that
teeming mother had cast her spawn over the whole universe. You accuse
me of a crime, and you put up statues to the son of Anne of Austria!
Nevertheless, he and I attempted the same thing; he succeeded, I failed;
but Louis XIV. found the Protestants without arms, whereas in my reign
they had powerful armies, statesmen, warriors, and all Germany on their
side.' At these words, slowly uttered, I felt an inward shudder pass
through me. I fancied I breathed the fumes of blood from I know not what
great mass of victims. Catherine was magnified. She stood before me like
an evil genius; she sought, it seemed to me, to enter my consciousness
and abide there."

"He dreamed all that," whispered Beaumarchais; "he certainly never
invented it."

"'My reason is bewildered,' I said to the queen. 'You praise yourself
for an act which three generations of men have condemned, stigmatized,
and--' 'Add,' she rejoined, 'that historians have been more unjust
toward me than my contemporaries. None have defended me. I, rich and
all-powerful, am accused of ambition! I am taxed with cruelty,--I who
have but two deaths upon my conscience. Even to impartial minds I am
still a problem. Do you believe that I was actuated by hatred, that
vengeance and fury were the breath of my nostrils?' She smiled with
pity. 'No,' she continued, 'I was cold and calm as reason itself. I
condemned the Huguenots without pity, but without passion; they were
the rotten fruit in my basket and I cast them out. Had I been Queen of
England, I should have treated seditious Catholics in the same way. The
life of our power in those days depended on their being but one God,
one Faith, one Master in the State. Happily for me, I uttered my
justification in one sentence which history is transmitting. When Birago
falsely announced to me the loss of the battle of Dreux, I answered:
"Well then; we will go to the Protestant churches." Did I hate the
reformers? No, I esteemed them much, and I knew them little. If I felt
any aversion to the politicians of my time, it was to that base Cardinal
de Lorraine, and to his brother the shrewd and brutal soldier who spied
upon my every act. They were the real enemies of my children; they
sought to snatch the crown; I saw them daily at work and they wore me
out. If _we_ had not ordered the Saint-Bartholomew, the Guises would
have done the same thing by the help of Rome and the monks. The League,
which was powerful only in consequence of my