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