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."