A pretty foot it was, and still a handsome woman she, this daughter of the Medicis, notwithstanding her being now somewhat _passe_. Ambitious as Catherine herself--"that mother of a race of kings"--intriguing, notoriously dissolute, not the less did Charles love her. Perhaps the more, for the cuckoo's cry is a wonderful incentive to passion, as to jealousy. He doted upon her with foolish fondness--would have done anything she commanded, even murder. And to more than this was she now instigating him; for it was to stifle, trample out the liberties of a nation, no matter at what cost in life or blood. Wicked as were her counsels, he would have followed them and willingly, could he have seen his way clear to success. Men still talk of his kindly nature--in face of the fact, proved by irresistible evidence, that he rejoiced at the massacre of the Protestants in Ireland, to say naught of many other instances of inhumanity brought home to this so-called "Martyr King." He may not have been--was not--either a Nero or a Theebaw; and with his favourites and familiars no doubt behaved amicably enough; at the same time readily sacrificing them when danger threatened himself. To his wife his fidelity and devotion were such as to have earned for him the epithet "uxorious," a title which can be more readily conceded. But in his affection for her--whether upheld by respect or not--there was a spice of fear. He knew all about the scandals relating to her mother, Marie of France, with Richelieu, and his own and father's favourite, the assassinated Buckingham, now sleeping in his grave. Charles more than suspected, as did all the world besides, that this same Queen-mother had sent her husband--king as himself--to an untimely tomb by a "cup of cold poison." And oft as the dark Italian eyes of her daughter flashed upon him in anger, he felt secret fear she might some day serve him as had her mother the ill-fated monarch of France. She was of a race and a land whence such danger might be reasonably expected and dreaded. Lucrezia Borgia and Tophana were not the only great female poisoners Italy has produced. "If you've no care for yourself, then," she went on with untiring persistence, "think of our children. Think of him," and she nodded towards a gaudily-dressed stripling of some ten or twelve, seen coming towards them. It was he who, twenty years after, under the seemingly innocent soubriquet of "Merry Monarch," made sadness in many a family circle, smouching England's escutcheon all over with shame, scarce equalled in the annals of France. "_Pauvre enfant_!" she exclaimed, as he came up, passing her jewelled fingers through the curls of his hair; "your father would leave you bereft of your birthright; some day to be a king with a worthless crown."