II., out of respect for the Valois blood, indemnified the
Comte d'Auvergne by the gift of the duchy of Angouleme.

Catherine had already given Marie Touchet, who asked nothing, the manor
of Belleville, an estate close to Vincennes which carried no title; and
thither she went whenever the king hunted and spent the night at the
castle. It was in this gloomy fortress that Charles IX. passed the
greater part of his last years, ending his life there, according to some
historians, as Louis XII. had ended his.

The queen-mother kept close watch upon her son. All the occupations of
his personal life, outside of politics, were reported to her. The king
had begun to look upon his mother as an enemy, but the kind intentions
she expressed toward his son diverted his suspicions for a time.
Catherine's motives in this matter were never understood by Queen
Elizabeth, who, according to Brantome, was one of the gentlest queens
that ever reigned, who never did harm or even gave pain to any one, "and
was careful to read her prayer-book secretly." But this single-minded
princess began at last to see the precipices yawning around the
throne,--a dreadful discovery, which might indeed have made her quail;
it was some such remembrance, no doubt, that led her to say to one of
her ladies, after the death of the king, in reply to a condolence that
she had no son, and could not, therefore, be regent and queen-mother:

"Ah! I thank God that I have no son. I know well what would have
happened. My poor son would have been despoiled and wronged like the
king, my husband, and I should have been the cause of it. God had mercy
on the State; he has done all for the best."

This princess, whose portrait Brantome thinks he draws by saying that
her complexion was as beautiful and delicate as the ladies of her suite
were charming and agreeable, and that her figure was fine though rather
short, was of little account at her own court. Suffering from a double
grief, her saddened attitude added another gloomy tone to a scene which
most young queens, less cruelly injured, might have enlivened. The pious
Elizabeth proved at this crisis that the qualities which are the shining
glory of women in the ordinary ways of life can be fatal to a sovereign.
A princess able to occupy herself with other things besides her
prayer-book might have been a useful helper to Charles IX., who found no
prop to lean on, either in his wife or in his mistress.

The queen-mother, as sh