ABSTRACT
Catherine, a merchant’s daughter despised by her daughter-in-law, who boasted of being the daughter of a king, did suffer from her lowly birth. But Florentine merchant’s daughter though she was, the descendant of the Magnifico knew her own value. She retained a strong grudge against Mary Stuart, yet this grudge did not follow the young Queen to Scotland. All the references to her in Catherine’s letters after 1561 prove that she had both forgiven and forgotten. Later she intervened several times in her favour with her mortal enemy, the Queen of England, and in the warmest terms. Henri II’s widow could not fail also to appear as a Florentine shopkeeper to the partisans of Diane, who when she lost her lover lost everything. But those watchful observers were disillusioned. An Italian diary kept at the beginning of the reign of François II proves that the Queen never lost her self-control.
