ow is. All this must be imputed to her goodness of heart,
of which we now stand in sore need--so everybody agrees and the
poor people cry: "We no longer have the Queen Mother to make
peace for us!" It was not through lack of her efforts that she
did not succeed when she went to Guienne recently to treat for
peace, at Coignac and Jarnac, with the King of Navarre and the
Prince de Conde. I know that which I have witnessed--the tears
in her eyes and the regret in her heart to which these princes
would not yield; and the result we possibly see in the evils
which afflict us to-day.

They have wished to accuse her of having been implicated in the
War of the League. Why, then, should she have undertaken to conclude
the peace I have just mentioned, if she had been? Why should she
have appeased the riots of the barricades of Paris; and why
reconciled the King with the Duc de Guise, as we have seen, if
it were only to destroy the latter?

In short, no matter how much they slander her, never shall we
have in France another so active in peace.

But the chief accusation against her is the massacre of Paris
[of Saint Bartholomew]. All that is a sealed book to me, for
I was just then setting out by boat from Brouage; but I have
heard it said on good authority that she was not the prime mover
in it. Three or four others, whom I might name, were much more
active in it than she, pushing her forward and making her believe,
from threats made upon the wounding of Admiral Coligny, that the
King was to be killed, with herself and all her children, or
else that the country was to be still worse involved in arms.
Certainly the Church party were very wrong to utter such threats
as they are said to have made, for they hastened the downward
steps of the poor Admiral and procured his death. If they had kept
their own counsel and uttered no word, and allowed the Admiral's
wounds to heal, he could have left Paris in safety and quiet,
and nothing else would have happened. M. de La Noue has been
strongly of this opinion. Indeed, he and M. de Strozze and I
have talked it over more than once, and he has never approved
the bravados, the bold threats and the like which were openly
made in the King's Court and his city of Paris. And he blamed
no less strongly his brother-in-law, M. de Theligny, who was
one of the hottest heads of them all, calling him a downright
fool and blockhead. The Admiral never was guilty of this loud
talk, at least not in publi