er in a good and holy marriage.'" D'Aubigne wrote of her:
"A princess with nothing of a woman but sex--with a soul full of
everything manly, a mind fit to cope with affairs of moment, and a
heart invincible in adversity."

It was in deep mourning that her son, then King of Navarre, arrived at
Paris; the eight hundred gentlemen who attended him were all likewise
in mourning. "But," says Marguerite de Valois, "the nuptials took
place in a few days, with triumph and magnificence that none others,
of even my quality, had ever beheld. The King of Navarre and his troop
changed their mourning for very rich and fine clothes, I being dressed
royally, with crown and corsage of tufted ermine all blazing with
crown jewels, and, the grand blue mantle with a train four ells long
borne by three princesses. The people down below, in their eagerness
to see us as we passed, choked one another." (Thus quickly was Jeanne
d'Albret forgotten.) The ceremonies were gorgeous, lasting four days;
but when Admiral Coligny, the Huguenot leader, was struck in the hand
by a musket ball, the festive aspect of affairs suddenly changed.
On the second day after the wounding of Coligny, and before the
excitement caused by that act had subsided, Catherine accomplished
the crowning work of her invidious nature, the tragedy of Saint
Bartholomew.

Peace and quiet never appeared upon the countenance of Catherine
de' Medici--that woman who so faithfully represents and pictures the
period, the tendencies of which she shaped and fostered by her own
pernicious methods; and Charles IX., her son, was no better than his
mother. Saint-Amand, in his splendid picture of the period, gives a
truthful picture of Catherine as well: "It is interesting to observe
how curiously the later Valois represented their epoch. Francis I. had
personified the Renaissance; Charles IX. sums up in himself all the
crises of the religious wars--he is the true type of the morbid and
disturbed society where all is violent; where the blood is scorched
by the double fevers of pleasure and cruelty; where the human soul,
without guide or compass, is tossed amid storms; where fanaticism
is joined to debauchery, superstition to incredulity, cultured
intelligence to depravity of heart. This wholly unbalanced
character--which stretches evil to its utmost limits while preserving
the knowledge of what is good, which mistrusts everybody and yet
has at least the aspiration toward friendship and love, if