her proceeded to bleed the unfortunate woman four times. The consequence was that poor Gabrielle died the following morning (April 10); the only wonder is that she did not die before! The public, learning that she had been taken ill shortly after supping with Zamet, persisted in the belief that she had been poisoned—Italians bore a sinister reputation in those days, and, indeed, down to a much later period—but this theory is now generally discredited.[19]
“On Good Friday,” writes Bassompierre, “while we were at the sermon on the Passion at Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, La Varenne came to tell the Maréchal d’Ornano[20] that the duchess had just died,[21] and that we ought to prevent the King, who was travelling post to Paris, from coming there; and he begged him to go and meet him, in order to stop him. I was with the marshal at the sermon, and he asked me to accompany him, which I did. We met the King beyond La Saussaye, near Villejuif, travelling at the top speed of his horses. When he saw the marshal, he suspected that he was the bearer of bad news, which caused him to weep bitterly. Finally, they made him alight at the Abbey of La Saussaye, where they laid him on a bed. He gave vent to every excess of grief which it is possible to describe. At length, a coach having arrived from Paris, they placed him in it to return to Fontainebleau, whither all the princes and nobles had hastened to find him. We went with him to Fontainebleau, and when he had mounted to the great Salle de la Cheminée, he begged all the company to return to Paris to pray God for his consolation. He kept with him Monsieur le Grand, the Comte du Lude, Termes, Castelnau de Charosse, Montglat, and Frontenac; and, as I was taking my leave with all those whom he had dismissed, he said to me: ‘Bassompierre, you were the last who was with my mistress; stay with me to talk to me of her.’ So I remained also, and we were eight or ten days without the company being augmented, if one excepts certain of the Ambassadors, who came to condole with him[22] and then returned to Paris immediately.”
During this time the King remained prostrated with grief. “My affliction,” he wrote to his sister Catherine, “is incomparable, like the person who is the cause of it. Regrets and tears will accompany me to the tomb. The root of my love is dead and will never put forth another branch.”
But alas! how changeable are the affections of kings! Scarcely two months had passed[23] before his Majesty had embarked in a new love-affair, with Henriette d’Entragues, whom he created Marquise de Verneuil, that ambitious, greedy, intriguing woman, who, later, was to conspire with the enemies of France against her royal lover. Nor did this attachment prevent him from seeking amusement in other directions and honouring with his fugitive attentions, not only divers beauties of the Court, whose names Bassompierre does not hesitate to hand down to fame, but even that vulgar class which the chronicler qualifies with a word so explicit that we dare not repeat it.
The following scene described by Bassompierre is too typical of the life of Henri IV and his immediate entourage to be omitted. It occurred during a flying visit to Paris which the King and a few of his favourites paid in July, 1599, while the Court was in residence at Blois:—
“The King had no retinue on this journey, and dined with a president and supped with a prince or noble as the humour took him. Mlle. d’Entragues was not yet his mistress,[24] and he used sometimes to pass the night with a pretty wench called la Glaude. It happened one evening that, after he had been supping with M. d’Elbeuf[25], the King came to pass the night with this girl at Zamet’s house, and when, after we had undressed him, we were about to enter the King’s coach, which was to take us back to our lodging, M. de Joinville and Monsieur le Grand quarrelled, touching something which the former pretended that Monsieur le Grand had told the King about him and Mlle. d’Entragues.[26] In consequence, Monsieur le Grand was wounded in the buttock, the Vidame de Mans received a thrust through the body, and La Rivière one in the stomach. After M. de Praslin had caused the doors of the house to be shut, and M. de Chevreuse [Joinville] had taken his departure, they asked me to go to the King and tell him what had occurred. The King rose, put on his dressing-gown and, taking up his sword, came on to the stairs, where the others were standing, while I preceded him, carrying a taper. He was intensely annoyed, and sent the same night to the First President[27] to command him to come to him on the morrow with the Court of the Parlement, when he directed them to investigate the affair and to show no favour to anyone. This they did, and proceeded to summon before them the Comte de Cramail, Chasseron, and myself to give evidence. And the King bade us go and answer the questions which the commissioners might put to us, which we did; and proceedings were instituted against the offender. But, by reason of the pressing entreaties which Monsieur, Madame, and Mlle. de Guise[28] addressed to the King, the affair went no further, and two months later the Constable[29] brought about a reconciliation at Conflans.”
In November, Bassompierre obtained permission from the King to go to Lorraine, to persuade Charles IV to free him from the security which his late father had given for some 50,000 crowns which the duke had borrowed at the time of the marriage of his elder daughter to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, an obligation which had been causing him considerable uneasiness. In Lorraine he remained for some six weeks, “more for the love which I bore Mlle. de Bourbonne[30] than for the other affair.”
Early in the New Year he returned to Paris, where the charms of Mlle. de Bourbonne were soon forgotten for those of a lady whom he calls la Raverie and who was presumably a star of the demi-monde. The courtiers of Henri IV were, however, quite capable of losing their hearts to two or more ladies at the same time, following the example of their royal master, who “fell in love that winter with Madame de Boinville and Mlle. Clin.”[31] In addition to love-making, he danced in several ballets, one of which was appropriately called le Ballet des Amoureux.