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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: Reformation.
At the moment when the little boat floated beneath the arch of the
pont au Change the question was strangely complicated by the ambitions
of the Guises, who were rivalling the Bourbons. Thus the Crown,
represented by Catherine de' Medici, was able to sustain the struggle
for thirty years by pitting the one house against the other house;
whereas later, the Crown, instead of standing between various jealous
ambitions, found itself without a barrier, face to face with the
people: Richelieu and Louis XIV. had broken down the barrier of the
Nobility; Louis XV. had broken down that of the Parliaments. Alone
before the people, as Louis XVI. was, a king must inevitably succumb.
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