Dark Eminence Catherine De Medici And Her Children by Marguerite Vance (good e books to read .TXT) 📗

Already his admiration for his beautiful widowed sister-in-law was causing comment at Court, his temper tantrums were bringing woe to his tutors and governors. This was the new King.

In a measure Catherine was proud of him, proud of his abnormal physical strength, his ability to outride, outshoot and outwrestle any of his gentlemen. But there her interest in him seemed to come to a full halt. It was his brother, Henry, Duke of Anjou, she was watching. He had ever been her favorite son and to see him on the throne of France was her dream. Incredible mother that she was, Catherine deliberately instructed Charles's tutors not to be overzealous in their training of his morals or his physical habits; let him, she implied, become another Francis, weak, easily influenced— by her—and not too long-lived. Henry must wear the crown as soon as possible. Meanwhile neither the Guises nor the Bourbons were going to influence Charles if Catherine could prevent it, and with this uppermost in her mind, she took Antoine of Bourbon to task.

By ancient law the Bourbon House would succeed the

last Valois as the reigning House of France. Catherine coolly looked over her remaining three sons and admitted hitterly to herself that the end of the Valois strain was by no means unlikely. Distrusting the Guises, she still must watch the Bourbons who were formidable in their own right. For one thing she must retain the regency for the ten-year-old King. Antoine of Navarre, the Bourbon prince, as closest male relative, might claim the regency himself and so be in control of Charles's every move. She must act swiftly and cautiously if she hoped to keep her own power over the throne. With all the charm at her command, that subtle Medici charm, she made Navarre a daring promise.

If he would under oath renounce his claim as Regent during the minority of the young King, he should be rewarded by receiving the high office of Lieutenant General. With every intention of declining, Antoine, under the spell of Catherine's charm, accepted and she relaxed. For a few more years at least she would be at the head of the kingdom, the power guiding the course of the throne of the one man in France who had shown her sincere friendship, her father-in-law, Francis I.

As for the presence of Mary Stuart, the little Dowager Queen, this, too, required thought. Charles had fallen hopelessly in love with her even before his brothers death, and once in a hysterical outburst, he shouted that in the tomb Francis must never forget that he had possessed as his very own this beautiful princess for even a short time and so should never regret his untimely death. Catherine, however, had had all she could endure of the girl who had dared call

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her "a merchant's daughter," and refused even to consider the match.

The wily Guises then remembered Don Carlos of Spain. Their position in the Catholic party would he immeasurably improved by the marriage of their niece to the son of His Most Catholic Majesty, Philip of Spain. However, they had not considered how the staunchly Protestant Elizabeth of England or Catherine de Medici, whose daughter was the young stepmother of Don Carlos, would view such a marriage. The plan, they decided, might better be abandoned.

Scotland made overtures for the return of Mary to her native land and Catherine was quick to agree to the suggested terms. So on a cold spring day in 1561 the young Queen of Scotland set sail from Calais for the land she scarcely remembered, leaving behind her bitter-sweet memories of a way of life she had found good and of a love which was profound, however contrived. Her marriage to her cousin, Henry Darnley, son o£ the Earl of Lennox, followed almost immediately. So Mary Stuart, for years a part of the Valois family, passed out of its bounds.

The perplexing subject of Huguenot versus Catholic at this time can be explained quite simply, though the endless plots and counterplots by leaders of both factions in the war for religious supremacy are too many and too complicated to follow unless one is making a serious study of the epoch.

Wherever class hatred is strong there are often the elements for religious controversy as well. The Huguenots were largely made up of middle-class folk, professional men, small

landowners and merchants. They were the ones who paid the high taxes from which the nobility was exempted; they dressed modestly, even somberly, as a rebuke to their wealthy adversaries, the Catholic nobility. They sincerely believed the Catholic dogma regarding the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Holy Communion was a sacrilege and for this they were willing to die—and did, by the thousands. On the other hand, the Catholics detested the Huguenots for their dreary hymns, their general attitude of self-righteousness and above all, their denial of the Real Presence. And, like the Huguenots, they were glad to suffer if need be in defense of their faith. That among leaders of both parties there were hypocrites and turncoats goes without saying. Most of the supporters of the Bourbons were Huguenots, most Guises "were ultra-Catholic, and their hatred for each other was lethal.

Catherine as Regent was caught between the two. To be on friendly terms with the Huguenots, to merely wink and look away when she saw their religious gatherings, this meant loyalty from the Bourbons and renewed double-dealing from the Guises; to show an interest in the Catholic progress brought the Guises beaming and fawning into her cainp while the Bourbons looked askance and planned reprisals.

All that really interested Catherine, having no religious scruples of her own, were the sovereign rights of her children and her continued place at the helm of the ship of state. What difference, thought Catherine, what the convictions of the French people were concerning their religion so long as she was sure