Part 1 — The Answer of the Duchess of Orleans to Catharine de Medicis.

’TWAS with much reason you pity me; and tho’ I have said nothing all this while, yet I have not thought the less. If the practice of our court did not teach me to dissemble, I should give myself some ease, by imparting many things to you, which would fill you with horror; and then you would find that the cruelties of your sons were trifles in comparison of these. The most impartial censurers of barbarity maintain that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was milder than the present persecution of the Protestants: Ambition was the chiefest motive of the Guises; but now their cruelties are covered with the cloak of religion; for the virtuous favourite [7] Sultaness, with the pitious [8] Mufti in waiting, are resolved to cause the christians to be more cruelly persecuted than they were at Algiers, and the Roman church is resolved, at any rate, to merit the name of the blood-thirsty beast. They value not exposing the reputation of princes; I blush for my race, and am often obliged to swallow my tears. I believe the efficacy of masses no more than you, therefore I will not offer you any. I am very glad to hear the cardinal of Lorrain proves so constant; for a prelate of his talent and constitution must certainly be a great consolation to a distressed princess. Brantome who has so much flatter’d you, may do it again; and tho’ Sancy has been too sincere, yet he dares not contradict him in your presence. I hope to see the ruins of my country rais’d up again; for tho’ our ambitious monarch huffs and hectors all Christendom, yet his game to me seems very desperate, and I believe he’ll prove the dog in the fable; since he has so depopulated and impoverish’d his dominions by persecutions, that those pious drones the Monks, only can support the church’s grandeur in their faces, with three story-chains; the rest of his people being reduc’d to wooden-shoes and garlick. Tho’ our Gazettes are little better than romances, yet they will serve to divert you and your cardinal, when not better employ’d; and I wish I could send them to you weekly. ’Tis true, great numbers set out daily from hence, for your country; and among them, people of the best quality, but I carefully avoid all commerce with them; and tho’ I have a wonderful esteem for you, take it not amiss, madam, if I endeavour never to see you.