Jeanne la Folle.  The Medici, masters of Florence and of Rome, will force Italy to support your interests; they will guarantee you advantages by treaties of commerce and alliance which shall recognize your fiefs in Piedmont, the Milanais, and Naples, where you have rights.  These, monsieur, are the reasons of the war to the death which we make against the Huguenots.  Why do you force me to repeat these things?  Charlemagne was wrong in advancing toward the north.  France is a body whose heart is on the Gulf of Lyons, and its two arms over Spain and Italy.  Therefore, she must rule the Mediterranean, that basket into which are poured all the riches of the Orient, now turned to the profit of those seigneurs of Venice, in the very teeth of Philip II.  If the friendship of the Medici and your rights justify you in hoping for Italy, force, alliances, or a possible inheritance may give you Spain.  Warn the house of Austria as to this,—­that ambitious house to which the Guelphs sold Italy, and which is even now hankering after Spain.  Though your wife is of that house, humble it!  Clasp it so closely that you will smother it! There are the enemies of your kingdom; thence comes help to the Reformers.  Do not listen to those who find their profit in causing us to disagree, and who torment your life by making you believe I am your secret enemy.  Have I prevented you from having heirs?  Why has your mistress given you a son, and your wife a daughter?  Why have you not to-day three legitimate heirs to root out the hopes of these seditious persons?  Is it I, monsieur, who am responsible for such failures?  If you had an heir, would the Duc d’Alencon be now conspiring?”

As she ended these words, Catherine fixed upon her son the magnetic glance of a bird of prey upon its victim.  The daughter of the Medici became magnificent; her real self shone upon her face, which, like that of a gambler over the green table, glittered with vast cupidities.  Charles IX. saw no longer the mother of one man, but (as was said of her) the mother of armies and of empires,—­mater castrorum.  Catherine had now spread wide the wings of her genius, and boldly flown to the heights of the Medici and Valois policy, tracing once more the mighty plans which terrified in earlier days her husband Henri II., and which, transmitted by the genius of the Medici to Richelieu, remain in writing among the papers of the house of Bourbon.  But Charles IX., hearing the unusual persuasions his mother was using, thought that there must be some necessity for them, and he began to ask himself what could be her motive.  He dropped his eyes; he hesitated; his distrust was not lessened by her studied phrases.  Catherine was amazed at the depths of suspicion she now beheld in her son’s heart.

“Well, monsieur,” she said, “do you not understand me?  What are we, you and I, in comparison with the eternity of royal crowns?  Do you suppose me to have other designs than those that ought to actuate all royal persons who inhabit the sphere where empires are ruled?”