pointed out to the latter the necessity of an alliance against the
Guises. Informed of this intrigue, the Guises entered the queen's
chamber for the purpose of compelling her to issue an order consigning
the vidame to the Bastille, and Catherine, to save herself, was under
the hard necessity of obeying them. After a captivity of some months,
the vidame died on the very day he left prison, which was shortly
before the conspiracy of Amboise. Such was the conclusion of the first
and only amour of Catherine de' Medici. Protestant historians have
said that the queen caused the vidame to be poisoned, to lay the
secret of her gallantries in a tomb!

We have now shown what was the apprenticeship of this woman for the
exercise of her royal power.




PART I

THE CALVINIST MARTYR



I

A HOUSE WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS AT THE CORNER OF A STREET
WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS IN A PARIS WHICH NO LONGER EXISTS

Few persons in the present day know how plain and unpretentious were
the dwellings of the burghers of Paris in the sixteenth century, and