I am sometimes asked, as one who witnessed them, what I
think, and I answer that it was not our country which was to
blame. A something besides Queen Catharine de' Medici had been
brought from Italy forty years before, a something invisible but
very powerful; a spirit of cruelty and treachery. In Italy it
had done small harm. But grafted on French daring and
recklessness, and the rougher and more soldierly manners of the
north, this spirit of intrigue proved capable of very dreadful
things. For a time, until it wore itself out, it was the curse
of France. Two Dukes of Guise, Francis and Henry, a cardinal of
Guise, the Prince of Conde, Admiral Coligny, King Henry the Third
all these the foremost men of their day--died by assassination
within little more than a quarter of a century, to say nothing of
the Prince of Orange, and King Henry the Great.
Then mark--a most curious thing--the extreme youth of those who
were in this business. France, subject to the Queen-Mother, of
course, was ruled at the time by boys scarce out of their tutors'
hands.
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