more blood, more money, and killed the prosperity of France far more than three Saint-Bartholomews.  Letellier with his pen gave effect to a decree which the throne had secretly promulgated since my time; but, though the vast execution was necessary of the 25th of August, 1572, on the 25th of August, 1685, it was useless.  Under the second son of Henri de Valois heresy had scarcely conceived an offspring; under the second son of Henri de Bourbon that teeming mother had cast her spawn over the whole universe.  You accuse me of a crime, and you put up statues to the son of Anne of Austria!  Nevertheless, he and I attempted the same thing; he succeeded, I failed; but Louis XIV. found the Protestants without arms, whereas in my reign they had powerful armies, statesmen, warriors, and all Germany on their side.’  At these words, slowly uttered, I felt an inward shudder pass through me.  I fancied I breathed the fumes of blood from I know not what great mass of victims.  Catherine was magnified.  She stood before me like an evil genius; she sought, it seemed to me, to enter my consciousness and abide there.”

“He dreamed all that,” whispered Beaumarchais; “he certainly never invented it.”

“‘My reason is bewildered,’ I said to the queen.  ’You praise yourself for an act which three generations of men have condemned, stigmatized, and—­’ ‘Add,’ she rejoined, ’that historians have been more unjust toward me than my contemporaries.  None have defended me.  I, rich and all-powerful, am accused of ambition!  I am taxed with cruelty,—­I who have but two deaths upon my conscience.  Even to impartial minds I am still a problem.  Do you believe that I was actuated by hatred, that vengeance and fury were the breath of my nostrils?’ She smiled with pity.  ‘No,’ she continued, ’I was cold and calm as reason itself.  I condemned the Huguenots without pity, but without passion; they were the rotten fruit in my basket and I cast them out.  Had I been Queen of England, I should have treated seditious Catholics in the same way.  The life of our power in those days depended on their being but one God, one Faith, one Master in the State.  Happily for me, I uttered my justification in one sentence which history is transmitting.  When Birago falsely announced to me the loss of the battle of Dreux, I answered:  “Well then; we will go to the Protestant churches.”  Did I hate the reformers?  No, I esteemed them much, and I knew them little.  If I felt any aversion to the politicians of my time, it was to that base Cardinal de Lorraine, and to his brother the shrewd and brutal soldier who spied upon my every act.  They were the real enemies of my children; they sought to snatch the crown; I saw them daily at work and they wore me out.  If we had not ordered the Saint-Bartholomew, the Guises would have done the same thing by the help of Rome and the monks.  The League, which was powerful only in consequence of my old age, would have begun in 1573.’  ’But, madame,