Виктория Холт - Louis the Well-Beloved

‘I think,’ he said to her, ‘that the people are well pleased with Madame Louise-Elisabeth and Madame Anne-Henriette. Did you hear them, Marie? They are calling for another glimpse of Madame Première and Madame Seconde.’

‘You . . . are pleased?’ asked Marie anxiously.

Louis laid one of the babies in her arms and gently touched the cheek of the other.

‘When I look at these two little creatures,’ he said, ‘I would not wish to change them . . . even for a Dauphin. Besides! . . .’ His smile was affectionate. ‘The next will be a Dauphin.’

So Marie was able to close her eyes, to slip into a sleep of exhaustion, utterly contented, believing that the life which lay before her would be made good by her children and her loving husband.

* * *

The Duc de Bourbon was making frantic efforts to return to Court. His punishment had been very severe. The Court had been his life, and to be forced to live in the country without the company of Madame de Prie was hard to bear indeed; but an additional torment had been inflicted. He, whose great delight it had been to hunt, was forbidden to do so.

Bourbon was desolate, ready to humble himself to regain something of his old position. This was what Fleury and the King desired for him; it was gratifying to see the once arrogant Duke made humble.

Bourbon was constantly pleading with nobles of the Court to use their influence to have at least the ban on hunting rescinded, while in Chantilly he raged against his fate and spent his time planning how he could possibly escape this deprivation of all that had given him the greatest pleasure in life.

Eventually he achieved his desires, attaining them through his marriage with Charlotte of Hesse-Rheinfels – which, pleasing the King and Fleury, resulted in his recall to Court.

Madame de Prie was possessed of greater dignity than her lover.

In her Normandy château she attempted to gather about her a circle of wits and writers, and as many courtiers as she could lure from Versailles. She wanted to make her circle renowned and even feared at Court.

Despising the weakness of her lover Bourbon, and realising that he had escaped her, she took a new lover – a young country gentleman of great personal charm.

She was gay and appeared to be in high spirits, but she was thinking only of the Court and yearning to be once more its most brilliant member. She spent her days in planning entertainments, writing letters to her friend, that rake, the Duc de Richelieu, who was away on an embassy in Vienna.

Determined to attract attention to herself she pretended to be a prophetess and foretold her own death, but no one believed her, for she was extremely beautiful, full of vitality and only twenty-seven years old.

‘Nevertheless,’ she declared, ‘my end is near. I sense these things, and I know it.’

She continued to live gaily, adored by her lover, writing her verses and letters, giving one brilliant entertainment after another.

When the day drew near on which she had prophesied she would die, she saw sceptical looks in the eyes of her friends, and decided to give a great banquet three days before the appointed one. It was the most brilliant of all her entertainments. She read her newest verses to her guests and told them that this was a farewell banquet.

Her lover implored her not to joke about such a serious matter, but her answer was to take a diamond ring from her finger and give it to him.

‘It is worth a small fortune,’ she said. ‘It is yours to remember me by. I have other gifts for you, mon ami. Diamonds and other precious stones. They will be of no use to me where I am going.’

Her guests joked with her.

‘Enough of this talk of death,’ they said. ‘You will give many more parties such as this one.’

Her lover tried to give her back the ring, but she would not take it, and two days later she pressed more jewels on him.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘I want you to go away, for I would be alone.’

He had always obeyed her, and he did so now. She smiled at him fondly, as he said: ‘Au revoir, my dearest.’ But she answered ‘Adieu!’

The next day – that which she had named as her last on Earth – she shut herself in her rooms alone and thought of the past: of all the ambition and the glory which was hers no longer and which she knew she could never regain.

She poured herself a glass of wine and slipped into it a dose of poison.

When her servants came into her room they found her, dead.

* * *

Stanislas and his wife came to Versailles from Chambord.

The ex-King of Poland embraced his daughter with tears in his eyes. Queen Catherine watched them with restraint; she had never given way to displays of affection as these two had. She believed herself to be more of a realist than her husband and daughter.

Stanislas, his arm about his daughter, had led her to a window seat, and with arms still entwined they sat down.

‘And how is the King feeling towards you now, dearest daughter?’

‘So loving, Father. It is like a second honeymoon.’

The relief of Stanislas was obvious. ‘How glad I am! I have had some anxious moments. At the time of the dismissal of the Duc de Bourbon . . .’

‘I know, Father,’ said Marie. ‘Louis was very angry then.’

‘The whole Court expected him to take a mistress. Yet he did not.’

‘I could not have borne that,’ said Marie sharply.

Her father put his head close to hers and said: ‘Yet, my child, should it come, you must meet it with fortitude.’

His brow was slightly wrinkled; he was aware of his wife; he did not wish her to be reminded of his own peccadilloes, for he himself had found it impossible to live without women. His wife was a prim woman and he feared that Marie – much as he loved her – might be the same.

‘Louis is young and virile,’ murmured Stanislas. ‘Such matters could be unavoidable.’

Marie laughed. ‘I have something to tell you, Father.’

Stanislas took both her hands in his and kissed them. ‘Again?’ he said.

‘Yes, Father, I am already pregnant.’

‘It is excellent news. We will pray that this time it will be a Dauphin.’

‘Louis is enchanted!’ cried Marie.

‘Keep him so, my child. And remember, the more children a Queen bears, the stronger is her position. There must be many children, for children fall an easy prey to sickness. One son . . . two . . . three . . . You cannot have too many.’

Marie nodded. ‘It shall be so,’ she said. ‘It is what we both wish.’

The babies were brought in, and Madame Première and Madame Seconde kicked their fat little legs and gurgled and screamed to the delight of all who beheld them.

The King joined them, and his pride in his daughters was obvious.

Stanislas, watching Louis and Marie together, prayed that Marie would take the right course when the mistresses appeared – as it seemed inevitable they would.

There he stood, the handsome King of France – his features so beautiful as to be almost feminine; yet there was a certain sensuality beginning to dawn on that handsome face. How graceful he was, how perfect his poise and manners! Even Stanislas could see that Marie seemed rather stocky beside him, lacking his grace, rather like the daughter of a prosperous tradesman than the daughter of a King.

Yet, thought Stanislas, my darling girl has the most important of all qualities a Queen should possess. Already she has produced twins and there is another child on the way.

Let her find content in her children, thought Stanislas, and resignation to accept whatever must come to her. That is the way for Marie Leczinska to remain firmly on the throne of France.

All through France there was rejoicing, for on a September day in the year 1729 the Queen gave birth to the Dauphin.

The child was doubly welcome for the baby who had been born in the year following the arrival of the twins, had been a girl – Louise-Marie, Madame Troisième.

The Queen had come triumphantly through the ordeal. She had shown the people that she could bear children – in 1727, the twins, 1728 Madame Troisième, and now in 1729 the Dauphin. Who could ask more than that?

The bells were ringing throughout Paris and the people were determined to make these celebrations excel those which had taken place in honour of the girls. The fireworks were more dazzling, the illuminations brighter. As soon as darkness fell boats bearing lights passed along the river, and the people danced and sang in the streets.

When the King went to Notre Dame for the thanksgiving service the crowds cheered him as even he had never been cheered before. They were delighted with their King – handsome and gracious, he had again proved his virility. They had not been pleased when such a godlike creature married a plain woman of little importance, yet even the marriage was proving successful. Four children in three years! It was as though Providence had sent the twins as a sign of the fertility of the Queen.

Louis insisted that the little boy should have for his governess the person whom he considered most suited to the task, one whom he had loved all his life: Madame de Ventadour.

And as she took the child in her arms immediately after his baptism by the Cardinal de Rohan, she looked at the little figure with the ribbon of Saint-Esprit wrapped about him, and tears came into her eyes for, as she said, it was as though her dearest one was once more a baby.

* * *

The next few years passed pleasantly for the King, and slightly less so for the Queen.

She was being more and more deprived of the King’s society. She realised that she could not mix happily with his friends; Marie found much at Court to shock her.

The King was a faithful husband – though a demanding one. Yet in spite of this, morals at the Court were in the Queen’s eyes outrageous.

One of the leading lights was Louis Armand du Plessis, the Duc de Richelieu, who was notorious for his love affairs and who had papered the walls of his apartments with pictures of the nude female form in attitudes which he considered amusing. The Queen remembered that before she had seen this man – he had been away from the Court on a mission to Vienna – she had heard that two women had fought a duel for his favours. It was said that he had begun his rakish career in his very early youth at the Court of Louis Quatorze, and his first mistress had been the Duchesse de Bourgogne, the King’s mother.

Matching him in vice was Mademoiselle de Charolais who made a point of taking a new lover once a year. Love affairs to be complete should be fruitful, she declared; and to prove how successful she was, had a child every year by a different lover.

The Comte de Clermont kept numerous mistresses and made no secret of this.

As these were typical of the people who frequented the King’s hunting parties, it was small wonder that the Queen was not encouraged to attend them. In fact during those years it seemed to Marie that she had either just borne a child or was about to do so. The little Duc d’Anjou had been born in 1730, the year following the birth of the Dauphin. 1731 was surprisingly a barren year, but in 1732 Adelaide made her appearance; and already Marie was pregnant again.

Each night, with occasional exceptions, the King visited her; she found herself exhausted by her nights with him and her frequent pregnancies, and made excuses for sleeping alone.

‘I believe it to be sinful to gratify the lusts of the flesh at certain times,’ she told Louis.

He was indulgent and as long as the saints’ days were not too frequent made little protest.

The courtiers were watching this state of affairs between the Queen and the King with some amusement; secret wagers were laid as to how long it would be before the King took a mistress.

Richelieu and that rake, the Comte de Clermont, would have advised the King of all the pleasures he was missing by remaining faithful to his far from attractive wife, but they were not unmindful of Fleury who, in his cautious way, was watching Louis no less closely than they.

Fleury had no desire for the King to select a mistress. He knew, from the records of the past, what havoc a mistress could play in state affairs. At present the King was faithful to the Queen and the Queen was producing children. That was satisfactory. Fleury was eager that this state of affairs should be preserved as long as possible; and remembering the astute conduct of Fleury in the case of the Duc de Bourbon, those courtiers who might have induced the King to satisfy the lusts of the flesh outside the marriage bed refrained from doing so.