As the years rolled by she bore him several children, and more and more took the position of his wife. He became still more infatuated with her; and she, for her part, abandoned the life of dissipation which is said to have distinguished her youth. Henri wanted to marry her; she must have had great powers of fascination to make him so faithful after so many years. The idea was to procure a divorce from Marguerite and elevate his mistress to the throne. But just before the proposed marriage Gabrielle went to Paris and stayed at the house of an Italian named Zamet. On April 7th, 1599, she became very ill, and was artificially delivered of a dead child on the 9th. She fell into violent convulsions; on the 10th she became unconscious, and that evening she died. Of course Sully, who did not like her—for even Gabrielle had her enemies—hinted that she was poisoned—such was the reputation of the Italians in Paris at that time—and Sully’s ill-natured hint has evidently influenced historians to this day, for the good lady whom I quoted above repeats it as at least probable. But is it not much more probable that she died of puerperal eclampsia? She was middle-aged; she had had several children; she was far from slight in figure. At the Royal Hospital for Women in Sydney we find that most of these women who die nowadays from eclampsia are very much like Gabrielle in age, figure, and the number of their children. Of course it is impossible to say definitely; but I should be very much surprised to find that Gabrielle’s kidneys were absolutely healthy during that last year of her life. And it is quite possible that in that last confinement Gabrielle in this way paid the penalty for her dissipation in early youth. It is at least more likely that she should die from a perfectly well-known and fatal disease such as eclampsia than that anybody should try to poison a woman so generally popular, though she had enemies who were both jealous of her and disliked the idea of a royal mistress becoming Queen of France. Kidney trouble is often caused by drink, and people at the Court of France—indeed, all over Europe—generally used to drink too much in those days. After all, it is only a speculation that could easily explain the sudden death of an apparently perfectly healthy woman just as the moment was approaching when she would achieve her ambition.