to
the latter the necessity of an alliance against the Guises. Informed of
this intrigue, the Guises entered the queen's chamber for the purpose of
compelling her to issue an order consigning the vidame to the Bastille,
and Catherine, to save herself, was under the hard necessity of obeying
them. After a captivity of some months, the vidame died on the very day
he left prison, which was shortly before the conspiracy of Amboise. Such
was the conclusion of the first and only amour of Catherine de' Medici.
Protestant historians have said that the queen caused the vidame to be
poisoned, to lay the secret of her gallantries in a tomb!

We have now shown what was the apprenticeship of this woman for the
exercise of her royal power.

PART I. THE CALVINIST MARTYR

I. A HOUSE WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS

AT THE CORNER OF A STREET WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS IN A PARIS WHICH NO
LONGER EXISTS

Few persons in the present day know how plain and unpretentious were
the dwellings of the burghers of Paris in the sixteenth century, and how
simple their lives. Perhaps this simplicity of habits and of thought was
the cause of the grandeur of that old bourgeoisie which was certainly
grand, free, and noble,--more so, perhaps, than the bourgeoisie of the
present day. Its history is still to be written; it requires and it
awaits a man of genius. This reflection will doubtless rise to the lips
of every one after reading the almost unknown incident which forms
the basis of this Study and is one of the most remarkable facts in the
history of that bourgeoisie. It will not be the first time in history
that conclusion has preceded facts.

In 1560, the houses of the rue de la Vieille-Pelleterie skirted the left
bank of the Seine, between the pont Notre-Dame and the pont au Change.
A public footpath and the houses then occupied the space covered by the
present roadway. Each house, standing almost in the river, allowed its
dwellers to get down to the water by stone or wooden stairways, closed
and protected by strong iron railings or wooden gates, clamped with
iron. The houses, like those in Venice, had an entrance on _terra
firma_ and a water entrance. At the moment when the present sketch is
published, only one of these houses remains to recall the old Paris of
which we speak, and that is soon to disappear; it stands at the
corner of the Petit-Pont, directly opposite to the guard-house of the
Hotel-Dieu.

Formerly each dwelling presented