL. xi. 30