Catherine de Medici had brought up her three sons solely with a view of having their confidence and implicit obedience.

"All the actions of the queen-mother," said the Venetian ambassador Sigismund Cavalli, who had for a long while resided at her court, "have always been prompted and regulated by one single passion, the passion of ruling." Her son Charles had yielded to it without an effort in his youth.

"He was accustomed to say that, until he was five and twenty, he meant to play the fool; that is to say, to think of nothing but of enjoying his heyday; accordingly he showed aversion for speaking and treating of business, putting himself altogether in his mother's hands.

Now, he no longer thinks and acts in the same way.

I have been told that, since the late events, he requires to have the same thing said more than three times over by the queen, before obeying her." It was not with regard to his mother only that Charles had changed.