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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: of Guise was necessarily ruined. The costs of endeavoring to seize the
crown during a whole century will explain the lowered position of this
great house during the reigns of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., when the
sudden death of MADAME told all Europe the infamous part which a
Chevalier de Lorraine had debased himself to play.
Calling themselves the heirs of the dispossessed Carolovingians, the
duke and cardinal acted with the utmost insolence towards Catherine
de' Medici, the mother-in-law of their niece. The Duchesse de Guise
spared her no mortification. This duchesse was a d'Este, and Catherine
was a Medici, the daughter of upstart Florentine merchants, whom the
sovereigns of Europe had never yet admitted into their royal
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