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'Estrées 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, Françoise 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 François I., who left François' 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'Estrées, 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-Alégre, 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 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.