,--can /she/ ally herself with the
Reformation?" asked Charles de Gondi.
"But," said his brother Albert, "if she seconds the Guises does she
not play into the hands of a usurpation? We have to do with men who
see a crown to seize in the coming struggle between Catholicism and
Reform. It is possible to support the Reformers without abjuring."
"Reflect, madame, that your family, which ought to have been wholly
devoted to the king of France, is at this moment the servant of the
king of Spain; and to-morrow it will be that of the Reformation if the
Reformation could make a king of the Duke of Florence."
"I am certainly disposed to lend a hand, for a time, to the
Huguenots," said Catherine, "if only to revenge myself on that soldier
and that priest and that woman!" As she spoke, she called attention
with her subtile Italian glance to the duke and cardinal, and then to
the second floor of the chateau on which were the apartments of her
son and Mary Stuart. "That trio has taken from my hands the reins of
State, for which I waited long while the old woman filled my place,"
she said gloomily, glancing toward Chenonceaux, the chateau she had
lately exchanged with Diane de Poitiers against that of Chaumont.
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