less Henry III. became more fervid.

Thus, by artfully inflaming the populace of Paris, and through his
organized bands of confederates--that of all the large towns of France,
against the Huguenots and their chief, by appeals to the religious
sentiment; and at the same time by stimulating the disgust and
indignation of the tax-payers everywhere at the imposts and heavy
burthens which the boundless extravagance of the court engendered, Guise
paved the way for the advancement of the great League which he
represented. The other two political divisions were ingeniously
represented as mere insolent factions, while his own was the true
national and patriotic party, by which alone the ancient religion and the
cherished institutions of France could be preserved.

And the great chief of this national patriotic party was not Henry of
Guise, but the industrious old man who sat writing despatches in the
depths of the Escorial. Spanish counsels, Spanish promises, Spanish
ducats--these were the real machinery by which the plots of Guise against
the peace of France and of Europe were supported. Madam League was simply
Philip II. Nothing was written, officially or unofficially, to the French
government by the Spanish court that was not at the same time
communicated to "Mucio"--as the Duke of Guise was denominated in the
secret correspondence of Philip, and Mucio was in Philip's pay, his
confidential agent, spy, and confederate, long before the actual
existence of the League was generally suspected.

The Queen-Mother, Catharine de' Medici, played into the Duke's hands.
Throughout the whole period of her widowhood, having been accustomed to
govern her sons, she had, in a certain sense, been used to govern the
kingdom. By sowing dissensions among her own children, by inflaming party
against party, by watching with care the oscillations of France--so than
none of the great divisions should obtain preponderance--by alternately
caressing and massacring the Huguenots, by cajoling or confronting
Philip, by keeping, as she boasted, a spy in every family that possessed
the annual income of two thousand livres, by making herself the head of
an organized system of harlotry, by which the soldiers and politicians of
France were inveigled, their secrets faithfully revealed to her by her
well-disciplined maids of honour, by surrounding her unfortunate sons
with temptation from earliest youth, and plunging them by cold
calculation into deepest debauc