But the work of union was not to be so easy as the conjunction of two such stars as Farnese and Valois seemed to promise. While the Romish Church was being toned down at Rome, popery became stricter in France. The fanatical party that was to acquire a horrible celebrity by the crimes of the Bartholomew massacre and of the League, was beginning to take shape round the dauphin, the future Henry II. That youth of eighteen, who had not long returned from Madrid, was far from being lively, talkative, and independent, like a young Frenchman, but gloomy and silent, and appeared to live only to obey women. There were two at his side, admirably calculated to give him a papistical direction: first, his wife, Catherine de Medicis, and next his mistress, Diana of Poitiers, a widow, still beautiful in spite of her age, and who would not (as it has been said) have spoken to a heretic for an empire. The mistress and the wife, who were on the best of terms, and all of the dauphin’s party, endeavored to thwart the king’s plans. The most influential members of that faction were continually repeating to him that the protestants of Germany were quite as fanatical and seditious as those of France. At the same time, the emperor’s agents, animated by the same intentions, told the German protestants that Francis I. was an infidel in alliance with the Turks. The obstacles opposed in France and Germany to the reconciliation of Christendom were such that its realization appeared a matter of difficulty.