t 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.

"Enough cut off, my son," she said when Henri III. came to her death-bed
to tell her that the great enemy of the crown was dead, "_now piece
together_."

By which she meant that the throne should at once reconcile itself
with the house of Lorraine and make use of it, as the only means of
preventing evil results from the hatred of the Guises,--by holding out
to them the hope of surrounding the king. But the persistent craft and
dissimulation of the woman and the Italian, which she had never
failed to employ, was incompatible with the debauched life of her son.
Catherine de' Medici once dead, the policy of the Valois died also.

Before undertaking to write the history of the manners and morals
of this period in action, the author of this Study has patiently and
minutely examined the principal reigns in the history of France, the
quarrel of the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, that of the Guises and the
Valois, each of which covers a century. His first intention was to
write a picturesque history of France. Three women--Isabella of Bavaria,
Catharine and Marie de' Medici--hold an enormous place in it, their sway
reaching from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, ending in Louis
XIV. Of these three queens, Catherine is the finer and more interesting.
Hers was virile power, dishonored neither by the terrible amours of
Isabella nor by those, even more terrible, though less known, of Marie
de' Medici. Isabella summoned the English into France against her son,
and loved her brother-in-law, the Duc d'Orleans. The record of Marie de'
Medici is heavier still. Neither had political genius.

It was in the course of these studies that the writer acquired the
conviction of Catherine's greatness; as he became initiated into the
constantly renewed difficulties of her position, he saw with what
injustice historians--all influenced by Protestants--had treated this
queen. Out of this conviction grew the three sketches which here follow;
in which some erroneous opinions formed upon Catherine, also upon the
persons who surrounded her, and on the events of her time, are refuted.
If this book is placed among the Philosophical St