Why refuse, in these days, to the majestic adversary of the most barren of heresies the grandeur she derived from the struggle itself?  Calvinists have written much against the “craftiness” of Charles IX.; but travel through France, see the ruins of noble churches, estimate the fearful wounds given by the religionists to the social body, learn what vengeance they inflicted, and you will ask yourself, as you deplore the evils of individualism (the disease of our present France, the germ of which was in the questions of liberty of conscience then agitated),—­you will ask yourself, I say, on which side were the executioners.  There are, unfortunately, as Catherine herself says in the third division of this Study of her career, “in all ages hypocritical writers always ready to weep over the fate of two hundred scoundrels killed necessarily.”  Caesar, who tried to move the senate to pity the attempt of Catiline, might perhaps have got the better of Cicero could he have had an Opposition and its newspapers at his command.

Another consideration explains the historical and popular disfavor in which Catherine is held.  The Opposition in France has always been Protestant, because it has had no policy but that of negation; it inherits the theories of Lutherans, Calvinists, and Protestants on the terrible words “liberty,” “tolerance,” “progress,” and “philosophy.”  Two centuries have been employed by the opponents of power in establishing the doubtful doctrine of the libre arbitre,—­liberty of will.  Two other centuries were employed in developing the first corollary of liberty of will, namely, liberty of conscience.  Our century is endeavoring to establish the second, namely, political liberty.

Placed between the ground already lost and the ground still to be defended, Catherine and the Church proclaimed the salutary principle of modern societies, una fides, unus dominus, using their power of life and death upon the innovators.  Though Catherine was vanquished, succeeding centuries have proved her justification.  The product of liberty of will, religious liberty, and political liberty (not, observe this, to be confounded with civil liberty) is the France of to-day.  What is the France of 1840?  A country occupied exclusively with material interests,—­without patriotism, without conscience; where power has no vigor; where election, the fruit of liberty of will and political liberty, lifts to the surface none but commonplace men; where brute force has now become a necessity against popular violence; where discussion, spreading into everything, stifles the action of legislative bodies; where money rules all questions; where individualism—­the dreadful product of the division of property ad infinitum—­will suppress the family and devour all, even the nation, which egoism will some day deliver over to invasion.  Men will say, “Why not the Czar?” just as they said, “Why not the Duc d’Orleans?” We don’t cling to many things even now; but fifty years hence we shall cling to nothing.