The life of the Court, which naturally possessed a great attraction for a man of Condé’s temperament, was full of snares and pitfalls. It was not for the mere pleasure of beholding their pretty faces that Catherine recruited her _entourage_ from the most beautiful young girls in France. During the lifetime of her husband, in the days before she had been called upon to play a political rôle, Catherine had been the most austere of queens, guarding the reputation of her ladies as jealously as she did her own, and visiting with her severe displeasure the slightest breach of decorum on their part. But when she found herself a widow, struggling in an endless web of plot and falsehood to protect her children’s heritage; beset on one side by the Catholics, on the other, by the Huguenots; often driven to her wits’ end to devise means to prevent the royal authority being submerged amid the strife of contending parties, her austerity gave way before political exigencies, and, recognizing how formidable a weapon she possessed in the charms of her “_escadron volant_,” she exploited them without scruple. “These maids-of-honour,” writes Brantôme, “were sufficient to set fire to the whole world; indeed, they burned up a good part of it, as many of us gentlemen of the Court as of others who approached their flames.” Catherine received not a few remonstrances concerning the havoc wrought by the _beaux yeux_ of these damsels. “You ought, Madame,” runs one of them, “to content yourself with a small train of maids-of-honour, and to look to it that they do not pass and repass through the hands of men, and that they are more modestly clothed.” But Catherine’s squadron had demonstrated its peculiar value on too many occasions for her to dream of disbanding it, or even of placing it on a peace-footing; and so its members continued to illuminate the Court ball-rooms, “like stars shining in a serene heaven.”[23] For the rest, her Majesty pretended to ignore the vices of her _filles d’honneur_, the better to make use of them when occasion for their services arose. No one could have shown more adroitness in throwing some isolated and often unconscious combatant in the path of the politicians and party-leaders whom she had reason to fear, to captivate their senses and surprise their secrets. It was against the Huguenot chiefs that this insidious mode of warfare was most frequently employed. “However austere they may wish to appear, these men are of their time, and share the weaknesses of their contemporaries. Women had, in many cases, launched them into adventures, women will check them in full career. Those who succeed without provoking scandal are highly praised and rewarded; the maladroit will be the less supported in their difficulties in that they are never able to invoke the excuse of a definite mission.”[24]