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.