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.