who had come to the Scottish Court some four years ago as a
starveling minstrel in the train of Monsieur de Morette, the
ambassador of Savoy.

It was Rizzio's skill upon the rebec that had first attracted Mary's
attention. Later he had become her secretary for French affairs
and the young Queen, reared amid the elegancies of the Court of
France, grew attached to him as to a fellow-exile in the uncouth
and turbulent land over which a harsh destiny ordained that she
should rule. Using his opportunities and his subtle Italian
intelligence, he had advanced so rapidly that soon there was no man
in Scotland who stood higher with the Queen. When Maitland of
Lethington was dismissed under suspicion of favouring the exiled
Protestant lords, the Seigneur Davie succeeded him as her secretary;
and now that Morton was under the same suspicion, it was openly said
that the Seigneur Davie would be made chancellor in his stead.

Thus the Seigneur Davie was become the most powerful man in Scotland,
and it is not to be dreamt that a dour, stiff-necked nobility would
suffer it without demur. They intrigued against him, putting it
abroad, amongst other things, that this foreign upstart was an
emissary, of the Pope's, scheming to overthrow the Protestant
religion in Scotland. But in the duel that followed their blunt
Scotch wits were no match for his Italian subtlety. Intrigue as
they might his power remained unshaken. And then, at last it began
to be whispered that he owed his high favour with the beautiful
young Queen to other than his secretarial abilities, so that Bedford
wrote to Cecil:

"What countenance the Queen shows David I will not write, for the