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.
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