tedness of Catharine.]

But, besides the two parties, and wavering between them--fluctuating in
her own purposes, as false to her own plans as she was to her promises,
with no principles either of morality or of government, intent only on
grasping power, the enemy of every one that stood in the way of this, even
if it were her son or her daughter--was that enigma, Catharine de' Medici,
whose secret has escaped so many simply because they looked for something
deep and recondite, when the solution lay almost upon the very surface.
Was Catharine sincerely in favor of peace? She was never sincere. Her
Macchiavellian training, the enforced hypocrisy of her married life, the
trimming policy she had thought herself compelled to pursue during the
minority of the kings, her two sons, had eaten from her soul, even to its
root, truthfulness--that pure plant of heaven's sowing. Loving peace only
because it freed her from the fears, the embarrassments, the vexations of
war--not because she valued human life or human happiness--she embraced it
as a welcome expedient to enable her to escape the present perplexities of
her position. It is improbable that Catharine distinctly premeditated a
treacherous blow at the Huguenots, simply because she rarely premeditated
anything very long. I am aware that this estimate of the queen is quite at
variance with the views which have obtained the widest currency; but it is
the estimate which history, carefully read, seems to require us to adopt.
Catharine's plans were proverbially narrow in their scope, never extending
much beyond the immediate present. After the catastrophe, which had
perhaps been the result of the impulse of the moment, she was not,
however, unwilling to accept the homage of those who deemed it a high
compliment to her prudence to praise her consummate dissimulation. She
probably entered upon the peace of Longjumeau without any settled purpose
of treachery--unless that state of the soul be in itself treachery that
has no fixed intention of upright dealing. But she had not, in adopting
the advice of Chancellor de l'Hospital, renounced the policy of the
Cardinal of Lorraine, in case that policy should at some future time
appear to be advantageous; and it was much to be feared that the
contingency referred to would soon arrive. Catharine, not less than
Charles himself, resented "the affair of Meaux" of the preceding
September. It was studiously held up to their eyes by the enemies of t