rrect in making a chief element in Catharine's influence, "la
puissance que ladicte Royne a sur ses enfans par ses creatures qu'elle
leur a donne pour serviteurs dez leur enfance." Memoires, 290, 291.

[914] In fact, Catharine, who spared neither herself nor her attendants in
her furious driving in her "_coche_" on such occasions, lost one or more
of the horses, which dropped dead. Tocsain contre les massacreurs, p. 78.

[915] Or, only to her estates in Auvergne, according to the Tocsain, pp.
78, 79. It will be remembered that Catharine's mother was a French heiress
of the famous family of La Tour d'Auvergne.

[916] The younger Tavannes, in the memoirs of his father (Edit. Petitot),
iii. 291, 292, gives the most complete summary of this remarkable
conversation; but it is substantially the same as the briefer sketch in
the Tocsain contre les massacreurs de France, Rheims 1579, pp. 78, 79--a
treatise of which the preface (L'Imprimeur aux lecteurs, dated June 25,
1577) shows that it was written before the death of Charles IX., but the
publication of which was from time to time deferred in the vain hope that
the authors of the inhuman massacre might yet repent. The new and "more
detestable perfidy, fury, and impetuosity" of which the Huguenots were the
victims in the first years of Henry III.'s reign, finally brought it to
the light. The _Archives curieuses_ contain only a part of the treatise.

[917] Smith to Walsingham, Aug. 22, 1572, Digges, 236.

[918] Walsingham to Burleigh, Aug. 10, 1572, Digges, 233. This news and
the interview, which must have taken place about the first week of August,
are the burden of three letters written by Walsingham on the same day.
"Herein nothing prevailed so much as the tears of his mother," he wrote to
Leicester, "who without the army of England cannot consent to any open
dealing. And because they are, as I suppose, assured by their ambassadors
that her Majesty will not intermeddle, they cannot be induced to make any
overture" (p. 233). Walsingham was disheartened at the loss of so critical
an opportunity. "Pleasure and youth will not suffer us to take profit of
advantages, and those who rule under [over] us are fearfull and
irresolute."

[919] Mem. de Tavannes, iii. 291.

[920] Walsingham to Leicester, Aug. 10, 1572, Digges, 233.

[921] "I am requested to desire your lordship to hold him excused in that
he writeth not," he adds, "for that at this time he is overwhelmed with
affair