One of the darkest of the royal English tragedies concerns a musician,
one David Ricci or Rizzio, who was born at Turin, the son of a poor
music-teacher, and who, when grown, managed to join the train of the
Count de Moretto, then going as ambassador to Scotland. There, thrown
upon his own resources in a far cold country, this forlorn Italian
managed to ingratiate himself among the musicians of Mary, the unhappy
Queen of Scots. She eventually noticed him and engaged him as a singer.
He gradually rose higher in her political and personal favour till he
became secretary for French affairs, and conducted himself with such
odious pride and grew so rich and so powerful that at last he was
dragged from the very presence of the queen and slain. And this was in
the year 1566.




CHAPTER IV.


ORLAND DI LASSUS AND HIS REGINA

A contemporary of the Rizzio, so humble as a musician and so soaring in
his intrigues, was the great Roland de Lattre, better known as Orland di
Lassus or Orlandus Lassus, the "Belgian Orpheus," "_le Prince des
Musiciens_." There is as much dispute over the date of his birth as over
the early conditions of his life. But he was born in either 1520 or 1530
at Mons in Hainault, and, according to the old Annales du Hainault, he
changed his name from Roland de Lattre to Orland di Lassus because his
father had been convicted of making spurious coin and, as a "false
moneyer," had to wear a string of his evil utterances round his neck.