A CROWN THAT FAILED
Henri of Navarre, hero of romance and probably the greatest King who
ever sat on the throne of France, had a heart as weak in love as it was
stout in war. To his last day he was a veritable coward before the
battery of bright eyes; and before Ravaillac's dagger brought his career
to a tragic end one May day in the year 1610 he had counted his
mistresses to as many as the years he had lived.
But of them all, fifty-seven of them--for the most part lightly coming
and lightly going--only one ever really reached his heart, and was
within measurable distance of a seat on his throne--the woman to whom he
wrote in the hey-day of his passion, "Never has man loved as I love you.
If any sacrifice of mine could purchase your happiness, how gladly I
would make it, even to the last drop of my life's blood."
Gabrielle d'Estrées who thus enslaved the heart of the hero, which
carried him to a throne through a hundred fights and inconceivable
hardships, was cradled one day in the year 1573 in Touraine. From her
mother, Françoise Babou, she inherited both beauty and frailness; for
the Babou women were famous alike for their loveliness and for a virtue
as facile even as that of Marie Gaudin, the pretty plaything of François
I., who left François' arms to find a husband in Philip Babou and thus
to transmit her charms and frailty to Gabrielle.
Her father, Antoine, son of Jean d'Estrées, a valiant soldier under five
kings, was a man of pleasure, who drank and sang his way through life,
preferring Cupid to Mars and the _joie de vivre_ to the call of duty. It
is perhaps little wonder that Antoine's wife, after bearing seven
children to her husband, left him to find at least more loyalty in the
Marquess of Tourel-Alégre, a lover twenty years younger than herself.
Thus it was that, deserted by her mother, and with a father too addicted
to pleasure to spare a thought for his children, Gabrielle grew to
beautiful girlhood under the care of an aunt--now living in the family
château in Picardy, now in the great Paris mansion, the Hotel d'Estrées;
and with so little guidance from precept or example that, in later
years, she and her six sisters and brothers were known as the "Seven
Deadly Sins."
In Gabrielle at least there was little that was vicious. She was an
irresponsible little creature, bubbling over with mischief and gaiety,
eager to snatch every flower of pleasure that caught her eyes; a dainty
little fairy with big blue "wonder" eyes, golden hair, the sweetest
rosebud of a mouth, ready to smile or to pout as the mood of the moment
suggested, with soft round baby cheeks as delicately flushed as any
rose.
Such was Gabrielle d'Estrées on the verge of young womanhood when Roger
de Saint-Larry, Duc de Bellegarde, the King's grand equerry, and one of
the handsomest young men in France, first set eyes on her in the château
of Coeuvres; and, as was inevitable, lost his heart to her at first
sight. When he rode away two days later, such excellent use had he made
of his opportunities, he left a very happy, if desolate maiden behind;
for Gabrielle had little power to resist fascinations which had made a
conquest of many of the fairest ladies at Court.
When Bellegarde returned to Mantes, where Henri was still struggling for
the crown which was so soon to be his, he foolishly gave the King of
Navarre such a rapturous account of the young beauty of Picardy and his
conquest that Henri, already weary of the faded charms of Diane
d'Audouins, his mistress, promptly left his soldiering and rode away to
see the lady for himself, and to find that Bellegarde's raptures were
more than justified.
Gabrielle, however, flattered though she was by such an honour as a
visit from the King of Navarre, was by no means disposed to smile on the
wooing of "an ugly man, old enough to be my father." And indeed, Henri,
with all the glamour of the hero to aid him, was but a sorry rival for
the handsome and courtly Bellegarde. Now nearing his fortieth year, with
grizzled beard, and skin battered and lined by long years of hard
campaigning, the future King of France had little to appeal to the
romantic eyes of a maid who counted less than half his years; and the
King in turn rode away from the Coeuvres Castle as hopelessly in love
as Bellegarde, but with much less encouragement to return.
But the hero of Ivry and a hundred other battles was no man to submit to
defeat in any lists; and within a few weeks Gabrielle was summoned to
Mantes, where he told her in decisive words that he loved her, and that
no one, Bellegarde or any other, should share her with him. "Indeed!"
she exclaimed, with a defiant toss of the head, "I will be no man's
slave; I shall give my heart to whom I please, and certainly not to any
man who demands it as a right." And within an hour she was riding home
fast as her horse could gallop.
Henri was thunderstruck at such defiance. He must follow her at once and
bring her to reason; but, in order to do so, he must risk his life by
passing through the enemy's lines. Such an adventure, however, was after
his own heart; and disguising himself as a peasant, with a bundle of
faggots on his shoulder, he made his way safely to Coeuvres, where he
presented himself, a pitiable spectacle of rags and poverty, to be
greeted by his lady with shouts of derisive laughter. "Oh dear!" she
gasped between her paroxysms of mirth, "what a fright you look! For
goodness' sake go and change your clothes." But though the King obeyed
humbly, Gabrielle shut herself in her room and declined point-blank to
see him again.
Such devotion, however, expressed in such fashion, did not fail in its
appeal to the romantic girl; and when, a little later, Gabrielle visited
the Royalist army then besieging Chartres, it was a much more pliant
Gabrielle who listened to the King's wooing and whose eyes brightened at
his stories of bravery and danger. Henri might be old and ugly, but he
had at least a charm of manner, a frank, simple manliness, which made
him the idol of his soldiers and in fact of every woman who once came
under its spell. And to this charm even Gabrielle, the rebel, had at
last to submit, until Bellegarde was forgotten, and her hero was all the
world to her.
The days that followed this slow awaking were crowded with happiness for
the two lovers; when Gabrielle was not by her King's side, he was
writing letters to her full of passionate tenderness. "My beautiful
Love," "My All," "My Trueheart"--such were the sweet terms he lavished
on her. "I kiss you a million times. You say that you love me a thousand
times more than I love you. You have lied, and you shall maintain your
falsehood with the arms which you have chosen. I shall not see you for
ten days, it is enough to kill me." And again, "They call me King of
France and Navarre--that of your subject is much more delightful--you
have much more cause for fearing that I love you too much than too
little. That fault pleases you, and also me, since you love it. See how
I yield to your every wish."
Such were the letters--among the most beautiful ever penned by
lover--which the King addressed to his "Menon" in those golden days,
when all the world was sunshine for him, black as the sky was still with
the clouds of war. And she returned love for love; tenderness for
passion. When he was lying ill at St Denis, she wrote, "I die of fear.
Tell me, I implore you, how fares the bravest of the brave. Give me
news, my cavalier; for you know how fatal to me is your least ill. I
cannot sleep without sending you a thousand good nights; for I am the
Princess Constancy, sensible to all that concerns you, and careless of
all else in the world, good or bad."
Through the period of stress and struggle that still separated Henri
from the crown which for nearly twenty years was his goal, Gabrielle was
ever by his side, to soothe and comfort him, to chase away the clouds of
gloom which so often settled on him, to inspire him with new courage and
hope, and, with her diplomacy checking his impulses, to smooth over
every obstacle that the cunning of his enemies placed in his path.
And when, at last, one evening in 1594, Henri made his triumphal entry
into Paris, on a grey horse, wearing a gold-embroidered grey habit, his
face proud and smiling, saluting with his plume-crowned hat the cheering
crowds, Gabrielle had the place of honour in front of him, "in a
gorgeous litter, so bedecked with pearls and gems that she paled the
light of the escorting torches."
This was, indeed, a proud hour for the lovers which saw Henri acclaimed
at "long last" King of France, and his loyal lady-love Queen in all but
name. The years of struggle and hardship were over--years in which Henri
of Navarre had braved and escaped a hundred deaths; and in which he had
been reduced to such pitiable straits that he had often not known where
his next meal was to come from or where to find a shirt to put on his
back.
Gabrielle was now Marquise de Monceaux, a title to which her Royal lover
later added that of Duchesse de Beaufort. Her son, César, was known as
"Monsieur," the title that would have been his if he had been heir to
the French throne. All that now remained to fill the cup of her ambition
and her happiness was that she should become the legal wife of the King
she loved so well; and of this the prospect seemed more than fair.
Charming stories are told of the idyllic family life of the new King;
how his greatest pleasure was to "play at soldiers" with his children,
to join in their nursery romps, or to take them, like some bourgeois
father, to the Saint Germain fair, and return loaded with toys and boxes
of sweetmeats, to spend delightful homely evenings with the woman he
adored.
But it was not all sunshine for the lovers. Paris was in the throes of
famine and plague and flood. Poverty and discontent stalked through her
streets, and there were scowling and envious eyes to greet the King and
his lady when they rode laughing by; or when, as on one occasion we read
of, they returned from a hunting excursion, riding side by side, "she
sitting astride dressed all in green" and holding the King's hand.
Nor within the palace walls was it all a bed of roses for Gabrielle; for
she had her enemies there; and chief among them the powerful Duc de
Sully, her most formidable rival in the King's affection. Sully was not
only Henri's favourite minister; he was the Jonathan to his David, the
man who had shared a hundred dangers by his side, and by his devotion
and affection had found a firm lodging in his heart.
Between the minister and the mistress, each consumed with jealousy of
the other, Henri had many a bad hour; and the climax came when de Sully
refused to pass the extravagant charges for the baptism of the
Marquise's second son, Alexander. Gabrielle was indignant and appealed
angrily and tearfully to the King, who supported his minister. "I have
loved you," he said at last, roused to wrath, "because I thought you
gentle and sweet and yielding; now that I have raised you to high
position, I find you exacting and domineering. Know this, I could better
spare a dozen mistresses like you than one minister so devoted to me as
Sully."
At these harsh words, Gabrielle burst into tears. "If I had a dagger,"
she exclaimed, "I would plunge it into my heart, and then you would find
your image there." And when Henri rushed from the room, she ran after
him, flung herself at his feet, and with heart-breaking sobs, begged for
forgiveness and a kind word. Such troubles as these, however, were but
as the clouds that come and go in a summer sky. Gabrielle's sun was now
nearing its zenith; Henri had long intended to make her his wife at the
altar; proceedings for divorce from his wife, Marguerite de Valois, were
running smoothly; and now the crowning day in the two lives thus
romantically linked was at hand.
In the month of April, 1599, Gabrielle and Henri were spending the last
ante-nuptial days together at Fontainebleau; the wedding was fixed for
the first Sunday after Easter, and Gabrielle was ideally happy among her
wedding finery and the costly presents that had been showered on her
from all parts of France--from the ring Henri had worn at his Coronation
and which he was to place on her finger at the altar, to a statue of the
King in gold from Lyons, and a "giant piece of amber in a silver casket
from Bordeaux."
Her wedding-dress was a gorgeous robe of Spanish velvet, rich in
embroideries of gold and silver; the suite of rooms which was to be hers
as Queen was already ready, with its splendours of crimson and gold
furnishing. The greatest ladies in France were now proud to act as her
tire-women; and princes and ambassadors flocked to Fontainebleau to pay
her homage.
The last days of Holy Week it had been arranged that she should spend in
devotion at Paris, and Henri was her escort the greater part of the way.
When they parted on the banks of the Seine they wept in each other's
arms, while Gabrielle, full of nameless forebodings, clung to her lover
and begged him to take her back to Fontainebleau. But with a final
embrace he tore himself away; and with streaming eyes Gabrielle
continued her journey, full of fears as to its issue; for had not a seer
of Piedmont told her that the marriage would never take place; and other
diviners, whom she had consulted, warned her that she would die young,
and never call Henri husband?
Two days later Gabrielle heard Mass at the Church of St Germain
l'Auxerrois; and on returning to the Deanery, her aunt's home, became
seriously ill. She grew rapidly worse; her sufferings were terrible to
witness; and on Good Friday she was delivered of a dead child. To quote
an eye-witness, "She lingered until six o'clock in very great pain, the
like of which doctors and surgeons had never seen before. In her agony
she tore her face, and injured herself in other parts of her body."
Before dawn broke on the following day she drew her last breath.
When news of her illness reached the King, he flew to her swift as his
horse could carry him, only to meet couriers on his way who told him
that Madame was already dead; and to find, when at last he reached St
Germain l'Auxerrois, the door of the room in which she lay barred
against him. He could not take her living once more into his arms; he
was not allowed to see her dead.
Henri was as a man who is mad with grief; he was inconsolable.. None
dared even to approach him with words of pity and comfort. For eight
days he shut himself in a black-draped room, himself clothed in black;
and he wrote to his sister, "The root of my love is dead; there will be
no Spring for me any more." Three months later he was making love to
Gabrielle's successor, Henriette d'Entragues!
Thus perished in tragedy Gabrielle d'Estrées, the creature of sunshine,
who won the bravest heart in Europe, and carried her conquest to the
very foot of a throne.