Mézeray [in his “History of France”], who never thinks of the dramatic, nevertheless makes known to us at the start his principal personages; he shows them more especially in action, without detaching them too much from the general sentiment and interests of which they are the leaders and representatives, while, at the same time, he leaves to each his individual physiognomy. The old Connétable de Montmorency, the Guises, Admiral de Coligny, the Chancellor de l’Hôpital define themselves on his pages by their conduct and proceedings even more than by the judgment he awards them. Catherine de’ Medici is painted there in all her dissimulation and her network of artifices, in which she was often caught herself; ambitious of sovereign power without possessing either the force or the genius of it; striving to obtain it by craft, and using for this purpose a continual system of what we should call to-day _see-sawing_; “rousing and elevating for a time one faction, putting to sleep or lowering another; uniting herself sometimes with the feeblest side out of caution, lest the stronger should crush her; sometimes with the stronger from necessity; at times standing neutral when she felt herself strong enough to command both sides, but without intention to extinguish either.” Far from being always too Catholic, there are moments when she seems to lean to the Reformed religion and to wish to grant too much to that party; and this with more sincerity, perhaps, than belonged to her naturally. The Catherine de’ Medici, such as she presents herself and is developed in plain truth on the pages of Mézeray is well calculated to tempt a modern writer. As there is nothing new but that which is old, for often discoveries are nothing more than that which was once known and is forgotten, the day when a modern historian shall take up the Catherine de’ Medici of Mézeray and give her some of the rather forced features which are to the taste of the present day, there will come a great cry of astonishment and admiration, and the critics will register a new discovery.[6]