Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/413

I57i ] THE RIDOLFI CONSPIRACY. 399 She feared that lie would send a sketch of them pre- maturely to Alva, and that Alva would form an un- favourable opinion with an imperfect case before him. But the Bishop of Boss feared to awake Don Guerau's suspicions by mutilated confidence. If Don Guerau felt his footsteps insecure anywhere in such a sea of quicksands, he would report in a hostile spirit, and the scheme would be ruined. Mary Stuart's letter was therefore laid before him exactly as she wrote it, and the ambassador's own ac- count to Philip was in parts a mere duplicate of the Queen of Scots' words. In form it was addressed to Eidolfi, and the matter which it contained was to be laid before the Pope and Philip. With extreme skill, and touching with comparative lightness on her personal sufferings, she turned the sub- stance of her representations entirely upon the cause of the Catholic Church. "When she spoke of her title and claims, she seemed to value them chiefly as means to- wards the restoration of the faith ; and her own injuries appeared most to grieve her through the sympathy which they excited among the Catholic noblemen a sympathy which, immediately that it was manifested, brought down upon her friends the most cruel and ma- lignant persecutions. ' Some were in prison/ she said, 'some murdered, some in exile, and she was so grieved that she prayed often it might be the will of God to take her out of the world. If she was once dead and beyond the reach of the hard woman who had her in her hands, the Catholics, she thought, would then be