the peoples to examine all things.  Examination leads to doubt.  Instead of faith, which is necessary to all societies, those two men drew after them, in the far distance, a strange philosophy, armed with hammers, hungry for destruction.  Science sprang, sparkling with her specious lights, from the bosom of heresy.  It was far less a question of reforming a Church than of winning indefinite liberty for man —­which is the death of power.  I saw that.  The consequence of the successes won by the religionists in their struggle against the priesthood (already better armed and more formidable than the Crown) was the destruction of the monarchical power raised by Louis IX. at such vast cost upon the ruins of feudality.  It involved, in fact, nothing less than the annihilation of religion and royalty, on the ruins of which the whole burgher class of Europe meant to stand.  The struggle was therefore war without quarter between the new ideas and the law,—­that is, the old beliefs.  The Catholics were the emblem of the material interests of royalty, of the great lords, and of the clergy.  It was a duel to the death between two giants; unfortunately, the Saint-Bartholomew proved to be only a wound.  Remember this:  because a few drops of blood were spared at that opportune moment, torrents were compelled to flow at a later period.  The intellect which soars above a nation cannot escape a great misfortune; I mean the misfortune of finding no equals capable of judging it when it succumbs beneath the weight of untoward events.  My equals are few; fools are in the majority:  that statement explains it all.  If my name is execrated in France, the fault lies with the commonplace minds who form the mass of all generations.  In the great crises through which I passed, the duty of reigning was not the mere giving of audiences, reviewing of troops, signing of decrees.  I may have committed mistakes, for I was but a woman.  But why was there then no man who rose above his age?  The Duke of Alba had a soul of iron; Philip II. was stupefied by Catholic belief; Henri IV. was a gambling soldier and a libertine; the Admiral, a stubborn mule.  Louis XI. lived too soon, Richelieu too late.  Virtuous or criminal, guilty or not in the Saint-Bartholomew, I accept the onus of it; I stand between those two great men,—­the visible link of an unseen chain.  The day will come when some paradoxical writer will ask if the peoples have not bestowed the title of executioner among their victims.  It will not be the first time that humanity has preferred to immolate a god rather than admit its own guilt.  You are shedding upon two hundred clowns, sacrificed for a purpose, the tears you refuse to a generation, a century, a world!  You forget that political liberty, the tranquillity of a nation, nay, knowledge itself, are gifts on which destiny has laid a tax of blood!’ ‘But,’ I exclaimed, with tears in my eyes, ’will the nations never be happy at less cost?’ ’Truth never leaves her well but to bathe in the blood which refreshes