Apart from her political duty, as she understood it, and which meant the
upholding of the monarchy, Catherine was a true woman; kind to her
suite, faithful to her friends. She had none of the weaknesses of her
sex; she lived chaste amid the debauchery of the most licentious court
in Europe. The losses to art caused by the destructive Calvinists she
replaced by erecting noble buildings and beautifying Paris. But she had
the sense of royalty developed to the utmost; she defended it to the
extreme. In France the opposition was always Protestant. It was her
enemy, the enemy of the crown, the arch-enemy of France. It is laid to
her charge that she coquetted with the Huguenots, whom she afterward
slew. This there is no denying; she had but her craft with which to
oppose the Guise faction, the various court cliques, and the Huguenots
themselves.
An expert at the game, she played one piece against another, skilfully
avoiding the checkmate. Pawns might be lost, bishops fall to her hand,
knights be unhorsed, but her king was secured. She could only triumph by
cunning.
A state cannot be governed by the same rule of morality as that which
should govern individual conduct; it is impossible that it should be so.
Professor Saintsbury says: "Every cool-headed student of history and
ethics will admit that it was precisely the abuse of the principle at
this time, and by the persons of whom Catherine de' Medici, if not the
most blamable, _has had the most blame put on her_, that brought the
principle itself into discredit.
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