“What mighty ills have not been done by woman?
Who was’t betrayed the Capitol? A woman!
Who lost Mark Antony the world? A woman!
Who was the cause of a long ten years’ war,
And laid at last old Troy in ashes? Woman!
Destructive,—deceitful woman!”—OTWAY.
“Woman may err, woman may give her mind
To evil thoughts, and lose her pure estate;
But for one woman who affronts her kind
By wicked passions and remorseless hate,
A thousand make amends in age and youth,
By heavenly pity, by sweet sympathy,
By patient kindness, by enduring truth,
By love, supremest in adversity.”—CHARLES MACKAY.
“WOE to thee, O country, that hast a child for king!” exclaimed the
Venetian ambassador in France, in 1560, when Charles IX., a child
ten years old, ascended the throne; but greater woe to that country
because the mother of that child, who held the power of government, as
queen-regent, was one of the greatest monsters of crime in the annals
of history, and forced that child to become a very fiend of infamy and
cruelty.
[Illustration: CATHERINE DE’ MEDICI