Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Later Years of Catherine De' Medici
HE second half of my study of Catherine de' Medici hardly seems to need any preface, and yet I should like to take the opportunity of once again defining the scope of my work. I can make no claim to figure as an expert historian. My aim has been no more than to paint portraits - to draw the central figure of Catherine as I see her, with such other persons in the drama as were interwoven with her destiny, standing out against a multi-coloured background and throwing strong shadows upon it. I have detected no error in accepted dates I have made no discovery of an actual fact. Yet the research into character may shed fresh light upon old events, may account for the unaccountable, and harmonize what is discordant. And the comments of contemporaries when read for themselves, apart from any larger historical purpose, acquire a new vitality. They sharpen our perception of detail, and give us that more personal aspect of the strange things that happen which often explains them. It is from this point of View alone that I venture to reproduce such famous catastrophes as the Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve, or the murder of Henri, Due de Guise.
Charity, which is understanding, is as needful for sound judgment of bygone generations as it is for our judgment of our neighbours. When men appear to us abnormally wicked, it is because we have not grasped closely enough the current standard of their morality. They only show black or white according as they rise or fall below the average line, and if they do not chance to possess some virtue upon which we pride ourselves, we may feel sure that they are rich in some other of which our age knows nothing.
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