‘She cannot last the night,’ said one of her women, ‘My God, she looks dead already. Is she?’

‘No; not yet.’

‘I would not care to have her sins on my soul. What she will have to answer for!’

Catherine heard them and smiled faintly. Fools! They did not understand. She had worshipped no god; she had worshipped power. She had no religion and no desire for eternal life. She had had one great wish—to rule France through her children; and this had, in large measure, been granted her.

She heard someone whisper: ‘No one ever really loved her. How terrible that is! To go through life unloved.’

Yes, thought Catherine. None loved me. But many feared me.

And after a while she slipped away into darkness.


* * *

‘Catherine de’ Medici is dead!’

The news reached Paris.

‘The Italian woman is no more. It is her turn to face her Maker.’

The people of Paris now hoped that her body would be brought to their city that they might have the pleasure of throwing it into the Seine.

Revolution threatened the whole of France; but in Paris, while some talked angrily of the retribution in store for the King, others found time to chant:

‘L’une ruyne d’Israel,

L’autre, ruyne de la France.’

Acknowledgments

I WISH TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE GREAT HELP the undermentioned books have been to me in my research:

Paris. Bidou.

The Medici. Colonel G. F. Young, CB.

Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. Edited by Dr A. Clarke.

National History of France.(The Century of the Renaissance.) Louis Batiffol. Translated by Elsie Finnimore Buckley.

France, the Nation and Its Development from Earliest Times to the Establishment of the Third Republic. William Henry Hudson.

History of France. Guizot.

Feudal Castles of France. Anonymous.

Dungeons of Old Paris. Tighe Hopkins.

Lives of the Queens of England. Strickland.

Catherine de’ Medici and the French Reformation. Edith Sichel.

The Later Years of Catherine de’ Medici. Edith Sichel.

The Favourites of Henry of Navarre. Le Petit Homme Rouge.

Mémoires de Marguerite de Valois. Marie Ludovic Chrétien Lalanne.

Les Mémoires et l’histoire en France. Charles Caboche.

Catherine de Medicis Presented Charles IX Son Royaume. Pierre Champion.

J. P.