She saw that in all
probability one of the greatest captains of the age would be foisted
that very day into the place and power of her son, the king of France,
under the formidable title of lieutenant-general of the kingdom.
Before this peril she stood alone, without power of action, without
defence. She might have been likened to a phantom, as she stood there
in her mourning garments (which she had not quitted since the death of
Henri II.) so motionless was her pallid face in the grasp of her
bitter reflections. Her black eyes floated in that species of
indecision for which great statesmen are so often blamed, though it
comes from the vast extent of the glance with which they embrace all
difficulties,--setting one against the other, and adding up, as it
were, all chances before deciding on a course. Her ears rang, her
blood tingled, and yet she stood there calm and dignified, all the
while measuring in her soul the depths of the political abyss which
lay before her, like the natural depths which rolled away at her feet.
This day was the second of those terrible days (that of the arrest of
the Vidame of Chartres being the first) which she was destined to meet
in so great numbers throughout her regal life; it also witnessed her
last blunder in the school of power.
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