lifelong policy, which was, moreover, so plain in its common-sense
that all cabinets are seen under similar circumstances to put it in
practice.

"Enough cut off, my son," she said when Henri III. came to her
death-bed to tell her that the great enemy of the crown was dead,
"/now piece together/."

By which she meant that the throne should at once reconcile itself
with the house of Lorraine and make use of it, as the only means of
preventing evil results from the hatred of the Guises,--by holding out
to them the hope of surrounding the king. But the persistent craft and
dissimulation of the woman and the Italian, which she had never failed
to employ, was incompatible with the debauched life of her son.
Catherine de' Medici once dead, the policy of the Valois died also.

Before undertaking to write the history of the manners and morals of
this period in action, the author of this Study has patiently and
minutely examined the principal reigns in the history of France, the
quarrel of the Burgundians and the Armagnacs, that of the Guises and
the Valois, each of which covers a century. His first intention was to
write a picturesque history of France. Three women--Isabella of
Bavaria, Catharine and Marie de' Medici--hold an enormous place in it,
their sway reaching from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century,
ending in Louis XIV. Of these three queens, Catherine is the finer and
more interesting. Hers was virile power, dishonored neither by the
terrible amours of Isabella nor by those, even more terrible, though
less known, of Marie de' Medici. Isabella summoned the English into
France against her son, and loved her brother-in-law, the Duc
d'Orleans. The record of Marie de' Medici is heavier still. Neither