unfortunate measure only so far as it caused the irritation of all
Europe against Louis XIV. At another period England, Holland, and the
Holy Roman Empire would not have welcomed banished Frenchmen and
encouraged revolt in France.

Why refuse, in these days, to the majestic adversary of the most
barren of heresies the grandeur she derived from the struggle itself?
Calvinists have written much against the "craftiness" of Charles IX.;
but travel through France, see the ruins of noble churches, estimate
the fearful wounds given by the religionists to the social body, learn
what vengeance they inflicted, and you will ask yourself, as you
deplore the evils of individualism (the disease of our present France,
the germ of which was in the questions of liberty of conscience then
agitated),--you will ask yourself, I say, on which side were the
executioners. There are, unfortunately, as Catherine herself says in
the third division of this Study of her career, "in all ages
hypocritical writers always ready to weep over the fate of two hundred
scoundrels killed necessarily." Caesar, who tried to move the senate to
pity the attempt of Catiline, might perhaps have got the better of
Cicero could he have had an Opposition and its newspapers at his
command.

Another consideration explains the historical and popular disfavor in
which Catherine is held. The Opposition in France has always been
Protestant, because it has had no policy but that of /negation/; it
inherits the theories of Lutherans, Calvinists, and Protestants on the
terrible words "liberty," "tolerance," "progress," and "philosophy."
Two centuries have been employed by the opponents of power in
establishing the doubtful doctrine of the /libre arbitre/,--liberty of
will. Two other centuries were employed in developing the first