There is one, however, who did concern himself to write of her, and made a little book which he entitled “The Life of Catherine;”[3] but it is an imposture and not worthy of belief, as she herself said when she saw it; such falsities being apparent to every one, and easy to note and reject. He that wrote it wished her mortal harm, and was an enemy to her name, her condition, her life, her honour, and nature; and that is why he should be rejected. As for me, I would I knew how to speak well, or that I had a good pen, well mended, at my command, that I might exalt and praise her as she deserves. At any rate, such as my pen is, I shall now employ it at all hazards. [Illustration: _Catherine de’ Medici_] This queen is extracted, on the father’s side, from the race of the Medici, one of the noblest and most illustrious families, not only in Italy, but in Christendom. Whatever may be said, she was a foreigner to these shores because the alliances of kings cannot commonly be chosen in their kingdom; for it is not best to do so; foreign marriages being as useful and more so than near ones. The House of the Medici has always been allied and confederated with the crown of France, which still bears the _fleur-de-lys_ that King Louis XI. gave that house in sign of alliance and perpetual confederation [the _fleur de Louis_, which then became the Florentine lily]. On the mother’s side she issued originally from one of the noblest families of France; and so was truly French in race, heart, and affection through that great house of Boulogne and county of Auvergne; thus it is hard to tell or judge in which of her two families there was most grandeur and memorable deeds. Here is what was said of them by the Archbishop of Bourges, of the house of Beaune, as great a learned man and worthy prelate as there is in Christendom (though some say a trifle unsteady in belief, and little good in the scales of M. Saint-Michel, who weighs good Christians for the day of judgment, or so they say): it is given in the funeral oration which the archbishop made upon the said queen at Blois:--