Catherine de Medici | Page 3

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Etext prepared by John Bickers, [email protected] and
Dagny, [email protected]

Catherine de' Medici
by Honore de Balzac
Translated by Katherine Prescott Wormeley

DEDICATION
To Monsieur le Marquis de Pastoret, Member of the Academie des
Beaux-Arts.
When we think of the enormous number of volumes that have been
published on the question as to where Hannibal crossed the Alps,
without our being able to decide to-day whether it was (according to
Whittaker and Rivaz) by Lyon, Geneva, the Great Saint-Bernard, and
the valley of Aosta; or (according to Letronne, Follard, Saint-Simon
and Fortia d'Urbano) by the Isere, Grenoble, Saint- Bonnet, Monte
Genevra, Fenestrella, and the Susa passage; or (according to Larauza)
by the Mont Cenis and the Susa; or (according to Strabo, Polybius and
Lucanus) by the Rhone, Vienne, Yenne, and the Dent du Chat; or
(according to some intelligent minds) by Genoa, La Bochetta, and La
Scrivia,--an opinion which I share and which Napoleon adopted,--not to
speak of the verjuice with which the Alpine rocks have been
bespattered by other learned men,--is it surprising, Monsieur le marquis,
to see modern history so bemuddled that many important points are still
obscure, and the most odious calumnies still rest on names that ought to
be respected?
And let me remark, in passing, that Hannibal's crossing has been made
almost problematical by these very elucidations. For instance, Pere
Menestrier thinks that the Scoras mentioned by Polybius is the Saona;
Letronne, Larauza and Schweighauser think it is the Isere; Cochard, a

learned Lyonnais, calls it the Drome, and for all who have eyes to see
there are between Scoras and Scrivia great geographical and linguistical
resemblances,--to say nothing of the probability, amounting almost to
certainty, that the Carthaginian fleet was moored in the Gulf of Spezzia
or the roadstead of Genoa. I could understand these patient researches
if there were any doubt as to the battle of Canna; but inasmuch as the
results of that great battle are known, why blacken paper with all these
suppositions (which are, as it were, the arabesques of hypothesis) while
the history most important to the present day, that of the Reformation,
is full of such obscurities that we are ignorant of the real name of the
man who navigated a vessel by steam to Barcelona at the period when
Luther and Calvin were inaugurating the insurrection of thought.[*]
You and I hold, I think, the same opinion, after having made, each in
his own way, close researches as to the grand and splendid figure of
Catherine de' Medici. Consequently, I have thought that my historical
studies upon that queen might properly be dedicated to an author who
has written so much on the history of the Reformation; while at the
same time I offer to the character and fidelity of a monarchical writer a
public homage which may, perhaps, be valuable on account of its
rarity.
[*] The name of the man who tried this experiment at Barcelona should
be