[914] In fact, Catharine, who spared neither herself nor her attendants in her furious driving in her "coche" on such occasions, lost one or more of the horses, which dropped dead. Tocsain contre les massacreurs, p. 78.
[915] Or, only to her estates in Auvergne, according to the Tocsain, pp. 78, 79. It will be remembered that Catharine's mother was a French heiress of the famous family of La Tour d'Auvergne.
[916] The younger Tavannes, in the memoirs of his father (Edit. Petitot), iii. 291, 292, gives the most complete summary of this remarkable conversation; but it is substantially the same as the briefer sketch in the Tocsain contre les massacreurs de France, Rheims 1579, pp. 78, 79—a treatise of which the preface (L'Imprimeur aux lecteurs, dated June 25, 1577) shows that it was written before the death of Charles IX., but the publication of which was from time to time deferred in the vain hope that the authors of the inhuman massacre might yet repent. The new and "more detestable perfidy, fury, and impetuosity" of which the Huguenots were the victims in the first years of Henry III.'s reign, finally brought it to the light. The Archives curieuses contain only a part of the treatise.
[917] Smith to Walsingham, Aug. 22, 1572, Digges, 236.
[918] Walsingham to Burleigh, Aug. 10, 1572, Digges, 233. This news and the interview, which must have taken place about the first week of August, are the burden of three letters written by Walsingham on the same day. "Herein nothing prevailed so much as the tears of his mother," he wrote to Leicester, "who without the army of England cannot consent to any open dealing. And because they are, as I suppose, assured by their ambassadors that her Majesty will not intermeddle, they cannot be induced to make any overture" (p. 233). Walsingham was disheartened at the loss of so critical an opportunity. "Pleasure and youth will not suffer us to take profit of advantages, and those who rule under [over] us are fearfull and irresolute."
[919] Mém. de Tavannes, iii. 291.
[920] Walsingham to Leicester, Aug. 10, 1572, Digges, 233.
[921] "I am requested to desire your lordship to hold him excused in that he writeth not," he adds, "for that at this time he is overwhelmed with affairs." Walsingham to Leicester, Aug. 10, 1572, Digges, 234.
[922] Sir Thomas Smith's plea in her behalf is interesting and plausible, but will not receive the sanction of any one who takes into account the vast difference in the positions of Elizabeth and Charles, or considers the principles of which the former was, or should have been, the advocate. The good secretary, I need not remind my reader, was never reluctant to parade his Latinity: "If you there [in France] do tergiversari and work tam timide and underhand with open and outward edicts, besides excuses at Rome and at Venice by your ambassadors, you, I say, which have Regem expertem otii, laboris amantem, cujus gens bellicosa jampridem assueta est cædibus tam exterioris quam vestri sanguinis, quid faciemus gens otiosa et paci assueta, quibus imperat Regina, et ipsa pacis atque quietis amantissima." Smith to Walsingham, Aug. 22, 1572, Digges, 237.
[923] Puntos de Cartas de Anton de Guaras al Duque de Alva, June 30th: MS. Simancas, apud Froude, x. 383.