According to some historians, Catherine was a mere intriguer, without talent or ability, living but in the moment, often caught in her own snares; according to others, by her intelligence, ability, and strength of character she advanced a cause truly national—­that of French unity; thus, she worked either the ruin or the salvation of France.  Michelet calls her a nonentity, a stage queen with merely the externals—­the attire—­of royalty, remaining exactly on a level with the rulers of the smaller Italian principalities, contriving everything and fearing everything, with no more heart than she had sense or temperament.  Being a female, she loved her young; she loved the arts, but cared to cultivate only their externalities.  In this, however, Michelet goes to an extreme; for no woman ever lived who had so great a talent for intrigues and politics as she—­a very type of the deceit and cunning which were inherent in her race.  If she were not important, had not wielded so much influence and decided the fate of so many great men, women, and even states, she would not be the subject of so much writing, of such fierce denunciation and strong praise.  To her family, France owes her finest palaces, her masterpieces of art—­painting, bookmaking, printing, binding, sculpture.

M. Saint-Amand declares that “isolated from her contemporaries, Catherine de’ Medici is a monster; brought back within the circle of their passions and their theories, she once more becomes a woman.”  But Catherine was the instigator, the embodiment of all that is vice, deceit, cunning, trickery, wickedness, and bold intrigue; she set the example, and her ladies followed her in all that she did; “the heroines bred in her school (and what woman was not in her school?) imitate, with docility, the examples she gives them.”  She was not only the type of her civilization,—­brutal, gross, immoral, elegant, polished, and mondain,—­but she was also its leader.

Greatness of soul, real moral force, strict virtue, are not attributes of the sixteenth-century woman—­they are isolated and rare exceptions; these Catherine did not possess.  Nor was she influenced deeply by her environments; the latter but encouraged and developed those qualities which were hers inherently,—­will, intelligence, inflexible perseverance, tenacity of purpose, unscrupulousness, cruelty; hence, to say “She is the victim rather than the inspiration of the corruption of her time” is misleading, to say the least.  If, upon her arrival at court, “she at once pleased every one by her grace and affability, modest air, and, above all, by her extreme gentleness,” she could not have changed, say her defenders, into the perfidious, wicked, and cruel creature she is said to have become as soon as she stepped into power.  “During the reign of Henry II., she wisely avoided all danger; faithful to her wifely duties, she gave no cause for scandal, and, realizing that she was not strong enough to overcome