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.