in their lot with those who had a deeper grievance and a more sacred
purpose.

Whether the conversion of the Bourbon prince was of that nature or not,
who can say? But the movement swelled, and France was divided into two
hostile camps: one under the Protestant banner of Antony de Bourbon,
father of Henry of Navarre, and the other under that of the Catholic,
Francis, Duke of Guise; and two children were on the throne of France
while the ground was trembling beneath their feet with a coming
revolution.

Francis I. had been too much occupied with his own plans to take in
hand systematically and seriously the prevailing heresy. Henry II.,
son of Francis, had also temporized with the religious revolt, probably
not realizing the powerful element it contained. Now, with the Guises
firmly in power, there would be no more half-way measures.

But a crisis was at hand which would change the whole situation. The
discovery of a plot to seize the person of the young king and place a
Bourbon prince upon the throne, led to a general slaughter. Fresh
relays of executioners in Paris stood ready to relieve each other when
exhausted, and the Seine was black with the bodies of the drowned.

During this preliminary storm the frail young king, Francis II.,
suddenly died. Marie Stuart passed out of French history, and the
power of the Guises was at an end. The fates were certainly fighting
on the side of Catharine.

There are hints that the fine Italian hand may be seen in this event
which at one stroke removed every obstacle from her path! However this
may be, Catharine wasted no regrets upon the death of a son which made
her queen regent during the minority of her second son, Charles, now
ten years of age (1560).

There was no time to lose. Her control over the feeble Charles IX.
before he reached his majority must be absolute. Every impulse toward
mercy must be extinguished.

What can be said of a mother who seeks to exterminate every germ of
truth or virtue in her son; who immerses him in degrading vices in
order to deaden his too sensitive conscience and make him a willing
tool for her purposes? Inheriting the splendid intelligence as well as
genius for statecraft of the Medici, nourished from her infancy upon
Machiavellian principles, cold and cruel by nature, this Florentine
woman has written her name in blood across the pages of French history.

There were two main ends to be kept in view: the destruction of the
G