and by the favor of Francis I. Later, after the birth of her children, her situation became more tolerable. She professed to be utterly devoted to her husband, mourned his death with real or affected grief, and would never ride or drive near the spot where he received the fatal wound.

Catherine de Medici is generally considered an execrable character, an impersonation of the principle of wickedness such as rarely appears on earth, especially in a female form. History has put her in the pillory among monsters of iniquity, like Domitian, Nero, Cæsar Borgia, enemies and destroyers of their kind. It is hardly possible to dispute the justice of this verdict. Yet she was not destitute of attractive qualities. On the ceiling of a room in the old Burgundian chateau at Tanlay, Catherine is painted as Juno, with two faces, one of which is described as "masculine and sinister," while the other is full of "sweetness and dignity." She might seem to have a dual nature. Her complexion was olive, bespeaking her Italian birth. She had the large eyes peculiar to the Medici family. Her arm and hand are said to have been "the despair of the sculptor," so faultless was their model. She was of medium height, large, but compactly made. Her figure was admired even in middle life. She required and was capable of the most vigorous out-of-door exercise. In the chase, she dashed on through stream and thicket, keeping up with the boldest riders. Then she would give herself up with a hearty appetite to the pleasures of the table; but she arose from it to apply herself with untiring energy to business. Her manners were lively and gracious; her conversation full of spirit and intelligence. She has left behind numerous monuments of her taste in architecture-the palace of the Tuileries owed its beginning to her. Her versatility and tact were equal to any emergency. Her letters to her children are those of a sympathetic mother. She was personally chaste, little as she valued chastity in others. But at the core, as Milton says of Belial, all was false and hollow. It was the grace of the leopard, serving as a veil for its ferocity. Beneath exterior accomplishments, and charms even, was a nature devoid of moral sense. She was swift to shed blood, when a selfish end required it.

But falsehood, and the

treachery that springs from it, was her most loathsome trait.

To comprehend the possibility of such a character, we must remember the spirit of the age, and the atmosphere in which she grew up. In the famous church of Santa Croce, at Florence, where are the sepulchres of Michael Angelo, Galileo, Alfieri, and the cenotaph of Dante, the attention of the visitor is arrested by an impressive epitaph. High up on the smooth face of a marble monument stands the name NICOLAUS MACHIAVELLI. Below, where the inscription would naturally come, there is a broad space left untouched by the chisel; beneath which are carved the words: "Tanto nomini nullum par elogium"-"To so a great a name no eulogy is adequate;" as if the pen had been dropped in despair, for want of words commensurate with the genius and merits of the statesman, scholar, and historian, whose name had been recorded. Yet the word, "Machiavellian" has become a current term to denote knavish intrigue, double-dealing, and fraud. It would be unjust to Machiavelli to brand him as the inventor of the ethical code which he has set forth in "The Prince." This work, which was written for Lorenzo, the father of Catherine, deliberately advises rulers to break their word, whenever they find it convenient to do so. It presents a fair picture of that base public morality of the fifteenth century, which had grown up in the conflicts of the Italian States, and under the eye of the Popes, some of whom were its notorious exemplars. The Machiavellian spirit tainted the public men of the sixteenth century; in some degree, the best of them, as William the Silent, and the Regent Murray of Scotland. As for assassination-that in Italy had been almost reduced to a fine art. The grandfather of Catherine, Lorenzo I., barely escaped from a murderous attempt, which proved fatal to his brother Julian, who fell under the dagger of an assassin before the high altar of the cathedral of Florence, during the celebration of mass-Pope Sixtus IV. being, probably, the chief contriver of the plot. Catherine de Medici was an Italian woman, born and nurtured under the influences that then prevailed, constrained from childhood to cloak her thoughts and impulses, and developing, under the unhappy circumstances in which she was placed, prior to the death of her husband, the cleverness and cunning that belonged to her nature. She was destined to be the

mother of three kings of France, and to play a conspicuous and baleful part in a most eventful period of French history.

At the accession of Francis II., the Queen Mother naturally felt that the hour for the gratification of her ambition had arrived. But she was disappointed. She found that the king and his government were completely under the sway of the family of Guise, in the person of Duke Francis, and of his brother Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine-the knight and the priest, the lion and the fox united. Claude of Lorraine, their father, was an opulent and influential noble, who had distinguished himself in the wars against Charles V. His son Francis, who was now forty years of age, had acquired brilliant fame by his defence of Metz against the Emperor, whom he forced to raise the seige after a loss of 30,000 men, and also by the recent capture of Calais from the English. The Cardinal had been the confessor and trusted counsellor of Henry II. The power of the family had been increased by matrimonial connections. Their brother had married a daughter of Diana of Poitiers. Their niece, Mary Stuart, the daughter of James V. of Scotland, had, in the preceding year, when she was sixteen years old, married Francis II., who was about a year younger than herself. Her beauty, her tact, accomplishments, and energy, were cast on the side of the Guise influence. With her aid, her uncles found no difficulty in managing the boyking. Catherine was obliged to stand back, and yield up the station that she had long coveted. The Constable Montmorenci, who, with his numerous relatives, had shared power with the Guises in the last reign, was civilly dismissed from his post. The Guises, in whose hands everything was practically left, set themselves up as the champions of the Roman Catholic cause, and the enemies of the Protestant heresy. But their path was not to be a smooth one. The princes of the house of Bourbon-descendants of a younger son of Louis IX., St. Louis of France-considered that they were robbed of their legitimate post at the side of the throne. Anthony of Vendome, the eldest, was the husband of that noble Protestant woman, Jeanne D'Albret, the daughter of Margaret, the sister of Francis I., and through his marriage wore the title of King of Navarre. He proved a vacillating and selfish adherent of the

Protestant party, which he at length was bribed to desert. His younger brother, Louis of Condé, who had married a niece of the Constable, and a devoted Protestant, was a gallant soldier, but rash in counsel. With the Bourbons stood the Chatillons, the sons of Louisa of Montmorenci, the Constable's sister; of whom the most eminent was the Admiral, Gaspard de Coligny, one of the greatest men of that or of any age. He was of middle height, with his head slightly bent forward as if in deep thought. His spacious forehead reminds one of the portraits of William the Silent, to whom in character he had many points of resemblance. He spoke little, and slowly. In battle, his grave countenance lighted up, and he was observed to chew the toothpick, which, to the disgust of a class of courtiers, he habitually carried in his mouth. Frequently defeated, he reaped hardly less renown from defeats than from victories. He rose from them with unabated vigor. His constancy never wavered in the darkest hour. He embraced the Calvinistic faith; and whether in the court, the camp, or among his dependents on his own estate, his conduct was strictly governed by the principles of religion. His reserve and gravity, in contrast with the vivacious temper of his countrymen, commanded that respect which these qualities, even when not united with remarkable powers of intellect, usually inspire in them, as we see in the case of Napoleon III.

Here, then, in the middle of the sixteenth century, in France, were all the materials of civil war. It was inevitable that the Calvinists, harassed beyond endurance, should league themselves with the disaffected nobles who offered them the only chance of salvation from their persecutors, and whose religious sympathies were on their side. Thus the Huguenots became a political party. The nation was divided into two bodies, with their passions inflamed. A tempest was at hand, and there was only a boy at the helm.

The conspiracy of Amboise, which occurred in 1560, was an abortive scheme, of which a Protestant gentleman named La Renaudie was the chief author, for driving the Guises from power. Condé was privy to it; Calvin disapproved of it; Coligny took no part in it. The next year the Estates assembled at Orleans, and a trap was laid by the

Catholic leaders for the destruction of all Protestants who should refuse to abjure their religion.. Condé had been arrested and put under guard, when, just as the fatal blow was ready to fall, the young King died. Charles IX., his brother, was only ten years old, and it was no longer practicable to shut out his mother from the office of guardian over him, and from a virtual regency. From this time she comes to the front, and becomes a power in the State. Mary Stuart returned to Scotland, and on another theatre entered upon that tragic career which ended on the scaffold at Fotheringay. The Queen Mother was now free from her dangerous rival. Through her whole career, tortuous and inconsistent as it often seemed, Catherine de Medici was actuated by a single motive-the purpose to maintain the authority of her sons and her own ascendancy over them. To check and cast down whichever party threatened to acquire a dangerous predominance, and to supplant her, was her incessant aim. Caring little or nothing for religious doctrines, she hated the restraints of religion, and hence could regard Calvinism only with aversion. But how indifferent she was to the controversy between the rival Churches is indicated by her jocose remark, when the mistaken report reached her that the Protestants had gained the victory at Dreux: "Then we shall say our prayers in French." She believed in astrology, and that was about the limit of her faith. To rule her children, and to rule France through them, was the one end which she always kept in view.

The civil wars began in 1562 with the massacre of Vassy, where the troopers of Guise povoked a conflict with an unarmed congregation of Protestant worshippers, many of whom they slaughtered. Ten years intervened between this event and the massacre of St. Bartholomew; years of intestine conflict, when France bled at every pore. Neither party was strong enough to subjugate the other. The patience of the Protestants had been worn out by forty years of sanguinary persecution. The battle on both sides was waged with bitter animosity. The country was ravaged from side to side. The Catholics found it impossible to crush their antagonists, who revived from every disaster, and extorted, in successive treaties, a measure of liberty for their worship. Among the events.