But for one woman who affronts her kind
By wicked passions and remorseless hate,
A thousand make amends in age and youth,
By heavenly pity, by sweet sympathy,
By patient kindness, by enduring truth,
By love, supremest in adversity.”—Charles Mackay.
“WOE to thee, O country, that hast a child for king!” exclaimed the Venetian ambassador in France, in 1560, when Charles IX., a child ten years old, ascended the throne; but greater woe to that country because the mother of that child, who held the power of government, as queen-regent, was one of the greatest monsters of crime in the annals of history, and forced that child to become a very fiend of infamy and cruelty.
CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI
Painting by François Clouet,
Chantilly.