barrenness gave reason to
fear a divorce in case her husband should ascend the throne. The dauphin
was under the spell of Diane de Poitiers, who assumed to rival Madame
d'Etampes, the king's mistress. Catherine redoubled in care and cajolery
of her father-in-law, being well aware that her sole support was in
him. The first ten years of Catherine's married life were years of
ever-renewed grief, caused by the failure, one by one, of her hopes of
pregnancy, and the vexations of her rivalry with Diane. Imagine what
must have been the life of a young princess, watched by a jealous
mistress who was supported by a powerful party,--the Catholic
party,--and by the two powerful alliances Diane had made in marrying one
daughter to Robert de la Mark, Duc de Bouillon, Prince of Sedan, and the
other to Claude de Lorraine, Duc d'Aumale.

Catherine, helpless between the party of Madame d'Etampes and the party
of the Senechale (such was Diane's title during the reign of Francois
I.), which divided the court and politics into factions for these mortal
enemies, endeavored to make herself the friend of both Diane de Poitiers
and Madame d'Etampes. She, who was destined to become so great a queen,
played the part of a servant. Thus she served her apprenticeship in that
double-faced policy which was ever the secret motor of her life. Later,
the _queen_ was to stand between Catholics and Calvinists, just as the
_woman_ had stood for ten years between Madame d'Etampes and Madame de
Poitiers. She studied the contradictions of French politics; she saw
Francois I. sustaining Calvin and the Lutherans in order to embarrass
Charles V., and then, after secretly and patiently protecting the
Reformation in Germany, and tolerating the residence of Calvin at the
court of Navarre, he suddenly turned against it with excessive rigor.
Catherine beheld on the one hand the court, and the women of the court,
playing with the fire of heresy, and on the other, Diane at the head
of the Catholic party with the Guises, solely because the Duchesse
d'Etampes supported Calvin and the Protestants.

Such was the political education of this queen, who saw in the cabinet
of the king of France the same errors committed as in the house of the
Medici. The dauphin opposed his father in everything; he was a bad
son. He forgot the cruel but most vital maxim of royalty, namely, that
thrones need solidarity; and that a son who creates opposition during
the lifetime of his father