The Mystery of Mary Stuart

If Mary kept this contract, and if it be correctly dated, then Letter VIII. is not of January-February, but of April, 1567.

If Mary regarded herself as now privately married, this pose would explain the phrase ‘your brother-in-law that was,’ in Letter VIII. But this is stretching possibilities.

Mr. Hosack has argued that the Letter just translated was really written to Darnley, between whom and Mary some private preliminary ceremony of marriage was said to have passed. In that case the words par Paris, ‘I send you by Paris, &c.,’ are a forged interpolation, as Paris was not in Mary’s service till January, 1567. The opening sentence about the danger which, as every one thinks, menaces her correspondent, might refer to Darnley. But the tone of remonstrance against indifference, suspicion, and violated promises, is the tone of almost all the Casket Letters, and does not apply to Darnley – before his public marriage.

As to the ‘heart in a ring,’ Mary, as Laing notes, had written to Elizabeth ‘Je vous envoye mon cœur en bague.’ The phrase in the Letter, seul soutien de ma vie, also occurs in one of the Casket Sonnets.

To what known or alleged circumstances in Mary’s relations with Bothwell can this Letter refer? The alternatives are (1) either to her receipt of Bothwell’s answer to Letter II., which Paris (on our scheme of dates) gave to Mary on January 25, at Glasgow; (2) to the moment of her stay at Callendar, where she arrived, with Darnley, on January 27, taking him on January 28 to Linlithgow, whence, on January 29, ‘she wraytt to Bothwell.’ She had learned at Linlithgow, on January 28, by Hob Ormistoun, that Bothwell was on his way from Liddesdale.[375 - Cecil’s Journal.] Or (3) does the letter refer to Monday, April 21, when she was at Stirling till Wednesday, April 23, when she went to Linlithgow, Bothwell being ‘at Haltoun hard by,’ and carrying her off on April 24?[376 - Cecil’s Journal.]

Taking first (1) – we find Mary acknowledging in this letter the receipt of Bothwell’s ‘marriage.’ If this is a contract, did Bothwell send it in the letter which, according to Paris, he wrote on January 24, accompanying it with a diamond? ‘Tell the Queen,’ said Bothwell, ‘that I send her this diamond, which you are to carry, and that if I had my heart I would send it willingly, but I have it not.’ The diamond, a ring probably, might be referred to in Bothwell’s letter as a marriage or betrothal ring (French, union). In return Mary would send her mourning ring; ‘the stone I compare to my heart.’

This looks well, but how could Mary, who, ex hypothesi, had just received a ring, a promise or contract of marriage, and a loving message, complain, as she does, of ‘the coldness of your letters,’ ‘your violated promise,’ ‘your forgetfulness,’ ‘your want of care for me’? Danger to Bothwell, in Liddesdale, she might fear, but these other complaints are absolutely inconsistent with the theory that Bothwell had just sent a letter, a ring, a promise of marriage, and a loving verbal message. We must therefore dismiss hypothesis 1.

(2) Did Mary send this Letter on January 29 from Linlithgow? She had no neglect to complain of there; for, according to her accusers, she was met by Hob Ormistoun, with a letter or message. Paris says this was at Callendar, where she slept on January 27.[377 - Laing, ii. 285.] In that case Bothwell was yet more prompt. Again, Mary had now no fear of danger to Bothwell’s person, as she had just learned that Bothwell had left perilous Liddesdale. Here, once more, there is no room, reason, or ground for her complaints. Again, in the Letter she says that she sends the mourning ring ‘by Paris.’ But, if we are to believe Paris, she did not do so. He gave her Bothwell’s letter, received from Bothwell’s messenger, at Callendar, January 27. She answered it at bedtime, gave it to Paris to be given to Bothwell’s messenger, enclosing a ring, and the messenger carried ring and letter to Bothwell. She could not write, ‘I have sent you by Paris’ the ring, if she did nothing of the sort. Later, according to Paris, she did send him, with the bracelets, from Linlithgow to Edinburgh, where he met Bothwell, just mounting to ride and join Mary and Darnley on their return. The Letter, then, does not fit the circumstances of one written either at Callendar, January 27 (Paris), or at Linlithgow, January 29 (‘Cecil’s Journal’).

(3) That the ring, and the lamentations, were carried, by Paris, from Linlithgow to the neighbouring house of Haltoun, where Bothwell lay, on the night of April 23, the night before he bore Mary off to Dunbar, is not credible. Nothing indicates her receipt of token or contract of marriage at that date. The danger to Bothwell was infinitesimal. He was not neglecting Mary, he was close to her, and only waiting for daylight to carry her off. He wrote in reply, Paris says, and verbally promised to meet her, ‘on the road, at the bridge.’[378 - Laing, ii. 289.]

To a man who was thus doing his best to please her, a man whom she was to meet next day, Mary could not be writing long, affected complaints and lamentations. She would write, if at all, on details of the business on hand. No ring was carried by Paris, according to his own deposition.

Thus the contents of the Letter do not fit into any recorded or alleged juncture in Mary’s relations with Bothwell, after January 21, 1567, when Paris (whom the Letter mentions) first entered her service. Laing places the Letter last in the series, and supposes that the ring and letter were sent from Linlithgow, to Bothwell hard by (at Haltoun), the night before the ‘ravishment.’ But he does not make it plain that the contents of the Letter are really consistent with its supposed occasion.[379 - Laing, ii. 325, 326. Laing holds that between April 21 and April 23 Mary wrote Letters V. VI. VII. VIII. and Eleven Sonnets to Bothwell: strange literary activity!] When was Bothwell absent from Mary, cold, forgetful, and in danger, between the return from Glasgow, and the abduction? The Letter does not help the case of the prosecution.

We have exhausted the three conceivable alternatives as to the date, occasion, and circumstances of this Letter. Its contents fit none of these dates and occasions. Mr. Froude adds a fourth alternative. This Letter ‘was written just before the marriage’[380 - Froude, iii. 75, note 1.] when Bothwell (whose absence is complained of) was never out of Mary’s company.

There is not, in short, an obvious place for this Letter in the recorded circumstances of Mary’s history, though the lack of obviousness may arise from our ignorance of facts.

XVI

THE CASKET SONNETS

When the ‘Detection’ of Buchanan was first published, La Mothe Fénelon, French ambassador in England, writing to Charles IX., described the Sonnets as the worst, or most compromising, of all the evidence. They never allude to Darnley, and must have been written after his death. As is well known, Brantôme says that such of Mary’s verses as he had seen were entirely unlike the Casket Sonnets, which are ‘too rude and unpolished to be hers.’ Ronsard, he adds, was of the same opinion. Both men had seen verses written hastily by Mary, and still ‘unpolished,’ whether by her, or by Ronsard, who may have aided her, as Voltaire aided Frederick the Great. Both critics were, of course, prejudiced in favour of the beautiful Queen. Both were good judges, but neither had ever seen 160 lines of sonnet sequence written by her under the stress of a great passion, and amidst the toils of travel, of business, of intense anxiety, all in the space of two days, April 21 to April 23.

That the most fervent and hurried sonneteer should write eleven sonnets in such time and circumstances is hard to believe, but we must allow for Mary’s sleepless nights, which she may have beguiled by versifying. It is known that a distinguished historian is occupied with a critical edition of these Sonnets. We may await his decision as to their relations with the few surviving poems of the Queen. My own comparison of these does not convince me that the favoured rhymes are especially characteristic of Mary. The topics of the Casket Sonnets, the author’s inability to remove the suspicions of the jealous Bothwell; her protestations of submission; her record of her sacrifices for him; her rather mean jealousy of Lady Bothwell, are also the frequent topics of the Casket Letters. The very phrases are occasionally the same: so much so as to suggest the suspicion that the Letters may have been modelled on the Sonnets, or the Sonnets on the Letters. If there be anything in this, the Sonnets are probably the real originals. Nothing is less likely than that a forger would think of such a task as forging verses by Mary: nor do we know any one among her enemies who could have produced the verses even if he had the will. To suspect Buchanan is grotesque. On the theory of a literary contest between Mary and Lady Bothwell for Bothwell’s affections, something is to be said in the following chapter. Meanwhile, I am obliged to share the opinion of La Mothe Fénelon, that, as proof of Mary’s passion for Bothwell, the Sonnets are stronger evidence than the Letters, and much less open to suspicion than some parts of the Letters.

XVII

CONCLUSIONS AS TO THE LETTERS AND THE POSSIBLE FORGERS

A few words must be said as to a now obsolete difficulty, the question as to the language in which the Letters were originally written. That question need not be mooted: it is settled by Mr. Henderson’s ‘Casket Letters.’ The original language of the epistles was French.

I. The epistles shown at Westminster were certainly in French, which was not (except in the first one or two sentences) the French later published by the Huguenots. That French was translated from the Latin, which was translated from the Scots, which was translated from the original French. Voluminous linguistic criticisms by Goodall, Hosack, Skelton, and others have ceased, therefore, to be in point.

II. Many phrases, whether as mirrored in the Scots and English translations, or as extant in contemporary copies of the original French, can be paralleled from authentic letters of Mary’s. Bresslau proved this easily, but it was no less easily proved that many of the phrases were conventional, and could be paralleled from the correspondence of Catherine de’ Medici and other contemporary ladies. A forger would have ample opportunities of knowing Mary’s phrasing and orthography. It would be easy for me to write a letter reproducing the phrasing and orthography, which is very distinctive, of Pickle the Spy. No argument against forgery can be based on imitations of peculiarities of phrase and spelling which the hypothetical forger was sure to know and reproduce.

But phrasing and spelling are not to be confounded with tone and style. Now the Letters, in tone, show considerable unity, except at one point. Throughout Mary is urging and spurring an indifferent half-hearted wooer to commit an abominable crime, and another treasonable act, her abduction. Really, to judge from the Letters, we might suppose Bothwell to be almost as indifferent and reluctant as Field-Marshal Keith was, when the Czarina Elizabeth offered him her hand. Keith put his foot down firmly, and refused, but the Bothwell who hesitated was lost. It is Mary who gives him no rest till he carries her off: we must blame Bothwell for not arranging the scheme before parting from Mary in Edinburgh; to be sure, Buchanan declares in his History that the scheme was arranged. In short, we become almost sorry for Bothwell, who had a lovely royal bride thrust on him against his will, and only ruined himself out of reluctance to disoblige a lady. It is the old Irish tale of Diarmaid and Grainne over again.

But, on the other hand, Letter II. represents Mary as tortured by remorse and regret. Only to please Bothwell would she act as she does. Her heart bleeds at it. We must suppose that she not only grew accustomed to the situation, but revelled in it, and insisted on an abduction, which even Lethington could only explain by her knowledge of the apices juris, the sublimities of Scots law. A pardon for the abduction would, in Scots law, cover the murder.

Such is the chief difference in tone. In style, though the fact seems to have been little if at all noticed, there are two distinct species. There is the simple natural style of Letters I., II., and the rest, and there is the alembicated, tormented, precious, and affected style of Letters VIII. (III.) and IV. Have we any other examples, from Mary’s hand, of the obscure affectations of VIII. (III.) and IV.? Letter VIII., while it contains phrases which recur in the Casket ‘Sonnets,’ is really more contorted and symboliste in manner than the verses. These ‘fond ballads’ contain, not infrequently, the same sentiments as the Letters, whether the Letters be in the direct or in the affected style. Thus, in Letter II., where Lady Bothwell and Mary’s jealousy of her are the theme, we read ‘Se not hir’ (Lady Bothwell) ‘quhais feinzeit teiris should not be sa mekle praisit or estemit as the trew and faithful travellis quhilk I sustene for to merite her place.’ Compare Sonnets ii. iii.:

Brief je feray de ma foy telle preuve,
Qu’il cognoistra sans faulte ma constance,
Non par mes pleurs ou fainte obeyssance
Comme autres font, mais par divers espreuve.

In both passages the writer contrasts the ‘feigned tears,’ ‘feigned obedience’ of Bothwell’s wife with her own practical proofs of devotion: in the Sonnet using ‘them’ for ‘her’ as in Letter IV.

A possible, but unexpected explanation of the extraordinary diversity of the two styles, I proceed to give. We have briefly discussed the Sonnets, which (despite the opinion of Ronsard) carry a strong appearance of authenticity, though whether their repetitions of the matter and phrasing of the Letters be in favour of the hypothesis that both are authentic might be argued variously. Now from the Sonnets it appears that Lady Bothwell was endeavouring to secure her bridegroom’s heart in a rather unlooked-for manner: namely, by writing to him elaborately literary love letters in the artificial style of the age of the Pleiad. As the Sonnets say, she wooes him ‘par les escriptz tout fardez de sçavoir.’ But Mary maintains that Lady Bothwell is a mere plagiarist. Her ingenious letters, treasured by Bothwell, and the cause of his preference for her, are

empruntés de quelque autheur luisant!

We have already tried to show that Bothwell was not the mere ‘brave stupid strong-handed Border noble,’ ‘the rough ignorant moss-trooper,’ but a man of taste and culture. If the Sonnets be genuine, there was actually a contest in literary excellence between Bothwell’s wife and his royal mistress. This queer rivalry would account for the style of Letter VIII., in which Mary labours to prove to Bothwell, as it were, that she is as capable as his wife of writing a fashionable, contorted, literary style, if she chooses: in poetry, too, if she likes. We naturally feel sorry for a man of action who received, at a moment when decisive action was needful, such an epistle as Letter VIII., and we naturally suppose that he never read it, but tossed it into the Casket with an explosion of profane words. But it is just conceivable that Bothwell had a taste for the ‘precious,’ and that, to gratify this taste, and eclipse Lady Bothwell, Mary occasionally wrote in the manner of Letter VIII. or quoted Jason, Medea, and Creusa.

This hypothesis, far-fetched as it may seem, at all events is naturally suggested by Sonnet VI. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine that a dexterous forger would sit down to elaborate, whether from genuine materials or not, anything so much out of keeping with his Letter II. as is his Letter VIII. Yet Letter VIII., as we saw, cannot be connected with any known moment of the intrigue.

While the Letters thus vary in style, in tone of sentiment they are all uniform, except Letter II. We are to believe that the forger deliberately laid down a theory of this strange wooing. The Queen throughout is much more the pursuer than the pursued. Bothwell is cold, careless, breaks promises, is contemptuously negligent, does not write, is suspicious, prefers his wedded wife to his mistress. Contemporary gossip averred that this, in fact, was his attitude. Thus, after Mary had been sent to Loch Leven, Lethington told du Croc that ‘Bothwell had written several times to his first wife, Lady Bothwell, since he lay with the Queen, and in his letters assured Lady Bothwell that he regarded her as his wife, and the Queen as his concubine.’ Lethington reported this to Mary herself, who discredited the fact, but Lethington relied on the evidence of Bothwell’s letters.[381 - Teulet, ii. 169, 170.] How could he know anything about them? The belief in Bothwell’s preference of his wife was general, and, doubtless, it may be urged that this explains the line taken by the forger.

The passion, in the Letters, is all on the side of Mary. By her eternal protests of entire submission she recalls to us at once her eager service to Darnley in the first days of their marriage, and her constant promises of implicit obedience to Norfolk. To Norfolk, as to Bothwell (we have already shown), she expresses her hope that ‘you will mistrust me no more.’[382 - Labanoff, iii. 5.] ‘If you be in the wrong I will submit me to you for so writing, and ax your pardon thereof.’ She will beg pardon, even if Norfolk is in the wrong! Precisely in the same tone does Mary (in Letter VIII.), after complaining of Bothwell’s forgetfulness, say, ‘But in spite of all I will not accuse you, either of your scant remembrance or scant care, and still less of your broken promise, seeing that what pleases you pleases me.’

This woman, whose pride is said to be in contradiction with her submission, as expressed in the Casket Letters, writes even to Elizabeth, ‘Je me sousmetray à vos commandemants.’[383 - Labanoff, iii. 64.] In Letter VIII. Bothwell is congratulated on ‘votre victoire et mon agreable perte.’ To Elizabeth Mary writes ‘Vous aurés fayt une profitable conqueste de moy.’

That any forger should have known Mary so well as to place her, imaginatively, as regarded Bothwell, in the very attitude which we see that, on occasion, she chose later to adopt in fact, as regarded Norfolk, is perhaps beyond belief. It may be urged that she probably, in early days, wrote to Darnley in this very tone, that Darnley’s papers would fall into his father’s hands, and that Lennox would hand them over as materials to the forger. But ‘it is to consider too curiously to consider thus.’

Such are the arguments, for the defence and the attack, which may be drawn from internal evidence of style. To myself this testimony seems rather in favour of the authenticity of considerable and compromising portions of the papers.

Letter VIII. (intended to prove a contract of marriage with Bothwell) remains an enigma to me: the three Letters proving Mary’s eagerness for the abduction are not without suspicious traits. The epistle about bringing Lord Robert to kill Darnley in a quarrel is involved in the inconsistencies which we have shown to beset that affair. The note about the waiting-woman was hardly worth forging, compromising as it is. Letter I. seems to me certainly authentic, if we adopt the scheme of dates suggested, and reject that of ‘Cecil’s Journal,’ which appears to be official, and answers to Lennox’s demands for dates. It may be merely Lennoxian, but no other scheme of chronology is known to have been put in by the accusers. Letter I., if our dates are admitted, implies the existence of a letter answering to Letter II., which I have had to regard as, in some parts at least, genuine. If forgery and tampering were attempted (as I think they certainly were in the letter never produced, but described by Lennox and Moray, and perhaps in other cases), who was the criminal?

My reply will have been anticipated. Whoever held the pen of the forger, Lethington must have directed the scheme. This idea, based on we know not what information, though I shall offer a conjecture, occurred to Elizabeth, as soon as she heard the first whisper of the existence of the Letters, in June-July, 1567. On July 21, de Silva mentioned to her what he had heard – that the Lords held certain Letters ‘proving that the Queen had been cognisant of the murder of her husband. She told me it was not true, though Lethington had behaved badly in the matter.’[384 - Spanish Calendar, i. 659.] The person from whom Elizabeth thus early heard something connecting Lethington, in an evil way, with the affair must have been Robert Melville. His position was then peculiar. He was first accredited to Elizabeth, on June 5, 1567, by Mary, Bothwell, and Lethington.[385 - Bain, ii. 329, 330.] Melville left Scotland, for Mary, on June 5, returned to Scotland, and again rode to London on June 21, as the envoy of some of her enemies. Now June 21 was the day of the opening of the Casket, and inspection of its contents. A meeting of the Privy Council was held on that day, but Lethington’s name is not among those of the nobles who attended it.[386 - Privy Council Register.] The minutes of the Council say not a word about the Casket, though the members attending Council were, with several others, present, so Morton declared, at the opening of the Casket. Though not at the Council, Lethington was at the Casket scene, according to Morton. And on that very day, Lethington wrote a letter to Cecil, the bearer being Robert Melville, who, says Lethington, is sent ‘on sudden dispatch.’[387 - Bain, ii. 336. Sir John Skelton did not observe the coincidence between the opening of the Casket and the ‘sudden dispatch’ of Robert Melville to London. The letter in full is in Maitland of Lethington, ii. 226, 227.] Melville, in addition to Lethington’s letter, carried a verbal message to Cecil, as the letter proves. We may glean the nature of the verbal message from the letter itself.

We know that the Lords, in December of the same year, publicly and in Parliament, and with strange logic, declared that the ground of their rising and imprisonment of Mary was her guilt as revealed in letters written by her hand, though these were not discovered when the Lords imprisoned Mary. Now Lethington, in his dispatch to Cecil, carried by Melville the day of the Casket finding, says that the bearer, Mr. Robert Melville, ‘can report to you at length the ground of the Lords’ so just and honourable cause.’ Presently that ‘ground’ was declared to be the evidence of the Casket Letters. Melville then would verbally report this new ‘ground’ to Cecil and Elizabeth. He was dispatched at that very date for no other reason. The Lords were Melville’s employers, but his heart was sore for Mary. Elizabeth, on June 30, tells Mary (Throckmorton carried her letter) that ‘your own faithful servant, Robert Melville, used much earnest speech on your behalf.’[388 - Bain, ii. 339.] What Elizabeth knew about Lethington’s bad behaviour as to the Letters, and spoke of to de Silva, she must have heard from Robert Melville. She did not, as far as we are aware, mention her knowledge of the subject till de Silva introduced it on July 21, but only from Melville could she learn whatever she did learn about Lethington. Throckmorton, her envoy to Scotland, did not mention the Letters till July 25, four days after Elizabeth spoke to de Silva. ‘Jhone a Forret,’ whom the Lords sent through London on July 8 to bring Moray, was not exactly the man to blame Lethington and discredit the Letters: for he was probably John Wood, later a chief enemy of Mary.

Suspicions of Lethington, later, were not confined to Elizabeth alone. In Mary’s instructions to her Commissioners (Sept. 9, 1568) she says, ‘There are divers in Scotland, both men and women, that can counterfeit my handwriting, and write the like manner of writing which I use [the ‘Roman’ or Italic] as well as myself, and principally such as are in company with themselves,’[389 - Goodall, ii. 342, 343.] as Lethington then was.

Lesley stated the matter thus: ‘There are sundry can counterfeit her handwriting, who have been brought up in her company, of whom there are some assisting themselves’ (the Lords) ‘as well of other nations as of Scots, as I doubt not both your highness’ (Elizabeth) ‘and divers others of your Highness’s Court, has seen sundry letters sent here from Scotland, which would not be known from her own handwriting.’[390 - Goodall, ii. 388, 389.]

All this is vague, and Mary’s reference to women, Lesley’s reference to those ‘brought up in her company,’ glance, alas! at the Queen’s Maries. Mary Livingstone, wedded to John Sempil, was not on the best terms with Queen Mary about certain jewels. Mary Fleming was Lethington’s wife. Mary Beaton’s aunts were at open feud with the Queen. A lady, unnamed, was selected as the forger by the author of ‘L’Innocence de la Royne d’Escosse’ (1572).

To return to Lethington. In 1615, Camden, writing, as it were, under the eye of James VI. and I., declared that Lethington ‘had privately hinted to the Commissioners at York, that he had counterfeited Mary’s hand frequently.’[391 - Camden, Annals, 143-5. Laing, i. 226.] There is nothing incredible, a priori, in the story. Between October 11, 1568 (when Norfolk, having been privately shown the Letters, was blabbing, even to his servant Bannister, his horror of Letter II.), and October 16, when Lethington rode out with Norfolk, and the scheme for his marrying Mary struck deep root, something may have been said. Lethington may have told Norfolk that perhaps the Letters were forged, that he himself, for amusement, had imitated Mary’s hand. As a fact, the secretaries of two of the foremost of contemporary statesmen did write to the innumerable bores who beset well-known persons, in hands hardly to be distinguished from those of their chiefs. Norfolk, as Laing says, did acknowledge, at his trial, that Lethington ‘moved him to consider the Queen as not guilty of the crimes objected.’ Lethington appears to have succeeded; possibly by aid of the obvious argument that, if he could imitate Mary’s hand for pastime, others might do it for evil motives. Nay, we practically know, and have shown, that Lethington did succeed in making Norfolk, to whom, five days before, he had offered the Letters as proofs of Mary’s guilt, believe that she had not written them. For, as we have seen, whereas Mary at this time was making a compromise with Moray, Norfolk persuaded her to abandon that course. Thus Lethington, on October 11, 1568, made Norfolk believe in the Letters; on October 16, he made him disbelieve or doubt.

We are not to suppose Lethington so foolish as to confess that he was himself the forger. Even if Lethington did tell Norfolk that he had often imitated Mary’s hand, he could not have meant to accuse himself in this case. His son, in 1620, asked Camden for his authority, and we know not that Camden ever replied. He never altered his statement, which meant no more than that, by the argument of his own powers of imitating Mary’s handwriting, Lethington kept urging the Duke of Norfolk to doubt her guilt.[392 - Laing, ii. 224-240.] Lethington’s illustration of the ease with which Mary’s writing could be imitated is rather, if he used it, a proof that he did not hold the pen which may have tampered with the Casket Letters. Our reasons for suspecting him of engaging, though not as penman, in the scheme are:

1. Elizabeth’s early suspicion of Lethington, and the probability that Robert Melville, who had just parted from Lethington, inspired that suspicion.

2. The probability, derived from Randolph’s letter, already cited, that Lethington had access to the Casket before June 21, 1567, but after Mary’s capture at Carberry.

3. Of all men Lethington, from his knowledge of Mary’s disgust at his desertion, ingratitude, and ‘extreme opposition’ to her, in her darkest hour, and from his certainty that Mary held, or professed to hold, documentary proof of his own guilt, had most reason to fear her, and desire and scheme her destruction.

4. Kirkcaldy of Grange, on April 20, 1567, months before the Letters were discovered, wrote to Cecil that Mary ‘has said that she cares not to lose (a) France, (b) England, and (c) her own country’ for Bothwell.[393 - Bain, ii. 322.]