In spite of her now brilliant future, Catherine’s situation at court was not changed by the death of the dauphin.  Her barrenness gave reason to fear a divorce in case her husband should ascend the throne.  The dauphin was under the spell of Diane de Poitiers, who assumed to rival Madame d’Etampes, the king’s mistress.  Catherine redoubled in care and cajolery of her father-in-law, being well aware that her sole support was in him.  The first ten years of Catherine’s married life were years of ever-renewed grief, caused by the failure, one by one, of her hopes of pregnancy, and the vexations of her rivalry with Diane.  Imagine what must have been the life of a young princess, watched by a jealous mistress who was supported by a powerful party, —­the Catholic party,—­and by the two powerful alliances Diane had made in marrying one daughter to Robert de la Mark, Duc de Bouillon, Prince of Sedan, and the other to Claude de Lorraine, Duc d’Aumale.

Catherine, helpless between the party of Madame d’Etampes and the party of the Senechale (such was Diane’s title during the reign of Francois I.), which divided the court and politics into factions for these mortal enemies, endeavored to make herself the friend of both Diane de Poitiers and Madame d’Etampes.  She, who was destined to become so great a queen, played the part of a servant.  Thus she served her apprenticeship in that double-faced policy which was ever the secret motor of her life.  Later, the queen was to stand between Catholics and Calvinists, just as the woman had stood for ten years between Madame d’Etampes and Madame de Poitiers.  She studied the contradictions of French politics; she saw Francois I. sustaining Calvin and the Lutherans in order to embarrass Charles V., and then, after secretly and patiently protecting the Reformation in Germany, and tolerating the residence of Calvin at the court of Navarre, he suddenly turned against it with excessive rigor.  Catherine beheld on the one hand the court, and the women of the court, playing with the fire of heresy, and on the other, Diane at the head of the Catholic party with the Guises, solely because the Duchesse d’Etampes supported Calvin and the Protestants.

Such was the political education of this queen, who saw in the cabinet of the king of France the same errors committed as in the house of the Medici.  The dauphin opposed his father in everything; he was a bad son.  He forgot the cruel but most vital maxim of royalty, namely, that thrones need solidarity; and that a son who creates opposition during the lifetime of his father must follow that father’s policy when he mounts the throne.  Spinosa, who was as great a statesman as he was a philosopher, said—­in the case of one king succeeding another by insurrection or crime,—­