It was a cruel fate that snatched Gabrielle d'Estrees from the arms of Henri IV., King of France and Navarre, at the moment when her long devotion to her hero-lover was on the eve of being crowned by the bridal veil; and for many a week there was no more stricken man in Europe than the disconsolate King as he wailed in his black-draped chamber, "The root of my love is dead, and will never blossom again."
No doubt Henri's grief was as sincere as it was deep, for he had loved his golden-haired Gabrielle of the blue eyes and dimpled baby-cheeks as he had never loved woman before. It was the passion of a lifetime, the passion of a strong man in his prime, that fate had thus nipped in the ful ness of its bloom; and its loss plunged him into an abyss of sorrow and despair such as few men have known.
But with the hero of Ivry no emotion of grief or pleasure ever endured long. He was a man of erratic, widely contrasted moods--now on the peaks of happiness, now in the gulf of dejection; one mood succeeding another as inevitably and widely as the pendulum swings. Thus when he had spent three seemingly endless months of gloom and solitude, reaction seized him, and he flung aside his grief with his black raiment. He was still in the prime of his strength, with many years before him. He would drink the cup of life, even to its dregs. He had long been weary of the matrimonial chains that fettered him to Marguerite of Valois. He would strike them off, and in another wife and other loves find a new lease of pleasure.
Thus it was with no heavy heart that he turned his back on Fontainebleau and his darkened room, and fared to Paris to find a new vista of pleasure opening to him at his palace doors, and his ears ful of the praises of a new divinity who had come, during his absence, to grace his Court--a girl of such beauty, sprightliness, and wit as his capital had not seen for many a year.
Henriette d'Entragues--for this was the divinity's name--was equipped by fate as few women were ever equipped, for the conquest of a King. Her mother, Marie Touchet, had been "light-o'-love" to Charles IX.; her father was the Seigneur d'Entragues, member of one of the most blue-blooded families of France, a soldier and statesman of fame; and their daughter had inherited, with her mother's beauty and grace, the clever brain and diplomatic skill of her father. A strange mixture of the bewitching and bewildering, this daughter of a King's mistress seems to have been. Tal and dark, voluptuous of figure, with ripe red lips, and bold and dazzling black eyes, she was, in her full-blooded, sensuous charms, the very "antipodes" to the childish, fairy-like Gabriel e who had so long been enshrined in the King's heart. And to this physical appeal--irresistible to a man of such strong passion as Henri, she added gifts of mind which "baby Gabrielle" could never claim.
She had a wit as brilliant as the tongue which was its vehicle; her wel -stored brain was more than a match for the most learned men at Court, and she would leave an archbishop discomfited in a theological argument, to cross swords with Sul y himself on some abstruse problem of statesmanship. When Sully had been brought to his knees, she would rush away, with mischief in her eyes, to take the lead in some merry escapade or practical joke, her silvery laughter echoing in some remote palace corridor. A bewildering, alluring bundle of inconsistencies--beauty, savant, wit, and madcap--such was Henriette d'Entragues when Henri, fresh from his woes, came under the spel of her magnetism.
Here, indeed, was an escape from his grief such as the King had never dared to hope for. Before he had been many hours in his palace, Henri was caught hopelessly in the toils of the new siren, and was intoxicated by her smiles and witcheries. Never was conquest so speedy, so dramatic.
Before a week had flown he was at Henrietta's feet, as lovesick a swain as ever sighed for a lady, pouring love into her ears and writing her passionate letters between the frequent meetings, in which he would send her a "good night, my dearest heart," with "a million kisses."
In the days of his lusty youth the idol and hero of France had never known passion such as this which consumed him within sight of his fiftieth birthday, and which was inspired by a woman of much less than half his years; for at the time Henri was forty-six, and Henriette was barely twenty.
He quickly found, however, that his wooing was not to be all "plain sailing." When Henriette's parents heard of it, they affected to be horrified at the danger in which their beloved daughter was placed. They summoned her home from the perils of Court and a King's passion; and when Henri sent an envoy to bring them to reason they sent him back with a rebuff. Their daughter was to be no man's--not even a King's--plaything. If Henri's passion was sincere, he must prove it by a definite promise of marriage; and only on this condition would their opposition be removed.
Even to such a stipulation Henri, such was his infatuation, made no demur. With his own hand he wrote an agreement pledging himself to make Demoiselle Henriette his lawful wife in case, within a certain period, she became the mother of a son; and undertaking to dissolve his marriage with his wife, Marguerite of France, for this purpose. And this agreement, signed with his own hand, he sent to the Seigneur d'Entragues and his wife, accompanied by a _douceur_ of a hundred thousand crowns.
But before it was dispatched a more formidable obstacle than even the lady's natural guardians remained to be faced--none other than the Duc de Sul y, the man who had shared al the perils of a hundred fights with Henri and was at once his chief counsellor and his _fidus Achates_.
When at last he summoned up courage to place the document in Sul y's hands, he awaited the verdict as nervously as any schoolboy in the presence of a dreaded master. Sully read through the paper, was silent for a few moments, and then spoke. "Sire," he said, "am I to give you my candid opinion on this document, without fear of anger or giving offence?" "Certainly," answered the King. "Wel then, this is what I think of it," was Sul y's reply, as he tore the document in two pieces and flung them on the floor. "Sul y, you are mad!" exclaimed Henri, flaring into anger at such an outrage. "You are right, Sire, I am a weak fool, and would gladly know myself still more a fool--if I might be the only one in France!"
It was in vain, however, that Sully pointed out the fol ies and dangers of such a step as was proposed. Henri's mind was made up, and leaving his friend, in high dudgeon, he went to his study and re-wrote his promise of marriage. The way was at last clear to the gratification of his passion. Henriette was more than willing, her parents' scruples and greed were appeased, and as for Sul y--wel , he must be left to get over his tantrums. Even to please such an old and trusted friend he could not sacrifice such an opportunity for pleasure and a new lease of life as now presented itself!
Halcyon months followed for Henri--months in which even Gabriel e was forgotten in the intoxication of a new passion, compared with which the memory of her gentle charms was but as water to rich, red wine. That Henriette proved wilful, capricious, and extravagant--that her vanity drained his exchequer of hundreds of thousands of crowns for costly jewellery and dresses, was a mere bagatel e, compared with his delight in her manifold al urements.
But Sul y had by no means said his last word. The decree for annulling Henri's marriage with Marguerite de Valois was pronounced; and it was of the highest importance that she should have a worthy successor as Queen of France--a successor whom he found in Marie de Medicis.
The marriage-contract was actually sealed before the King had any suspicion that his hand was being disposed of, and it was only when Sul y one day entered his study with the startling words, "Sire, we have been marrying you," that the awakening came. For a few moments Henri sat as a man stunned, his head buried in his hands; then, with a deep sigh, he spoke: "If God orders it so, so let it be. There seems to be no escape; since you say that it is necessary for my kingdom and my subjects, why, marry I must."
It was a strange predicament in which Henri now found himself. Still more infatuated than ever with Henriette, he was to be tied for life to a Princess whom he had never even seen. To add to the embarrassment of his position, the condition of his marriage promise to Henriette was already on the way to fulfilment; and he was thus pledged to wed her as strongly as any State compact could bind him to stand at the altar with Marie de Medicis. One thing was clear, he must at any cost recover that fatal document; and, while he was giving orders for the suitable reception of his new Queen, and arranging for her triumphal progress to Paris, he was writing to Henriette and her parents demanding the return of his promise of marriage agreement--to her, a pleading letter in which he prays her "to return the promise you have by you and not to compel me to have recourse to other means in order to obtain it"; to her father, a more imperious demand to which he expects instant obedience.
As some consolation to his mistress, whose alternate tears, rage, and reproaches drove him to distraction, he creates her Marquise de Verneuil and promises that, if he should be unable to marry her, he will at least give her a husband of Royal rank, the Due de Nevers, who was eager to make her his wife.
But pleadings and threats alike fail to secure the return of the fatal document, and Henri is reduced to despair, until Henriette gives birth to a dead child and his promise thus becomes of as little value as the paper it was written on. The condition has failed, and he is a free man to marry his Tuscan Princess, while Henriette, thus foiled in her great ambition, is in danger not only of losing her coveted crown, but her place in the King's favour. The days of her wilful autocracy are ended; and, though her heart is ful of anger and disappointment, she writes to him a pitiful letter imploring him still to love her and not to cast her
"from the Heaven to which he has raised her, down to the earth where he found her." "Do not let your wedding festivities be the funeral of my hopes," she writes. "Do not banish me from your Royal presence and your heart. I speak in sighs to you, my King, my lover, my al --I, who have been loved by the earth's greatest monarch, and am willing to be his mistress and his servant."
To such humility was the proud, arrogant beauty now reduced. She was an abject suppliant where she had reigned a Queen. Nor did her pleadings fal on deaf ears. Her Royal lover's hand was given, against his will, to his new Queen, but his heart, he vowed, was al Henriette's--so much so that he soon instal ed her in sumptuous rooms in his palace adjoining those of the Queen herself.
Was ever man placed in a more delicate position than this King of France, between the rival claims of his wife and mistress, who were occupying adjacent apartments, and who, moreover, were both about to become mothers? It speaks wel for Henri's tactfulness that for a time at least this _menage a trois_ appears to have been quite amiably conducted. When Queen Marie gave birth to a son it was to Henriette that the infant's father first confided the good news, seasoning it with "a million kisses" for herself. And when Henriette, in turn, became a mother for the second time, the double Royal event was celebrated by fetes and rejoicings in which each lady took an equal y proud and conspicuous part.
It was inevitable, however, that a woman so favoured by the King, and of so imperious a nature, should have enemies at Court; and it was not long before she became the object of a conspiracy of which the Duchesse de Villars and the Queen were the arch-leaders. One day a bundle of letters was sent anonymously to Henri, letters ful of tenderness and passion, addressed by his beloved Marquise, Henriette, to the Prince de Joinville. The King was furious at such evidence of his mistress's disloyalty, and vowed he would never see her again. But al his storming and reproaches left the Marquise unmoved. She declared, with scorn in her voice, that the letters were forgeries; that she had never written to Joinville in her life, nor spoken a word to him that His Majesty might not have heard. She even pointed out the forger, the Duc de Guise's secretary, and was at last able to convince the King of her innocence.
The Duchesse de Villars and Joinville were banished from the Court in disgrace; the Queen had a severe lecture from her husband; and Henriette was not only restored to full favour, but was consoled by a welcome present of six thousand pounds.
But the days of peace in the King's household were now gone for ever.
Queen Marie, thus humiliated by her rival, became her bitter enemy and also a thorn in the side of her unfaithful husband. Every day brought its fierce quarrels which only stopped on the verge of violence. More than once in fact Henri had to beat a retreat before his Queen's clenched fist, while she lost no opportunity of insulting and humiliating the Marquise.
It is impossible altogether to withhold sympathy from a man thus distracted between two jealous women--a shrewish wife, who in her most amiable mood repel ed his advances with coldness and cutting words, and a mistress who vented on him all the resentment which the Queen's insults and snubs roused in her. Even al Sul y's diplomacy was powerless to pour oil on such vexed waters as these.
The Queen, however, had not long to wait for her revenge, which came with the disclosure of a conspiracy, at the head of which were Henriette's father and her half-brother, the Comte d'Auvergne, and in which, it was proved, she herself had played no insignificant part.
Punishment came, swift and terrible. Her father and brother were sentenced to death, herself to perpetual confinement in a monastery.
But even at this crisis in her life, Henriette's stout heart did not fail her for a moment. "The King may take my life, if he pleases," she said. "Everybody will say that he killed his wife; for I was Queen before the Tuscan woman came on the scene at all." None knew better than she that she could afford thus to put on a bold front. Henri was still her slave, to whom her little finger was more than his crown; and she knew that in his hands both her liberty and her life were safe. And thus it proved; for before she had spent many weeks in the Monastery of Beaumont-les-Tours, its doors were flung open for her, and the first news she heard was that her father was a free man, while her brother's death-sentence had been commuted to a few years in the Bastille.
Thus Henriette returned to the turbulent life of the palace--the daily routine of quarrels and peacemaking with the King, and undisguised hostility from the Queen, through all of which Henri's heart still remained hers. "How I long to have you in my arms again," he writes, when on a hunting excursion, which had led him to the scene of their early romance. "As my letter brings back the memory of the past, I know you will feel that nothing in the present is worth anything in comparison. This, at least, was my feeling as I walked along the roads I so often traversed in the old days on my journey to your side. When I sleep I dream of you; when I wake my thoughts are al of you." He sends her a million kisses, and vows that all he asks of life is that she shal always love him entirely and him alone.
One would have thought that such a conquest of a King and such triumph over a Queen would have gratified the ambition of the most exacting of women. But the Marquise de Verneuil seems to have found smal satisfaction in her victories. When she was not provoking quarrels with Henri, which roused him to such a pitch of anger that at times he threatened to strike her, she received his advances with a coldness or a sullen acquiescence calculated to chill the most ardent lover. In other moods she would drive him to despair by declaring that she had long ceased to love him, and that all she wanted from him was a dowry to carry in marriage to one or other of several suitors who were dying for her hand.
But Madame's day of triumph was drawing much nearer to an end than she imagined. The end, in fact, came with dramatic suddenness when Henri first set eyes on the radiantly lovely Charlotte de Montmorency. Weary at heart of the tempers and exactions of Henriette, it needed but such a lure as this to draw him final y from her side; and from the first flash of Charlotte's beautiful eyes this most susceptible of Kings was undone. Madame de Verneuil's reign was ended; the next quarrel was made the occasion for a complete rupture, and the Court saw her no more.
Already she had lost the bloom of her beauty; she had grown stout and coarse through her excessive fondness for the pleasures of the table, and the rest of her days, which were passed in friendless isolation, she spent in indulging appetites, which added to her mountain of flesh while robbing her of the last trace of good-looks. When the knife of Ravaillac brought Henri's life and his new romance to a tragic end, the Marquise was among those who were suspected of inspiring the assassin's blow; and although her guilt was never proved, the taint of suspicion clung to her to her last day.
After fruitless angling for a husband--the Duc de Guise, the Prince de Joinville, and many another who, with one consent, fled from her advances, she resigned herself to a life of obscurity and gluttony, until death came, one day in the year 1633, to release her from a world of vanity and disillusionment.