assions notably exhibited the strange effects produced in all ages
by the strong antagonism of two powerful conflicting interests in the
State. Gallantry, which served Catherine so well, was also an auxiliary
of the Guises. The Prince de Conde, the first leader of the Reformation,
was a lover of the Marechale de Saint-Andre, whose husband was the tool
of the Grand Master. The cardinal, convinced by the affair of the Vidame
de Chartres, that Catherine was more unconquered than invulnerable as to
love, was paying court to her. The play of all these passions strangely
complicated those of politics,--making, as it were, a double game of
chess, in which both parties had to watch the head and heart of their
opponent, in order to know, when a crisis came, whether the one would
betray the other.

Though she was constantly in presence of the Cardinal de Lorraine or of
Duc Francois de Guise, who both distrusted her, the closest and ablest
enemy of Catherine de' Medici was her daughter-in-law, Queen Mary, a
fair little creature, malicious as a waiting-maid, proud as a Stuart
wearing three crowns, learned as an old pedant, giddy as a school-girl,
as much in love with her husband as a courtesan is with her lover,
devoted to her uncles whom she admired, and delighted to see the king
share (at her instigation) the regard she had for them. A mother-in-law
is always a person whom the daughter-in-law is inclined not to like;
especially when she wears the crown and wishes to retain it, which
Catherine had imprudently made but too well known. Her former position,
when Diane de Poitiers had ruled Henri II., was more tolerable than
this; then at least she received the external honors that were due to a
queen, and the homage of the court. But now the duke and the cardinal,
who had none but their own minions about them, seemed to take pleasure
in abasing her. Catherine, hemmed in on all sides by their courtiers,
received, not only day by day but from hour to hour, terrible blows to
her pride and her self-love; for the Guises were determined to treat her
on the same system of repression which the late king, her husband, had
so long pursued.

The thirty-six years of anguish which were now about to desolate France
may, perhaps, be said to have begun by the scene in which the son of the
furrier of the two queens was sent on the perilous errand which makes
him the chief figure of our present Study. The danger into which this
zealous Reformer was a