house of Bourbon
was able to succeed to the house of Valois, that it found a crown
preserved to it, was due solely to Catherine de' Medici. Suppose the
second Balafre had lived? No matter how strong the Bearnais was, it is
doubtful whether he could have seized the crown, seeing how dearly the
Duc de Mayenne and the remains of the Guise party sold it to him. The
means employed by Catherine, who certainly had to reproach herself with
the deaths of Francois II. and Charles IX., whose lives might have
been saved in time, were never, it is observable, made the subject of
accusations by either the Calvinists or modern historians. Though there
was no poisoning, as some grave writers have said, there was other
conduct almost as criminal; there is no doubt she hindered Pare from
saving one, and allowed the other to accomplish his own doom by moral
assassination. But the sudden death of Francois II., and that of Charles
IX., were no injury to the Calvinists, and therefore the causes of these
two events remained in their secret sphere, and were never suspected
either by the writers of the people of that day; they were not divined
except by de Thou, l'Hopital, and minds of that calibre, or by the
leaders of the two parties who were coveting or defending the throne,
and believed such means necessary to their end.

Popular songs attacked, strangely enough, Catherine's morals. Every
one knows the anecdote of the soldier who was roasting a goose in
the courtyard of the chateau de Tours during the conference between
Catherine and Henri IV., singing, as he did so, a song in which the
queen was grossly insulted. Henri IV. drew his sword to go out and kill
the man; but Catherine stopped him and contented herself with calling
from the window to her insulter:--

"Eh! but it was Catherine who gave you the goose."

Though the executions at Amboise were attributed to Catherine, and
though the Calvinists made her responsible for all the inevitable evils
of that struggle, it was with her as it was, later, with Robespierre,
who is still waiting to be justly judged. Catherine was, moreover,
rightly punished for her preference for the Duc d'Anjou, to whose
interests the two elder brothers were sacrificed. Henri III., like all
spoilt children, ended in becoming absolutely indifferent to his mother,
and he plunged voluntarily into the life of debauchery which made of him
what his mother had made of Charles IX., a husband without sons, a king
withou