ts, and hated but
admired by the Catholics, she had become celebrated throughout Europe
for her beauty, intelligence, and strength of mind; thus, her arrival
at Paris created a sensation.

She was so scandalized at the luxury and bold debauchery at court that
she decided to give up the marriage; she had detected the intrigues
and falsity of both the king and Catherine, and had a foreboding of
evil. She wrote to her son Henry:

"Your betrothed is beautiful, very circumspect and graceful, but
brought up in the worst company that ever existed (for I do not see
a single one who is not infected by it) ... I would not for anything
have you come here to live; this is why I desire you to marry and
withdraw yourself and your wife from this corruption which (bad as I
supposed it to be) I find still worse than I thought. Here, it is not
the men who invite the women, but the women who invite the men. If you
were here, you could not escape contamination without a great grace
from God."

In the meantime, Catherine, undecided whether to strike immediately or
to wait, was redoubling her kindness and courtesy and her affectionate
overtures; her enemies were in her hands. Although Jeanne suspected
that Catherine was capable of every perfidy, she at times believed
that her suspicions were unjust or exaggerated. The situation between
these two great women was indeed a dramatic one: both were tactful,
powerful, experienced in war and diplomacy; both were mothers with
children for whose future they sought to provide. Jeanne's hesitancy,
however, was fatal; physically exhausted from suffering and sorrow,
worry and excitement, she suddenly died, in the midst of her
preparations for the marriage. While it is not absolutely certain that
her death was due to poison, subsequent events lead strongly to the
belief that Catherine was instrumental in causing it--that, probably,
being but the first act toward the awful catastrophe she was planning.

"A few hours before her agony, Jeanne dictated the provisions of her
will. She recommended her son to remain faithful to the religion
in which she had reared him, never to permit himself to be lured by
voluptuousness and corruption, and to banish atheists, flatterers, and
libertines.... She begged him to take his sister, Catherine, under his
protection and to be, after God, her father. 'I forbid my son ever
to use severity towards his sister; I wish, to the contrary, that he
treat her with gentleness a