k on
_French Women of the Valois Court_, presents one of the strongest
pictures drawn of Catherine. We shall follow him in the greater part
of this sketch.

According to some historians, Catherine was a mere intriguer, without
talent or ability, living but in the moment, often caught in her
own snares; according to others, by her intelligence, ability, and
strength of character she advanced a cause truly national--that of
French unity; thus, she worked either the ruin or the salvation of
France. Michelet calls her a nonentity, a stage queen with merely
the externals--the attire--of royalty, remaining exactly on a level
with the rulers of the smaller Italian principalities, contriving
everything and fearing everything, with no more heart than she had
sense or temperament. Being a female, she loved her young; she loved
the arts, but cared to cultivate only their externalities. In this,
however, Michelet goes to an extreme; for no woman ever lived who had
so great a talent for intrigues and politics as she--a very type of
the deceit and cunning which were inherent in her race. If she were
not important, had not wielded so much influence and decided the
fate of so many great men, women, and even states, she would not
be the subject of so much writing, of such fierce denunciation
and strong praise. To her family, France owes her finest palaces,
her masterpieces of art--painting, bookmaking, printing, binding,
sculpture.

M. Saint-Amand declares that "isolated from her contemporaries,
Catherine de' Medici is a monster; brought back within the circle of
their passions and their theories, she once more becomes a woman."
But Catherine was the instigator, the embodiment of all that is vice,
deceit, cunning, trickery, wickedness, and bold intrigue; she set
the example, and her ladies followed her in all that she did; "the
heroines bred in her school (and what woman was not in her school?)
imitate, with docility, the examples she gives them." She was not
only the type of her civilization,--brutal, gross, immoral, elegant,
polished, and _mondain_,--but she was also its leader.

Greatness of soul, real moral force, strict virtue, are not attributes
of the sixteenth-century woman--they are isolated and rare exceptions;
these Catherine did not possess. Nor was she influenced deeply by
her environments; the latter but encouraged and developed those
qualities which were hers inherently,--will, intelligence, inflexible
perseverance,