therefore not the outcome of any inborn feeling of sympathy or
womanly tenderness. Whether her signing of the Edict of Saint-Germain,
admitting the Protestants to all employments and granting them the
privilege of Calvinistic worship in two cities of every province, and
her refusal, upon the urgent solicitations of her son-in-law, Philip
II., to persecute heretics were really snares laid for the Huguenots,
is a matter which historians have not decided.

Inasmuch as the entire history of France plays about the personality
of Catherine de' Medici, no attempt will be made to give a detailed
chronological account of her career; the results, rather than the
events themselves, will be given. M. Saint-Amand, in his work 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