“If he comes,” cried the queen, “I am saved!”
Thus the leaders of the great movement of the Reformation in France were justified in hoping for an ally in Catherine de’ Medici.
“There is one thing to be considered,” said the queen. “The Bourbons may fool the Huguenots and the Sieurs Calvin and de Beze may fool the Bourbons, but are we strong enough to fool Huguenots, Bourbons, and Guises? In presence of three such enemies it is allowable to feel one’s pulse.”
“But they have not the king,” said Albert de Gondi. “You will always triumph, having the king on your side.”
“Maladetta Maria!” muttered Catherine between her teeth.
“The Lorrains are, even now, endeavoring to turn the burghers against you,” remarked Birago.
V. THE COURT
The hope of gaining the crown was not the result of a premeditated plan in the minds of the restless Guises. Nothing warranted such a hope or such a plan. Circumstances alone inspired their audacity. The two cardinals and the two Balafres were four ambitious minds, superior in talents to all the other politicians who surrounded them. This family was never really brought low except by Henri IV.; a factionist himself, trained in the great school of which Catherine and the Guises were masters,—by whose lessons he had profited but too well.
At this moment the two brothers, the duke and cardinal, were the arbiters of the greatest revolution attempted in Europe since that of Henry VIII. in England, which was the direct consequence of the invention of printing. Adversaries to the Reformation, they meant to stifle it, power being in their hands. But their opponent, Calvin, though less famous than Luther, was far the stronger of the two. Calvin saw government where Luther saw dogma only. While the stout beer-drinker and amorous German fought with the devil and flung an inkbottle at his head, the man from Picardy, a sickly celibate, made plans of campaign, directed battles, armed princes, and roused whole peoples by sowing republican doctrines in the hearts of the burghers—recouping his continual defeats in the field by fresh progress in the mind of the nations.