Thus diversified by intercourse with her friends and with her books, by study and recreation, Mary's early life passed rapidly away. It has been already seen, that whatever could have tended to corrupt the mind or manners was carefully removed from the young Queen. As soon as Mary entered upon her teens, she and her companions, the two young princesses, Henry's daughters, spent several hours every day in the private apartment of Catherine de Medicis, whose conversation, as well as that of the foreign ambassadors and other persons of distinction who paid their respects to her, they had thus an opportunity of hearing. Conæus mentions, that Mary was soon observed to avail herself, with great earnestness, of these opportunities of acquiring knowledge; and it has been hinted, that the superior intelligence she evinced, in comparison with Catherine's own daughters, was the first cause of exciting that Queen's jealousy. It was perhaps at some of these conferences that Mary imperceptibly imbibed, from her future mother-in-law, and her not unfrequent visitor, Nostradamus, a slight portion of that tendency to superstitious belief then so prevalent. One of the most remarkable characters about Henry's court, was Nicolas Cretin, or Nostradamus, as he was more commonly called, who combined in his own person the three somewhat incongruous professions of physician, astrologer, and philosopher. He asserted, that he was not only perfectly acquainted with the laws of planetary influence, but that, by the inspiration of divine power, he could predict the events of futurity. The style of his prophecies was in general sufficiently obscure; yet such was the reverence paid to learning in those days (and Nostradamus was a very library of learning), that he was courted and consulted even by the first statesmen in France. Mary had far too lively a fancy to escape the infection; and the force of this early bias continued to be felt by her more or less all her life. CHAPTER IV. MARY'S MARRIAGE, PERSONAL APPEARANCE, AND POPULARITY.