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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: they go too far when they declare that she never claimed her rights as
wife and queen. In the first place, the sense of dignity which
Catherine possessed in the highest degree forbade her claiming what
historians call her rights as a wife. The ten children of the marriage
explain Henri's conduct; and his wife's maternal occupations left him
free to pass his time with Diane de Poitiers. But the king was never
lacking in anything that was due to himself; and he gave Catherine an
"entry" into Paris, to be crowned as queen, which was worthy of all
such pageants that had ever taken place. The archives of the
Parliament, and those of the Cour des Comptes, show that those two
great bodies went to meet her outside of Paris as far as Saint Lazare.
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