They have accused her of that massacre in Paris [the Saint-Bartholomew]; all that is a sealed book to me, for at that time I was preparing to embark at Brouage; but I have often heard it said that she was not the chief actress in it. There were three or four others, whom I might name, who were more ardent in it than she and pushed her on, making her believe, from the threats uttered on the wounding of M. l’amiral, that the king was to be killed, and she with all her children and the whole Court, or else that the country would be in arms much worse than ever. Certainly the party of Religion did very wrong to make the threats it is said they made; for they brought on the fate of poor M. l’amiral, and procured his death. If they had kept themselves quiet, said no word, and let M. l’amiral’s wound heal, he could have left Paris at his ease, and nothing further would have come of it. M. de La Noue was of that opinion. He and M. Strozzi and I have often spoken of it, he not approving of such bravados, audacities, and threats as were made at the very Court of the king in his city of Paris; and he greatly blamed M. de Theligny, his brother-in-law, who was one of the hottest, calling him and his companions perfect fools and most incapable. M. l’amiral never used such language as I have heard from others, at least not aloud. I do not say that in secret and private with his intimate friends he never spoke it. That was the cause of the death of M. l’amiral and the massacres of his people, and not the queen; as I have heard say by those who know well, although there are many from whose heads you could never oust the opinion that this train was long laid and the plot long in hatching. It is all false. The least passionate think as I have said; the more passionate and obstinate believe the other way; and very often we give credit for the ordering of events to kings and great princes, and say after those events have happened how prudent and provident they were, and how well they knew how to dissimulate, when all the while they knew no more about them than a plum. To return again to our queen; her enemies have put it about that she was not a good Frenchwoman. God knows with what ardour I saw her urge that the English might be driven from France at Havre de Grâce, and what she said of it to M. le Prince, and how she made him go with many gentlemen of his party, and the crown-companies of M. d’Andelot, and other Huguenots, and how she herself led the army, mounted usually on a horse, like a second beautiful Queen Marfisa, exposing herself to the arquebusades and the cannonades as if she were one of her captains, looking to the making of the batteries, and saying she should never be at ease until she had taken that town and driven the English out of France; hating worse than poison those who had sold it to them. And thus she did so much that finally she made the country French.