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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Catherine de Medici by Honore de Balzac: iconoclasms of the Calvinists, who did as much harm to art as to the
body politic. Hemmed in between the Guises who claimed to be the heirs
of Charlemagne and the factious younger branch who sought to screen
the treachery of the Connetable de Bourbon behind the throne,
Catherine, forced to combat heresy which was seeking to annihilate the
monarchy, without friends, aware of treachery among the leaders of the
Catholic party, foreseeing a republic in the Calvinist party,
Catherine employed the most dangerous but the surest weapon of public
policy,--craft. She resolved to trick and so defeat, successively, the
Guises who were seeking the ruin of the house of Valois, the Bourbons
who sought the crown, and the Reformers (the Radicals of those days)
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