old age, would have begun
in 1573.' 'But, madame, instead of ordering that horrible murder (pardon
my plainness) why not have employed the vast resources of your political
power in giving to the Reformers those wise institutions which made the
reign of Henri IV. so glorious and so peaceful?' She smiled again and
shrugged her shoulders, the hollow wrinkles of her pallid face giving
her an expression of the bitterest sarcasm. 'The peoples,' she said,
'need periods of rest after savage feuds; there lies the secret of
that reign. But Henri IV. committed two irreparable blunders. He ought
neither to have abjured Protestantism, nor, after becoming a Catholic
himself, should he have left France Catholic. He, alone, was in a
position to have changed the whole of France without a jar. Either not
a stole, or not a conventicle--that should have been his motto. To leave
two bitter enemies, two antagonistic principles in a government with
nothing to balance them, that is the crime of kings; it is thus that
they sow revolutions. To God alone belongs the right to keep good
and evil perpetually together in his work. But it may be,' she said
reflectively, 'that that sentence was inscribed on the foundation of
Henri IV.'s policy, and it may have caused his death. It is impossible
that Sully did not cast covetous eyes on the vast wealth of the
clergy,--which the clergy did not possess in peace, for the nobles
robbed them of at least two-thirds of their revenue. Sully, the
Reformer, himself owned abbeys.' She paused, and appeared to reflect.
'But,' she resumed, 'remember you are asking the niece of a Pope to
justify her Catholicism.' She stopped again. 'And yet, after all,'
she added with a gesture of some levity, 'I should have made a good
Calvinist! Do the wise men of your century still think that religion had
anything to do with that struggle, the greatest which Europe has ever
seen?--a vast revolution, retarded by little causes which, however, will
not be prevented from overwhelming the world because I failed to smother
it; a revolution,' she said, giving me a solemn look, 'which is still
advancing, and which you might consummate. Yes, _you_, who hear me!' I
shuddered. 'What! has no one yet understood that the old interests and
the new interests seized Rome and Luther as mere banners? What! do they
not know Louis IX., to escape just such a struggle, dragged a population
a hundredfold more in number than I destroyed from their homes and l