Love affairs of the Courts of Europe by Thornton Hall

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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'Estrees 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, Francoise 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 Francois
I., who left Francois' 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'Estrees, 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-Alegre, 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
chateau in Picardy, now in the great Paris mansion, the Hotel d'Estrees;
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'Estrees 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 chateau
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, Cesar, 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'Estrees, the creature of sunshine,
who won the bravest heart in Europe, and carried her conquest to the
very foot of a throne.

CHAPTER V

A QUEEN OF HEARTS

If ever woman was born for love and for empire over the hearts of men it
was surely Jeanne Becu, who first opened her eyes one August day in the
year 1743, at dreary Vaucouleurs, in Joan of Arc's country, and who was
fated to dance her light-hearted way through the palace of a King to the
guillotine.

Scarcely ever has woman, born to such beauty and witchery, been cradled
less auspiciously. Her reputed father was a scullion, her mother a
sempstress. For grandfather she had Fabien Becu, who left his
frying-pans in a Paris kitchen to lead Jeanne Husson, a fellow-servant,
to the altar. Such was the ignoble strain that flowed in the veins of
the Vaucouleurs beauty, who five-and-twenty years later was playfully
pulling the nose of the fifteenth Louis, and queening it in his palaces
with a splendour which Marie Antoinette herself never surpassed.

From her sordid home Jeanne was transported at the age of six to a
convent, where she spent nine years in rebellion against rules and
punishments, until "the golden head emerged at last from black woollen
veil and coarse unstarched bands, the exquisite form from shapeless,
hideous robe, the perfect little feet from abominable yellow shoes," to
play first the role of lady's maid to a wealthy widow, and, when she
wearied (as she quickly did) of coiffing hair, to learn the arts of
millinery.

"Picture," says de Goncourt, "the glittering shop, where all day long
charming idlers and handsome great gentlemen lounged and ogled; the
pretty milliner tripping through the streets, her head covered by a big,
black _caleche_, whence her golden curls escaped, her round, dainty
waist defined by a muslin-frilled pinafore, her feet in little
high-heeled, buckled shoes, and in her hand a tiny fan, which she uses
as she goes--and then imagine the conversations, proposals, replies!"

Such was Jeanne Becu in the first bloom of her dainty beauty, the
prettiest grisette who ever set hearts fluttering in Paris streets; with
laughter dancing in her eyes, a charming pertness at her red lips, grace
in every movement, and the springtide of youth racing through her veins.

When Voltaire first saw her portrait, he exclaimed, "The original was
fashioned for the gods." And we cannot wonder, as we look on the
ravishing beauty of the face that wrung this eloquent tribute from the
cold-blooded cynic--the tender, melting violet of the eyes, with their
sweeping brown lashes, under the exquisite arch of brown eyebrows, the
dainty little Greek nose, the bent bow of the delicious tiny mouth, the
perfect oval of the face, the complexion "fair and fresh as an
infant's," and a glorious halo of golden hair, a dream of fascinating
curls and tendrils.

It was to this bewitching picture, "with the perfume and light as of a
goddess of love," that Jean du Barry, self-styled Comte, adventurer and
roue, succumbed at a glance. But du Barry's tenure of her heart, if
indeed he ever touched it at all, was brief; for the moment Louis XV.
set eyes on the ravishing girl he determined to make the prize his own,
a superior claim to which the Comte perforce yielded gracefully.

Thus, in 1768, we find Jeanne Becu--or "Mademoiselle Vaubarnier," as she
now called herself--transported by a bound to the Palace of Versailles
and to the first place in the favour of the King, having first gone
through the farce of a wedding ceremony with du Barry's brother,
Guillaume, a husband whom she first saw on the marriage morning, and on
whom she looked her last at the church door.

Then followed for the maid of the kitchen a few years of such Queendom
and splendour as have seldom fallen to the lot of any lady cradled in a
palace--the idolatrous worship of a King, the intoxication of the power
that only beauty thus enshrined can wield, the glitter of priceless
jewels, rarest laces, and richest satins and silks, the flash of gold on
dinner and toilet-table, an army of servants in sumptuous liveries, the
fawning of great Court ladies, the courtly flatteries of princes--every
folly and extravagance that money could purchase or vanity desire.

Six years of such intoxicating life and then--the end. Louis is lying on
his death-bed and, with fear in his eyes and a tardy penitence on his
lips, is saying to her, "Madame, it is time that we should part." And,
indeed, the hour of parting had arrived; for a few days later he drew
his last wicked breath, and Madame du Barry was under orders to retire
to a convent. But her grief for the dead King was as brief as her love
for him had been small; for within a few months, we find her installed
in her beautiful country home, Lucienne, ready for fresh conquests, and
eager to drain the cup of pleasure to the last drop. Nor was there any
lack of ministers to the vanity of the woman who had now reached the
zenith of her incomparable charms.

Among the many lovers who flocked to the country shrine of the widowed
"Queen," was Louis, Duc de Cosse, son of the Marechal de Brissac, who,
although Madame du Barry's senior by nine years, was still in the prime
of his manhood--handsome as an Apollo and a model of the courtly graces
which distinguished the old _noblesse_ in the day of its greatest pride,
which was then so near its tragic downfall.

De Casse had long been a mute worshipper of Louis' beautiful "Queen,"
and now that she was a free woman he was at last able to pay open homage
to her, a homage which she accepted with indifference, for at the time
her heart had strayed to Henry Seymour, although in vain. The woman
whose beauty had conquered all other men was powerless to raise a flame
in the breast of the cold-blooded Englishman; and, realising this, she
at last bade him farewell in a letter, pathetic in its tender dignity.
"It is idle," she wrote, "to speak of my affection for you--you know it.
But what you do not know is my pain. You have not deigned to reassure
me about that which most matters to my heart. And so I must believe that
my ease of mind, my happiness, are of little importance to you. I am
sorry that I should have to allude to them; it is for the last time."

It was in this hour of disillusion and humiliation that she turned for
solace to de Cosse, whose touching constancy at last found its reward.
It was not long before friendship ripened into a love as ardent as his
own; and for the first time this fickle beauty, whose heart had been a
pawn in the game of ambition, knew what a beautiful and ennobling thing
true love is.

Those were halcyon days which followed for de Cosse and the lady his
loyalty had won; days of sweet meetings and tender partings--of a union
of souls which even death was powerless to dissolve. When they could not
meet--and de Cosse's duties often kept him from her side--letters were
always on the wing between Lucienne and Paris, letters some of which
have survived to bring their fragrance to our day.

Thus the lover writes, "A thousand thanks, a thousand thanks, dear
heart! To-day I shall be with you. Yes, I find my happiness is in being
loved by you. I kiss you a thousand times! Good-bye. I love you for
ever." In another letter we read, "Yes, dear heart, I desire so ardently
to be with you--not in spirit, my thoughts are ever with you, but
bodily--that nothing can calm my impatience. Good-bye, my darling. I
kiss you many and many times with all my heart." The curious may read at
the French Record Office many of these letters written in a bold,
flowing hand by de Cosse in the hey-day of his love. The paper is
time-stained, the ink is faded; but each sentence still palpitates with
the passion that inspired it a century and a quarter ago.

And with this great love came new honours for de Cosse. His father's
death made him Duc de Brissac, head of one of the greatest houses in
France, owner of vast estates. He was appointed Governor of Paris and
Colonel of the King's own body-guard. He had, in fact, risen to a
perilous eminence; for the clouds of the great Revolution were already
massing in the sky, and the _sans-culotte_ crowds were straining to be
at the throats of the cursed "aristos," and to hurl Louis from his
throne. Brissac (as we must now call him) was thus an object of special
hatred, as of splendour, standing out so prominently as representative
of the hated _noblesse_.

Other nobles, fearful of the breaking of the storm, were flying in
droves to seek safety in England and elsewhere. But when the Governor of
Paris was urged to fly, he answered proudly, "Certainly not. I shall act
according to my duty to my ancestors and myself." And, heedless of his
life, he clung to his duty and his honour, presenting a smiling face to
the scowls of hatred and envy, and spending blissful hours at Lucienne
with the woman he loved.

Nor was she any less conscious of her danger, or less indifferent to it.
She also had become a target of hatred and scarcely veiled threats.
Watchful eyes marked every coming and going of Brissac's messengers
with their missives of love; it was discovered that Brissac's
aide-de-camp, whose life they sought, was in hiding in her house; that
she was supplying the noble emigrants with money. The climax was reached
when she boldly advertised a reward of two thousand louis for a clue to
the jewellery of which burglars had robbed her--jewels of which she
published a long and dazzling list, thus bringing to memory the days
when the late King had squandered his ill-gotten gold on her.

The Duc, at last alarmed for her--never for himself--begged her either
to escape, or, as he wrote, to "come quickly, my darling, and take every
precaution for your valuables, if you have any left. Yes, come, and your
beauty, your kindness and magnanimity. I am ashamed of it, but I feel
weaker than you. How should I feel otherwise for the one I love best?"

But already the hour for flight had passed. The passions of the mob were
breaking down the barriers that were now too weak to hold them in check;
the Paris streets had their first baptism of blood, prelude to the
deluge to follow; hideous, fierce-eyed crowds were clamouring at the
gates of Versailles; and de Brissac was soon on his way, a prisoner, to
Orleans.

The blow had fallen at last, suddenly, and with crushing force. When
"Louis Hercule Timoleon de Cosse-Brissac, soldier from his birth," was
charged before the National High Court with admitting Royalists into the
Guards, he answered: "I have admitted into the King's Guards no one but
citizens who fulfilled all the conditions contained in the decree of
formation": and no other answer or plea would he deign to his accusers.

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