"Ah! madame," said the cardinal, as he saw her enter, "these are some of your tricks; you are death to us all." However it may be, thirteen days after the murder of the Duke of Guise, on the 5th of January, 1589, Catherine de' Medici herself died.

Nor was her death, so far as affairs and the public were concerned, an event: her ability was of the sort which is worn out by the frequent use made of it, and which, when old age comes on, leaves no long or grateful reminiscence.

Time has restored Catherine de' Medici to her proper place in history; she was quickly forgotten by her contemporaries.
She had good reason to say to her son, as her last advice, "Now for the sewing." It was not long before Henry III.

perceived that to be king, it was not sufficient to have murdered his rival.

He survived the Duke of Guise only seven months, and during that short period he was not really king, all by himself, for a single day; never had his kingship been so embarrassed and impotent; the violent death of the Duke of Guise had exasperated much more than enfeebled the League; the feeling against his murderer was passionate and contagious; the Catholic cause had lost its great leader; it found and accepted another in his brother the Duke of Mayenne, far inferior to his elder brother in political talent and prompt energy of character, but a brave and determined soldier, a much better man of party and action than the sceptical, undecided, and indolent Henry III.