Confusion ensued; the three men of the Queen's household were
instantly surrounded and overpowered. In the brief, sharp struggle
the table was overturned, and all would have been in darkness but
that as the table went over the Countess of Argyll had snatched up
the candle-branch, and stood now holding it aloft to light that
extraordinary scene. Rizzio, to whom the sight of Morton had been
as the removal of his last illusion, flung himself upon his knees
before the Queen. Frail and feeble of body, and never a man of his
hands, he was hopelessly unequal to the occasion.

"Justice, madame!" he cried. "Faites justice! Sauvez ma vie!"

Fearlessly, she stepped between him and the advancing horde of
murderers, making of her body a buckler for his protection. White
of face, with heaving bosom and eyes like two glowing sapphires, she
confronted them.

"Back, on your lives!" she bade them.

But they were lost to all sense of reverence, even to all sense of
decency, in their blind rage against this foreign upstart who had
trampled their Scottish vanity in the dust. George Douglas, without
regard for her condition either as queen or woman - and a woman
almost upon the threshold of motherhood - clapped a pistol to her
breast and roughly bade her stand aside.

Undaunted, she looked at him with eyes that froze his trigger-finger,
whilst behind her Rizzio grovelled in his terror, clutching her
petticoat. Thus, until suddenly she was seized about the waist and
half dragged, half-lifted aside by Darnley, who at the same time