“He has told me more than a hundred pretty things that I cannot repeat to you, and at which you yourself would be surprised:  he did not want to let me go; he wanted to make me sit up with him all night.  As for me, I pretended to believe everything, and I seemed to interest myself really in him.  Besides, I have never seen him so small and humble; and if I had not known how easily his heart overflows, and how mine is impervious to every other arrow than those with which you have wounded it, I believe that I should have allowed myself to soften; but lest that should alarm you, I would die rather than give up what I have promised you.  As for you, be sure to act in the same way towards those traitors who will do all they can to separate you from me.  I believe that all those people have been cast in the same mould:  this one always has a tear in his eye; he bows down before everyone, from the greatest to the smallest; he wishes to interest them in his favour, and make himself pitied.  His father threw up blood to-day through the nose and mouth; think what these symptoms mean.  I have not seen him yet, for he keeps to the house.  The king wants me to feed him myself; he won’t eat unless I do.  But, whatever I may do, you will be deceived by it no more than I shall be deceiving myself.  We are united, you and I, to two kinds of very detestable people [Mary means Miss Huntly, Bothwell’s wife, whom he repudiated, at the king’s death, to marry the queen.]:  that hell may sever these knots then, and that heaven may form better ones, that nothing can break, that it may make of us the most tender and faithful couple that ever was; there is the profession of faith in which I would die.

“Excuse my scrawl:  you must guess more than the half of it, but I know no help for this.  I am obliged to write to you hastily while everyone is asleep here:  but be easy, I take infinite pleasure in my watch; for I cannot sleep like the others, not being able to sleep as I would like—­that is to say, in your arms.

“I am going to get into bed; I shall finish my letter tomorrow:  I have too many things to tell to you, the night is too far advanced:  imagine my despair.  It is to you I am writing, it is of myself that I converse with you, and I am obliged to make an end.

“I cannot prevent myself, however, from filling up hastily the rest of my paper.  Cursed be the crazy creature who torments me so much!  Were it not for him, I could talk to you of more agreeable things:  he is not greatly changed; and yet he has taken a great deal o f %t.  But he has nearly killed me with the fetid smell of his breath; for now his is still worse than your cousin’s:  you guess that this is a fresh reason for my not approaching him; on the contrary, I go away as far as I can, and sit on a chair at the foot of his bed.

“Let us see if I forget anything.