, singing, as he did so, a song in which the
queen was grossly insulted. Henri IV. drew his sword to go out and
kill the man; but Catherine stopped him and contented herself with
calling from the window to her insulter:--
"Eh! but it was Catherine who gave you the goose."
Though the executions at Amboise were attributed to Catherine, and
though the Calvinists made her responsible for all the inevitable
evils of that struggle, it was with her as it was, later, with
Robespierre, who is still waiting to be justly judged. Catherine was,
moreover, rightly punished for her preference for the Duc d'Anjou, to
whose interests the two elder brothers were sacrificed. Henri III.,
like all spoilt children, ended in becoming absolutely indifferent to
his mother, and he plunged voluntarily into the life of debauchery
which made of him what his mother had made of Charles IX., a husband
without sons, a king without heirs. Unhappily the Duc d'Alencon,
Catherine's last male child, had already died, a natural death.
The last words of the great queen were like a summing up of her
lifelong policy, which was, moreover, so plain in its common-sense
that all cabinets are seen under similar circumstances to put it in
practice.
Pages:
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32