SCOTS QUEENS
VISITS TO FRANCE. ‘ The recent visit of a Queen of Scots birth to France reminds of other Scots Queens and Princesses who have sojourned there. Most people know the affection that the ill-starred Mary Queen of Scots had for France; she had spent part of her girlhood there, and those who have visited the Chateau of Chenonceau in Touraine, where she lived, can imagine why she fell in love with the country. Chenonceau is a dream of a castle,
built partly over a beautiful river—the Cher, which is a tributary of the lordly Loire. Here, in 1558, Mary spent her happy honeymoon with her youthful husband, the Dauphin, who afterwards became Francis 11. At the time of his marriage he was a mere youth of seventeen.'
Some of the treasures in the chateau are still pointed out as wedding gifts to the Scots Queen. The death of the young Dauphin caused the Queen to leave France for Scotland, and in a beautiful though sad song this departure is commemorated: “Adieu charmant pays de France . . . Te quitter, e’est mourir.” (Fare thee well, beloved France; to leave thee means my death.) The grey, sullen skies of Scotland were not attractive to her, and her later life was anything but happy.
It is not so well known that' another Scots Princess who lived about a century before Mary Queen of Scots is linked up with the history of France. In the grim prison-like Castle of Plessis-les-Tours, also in Touraine, and mentioned by Sir Walter Scott in “Quentin Durward,” you see pictures of a Scottish Princess, Margaret, who was first wife of the dreaded and terrible Louis XI., whose character is so well portrayed by Scott in the same book.
This young girl-wife of twenty lay stricken with a serious illness, but, unlike Mary Queen of Scots, she had seen anything but happy days in France' owing to the cruelty of her husband. When the doctor came to attend her she is said to have uttered these words: “De grace, laissez-moi mourir” —“Please let me die” —and her wish was granted, for indeed she died. History is thus repeating itself when a Scotsborn Queen paid a visit to France, this time luckily under happy conditions.
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Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 August 1938, Page 8
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373SCOTS QUEENS Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 August 1938, Page 8
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