The little Dauphine was watching her. ‘I am sorry,’ said Anne-Henriette. ‘My thoughts were far away.’

And the young bride put her hands in those of her sister-in-law and smiled at her. It is strange, thought Anne-Henriette, that because we are both afraid of the future we can give courage to each other.


* * *

The ceremony of putting the newly married couple to bed was over. The Dauphine trembled, for as yet the Dauphin had scarcely spoken to her.

He hates me, she thought; and fervently she wished that she were home at the court of her father.

The Dauphin was lying at one side of the bed; she was at the other. It seemed as though he wanted to put as great a distance between them as possible.

Neither of them spoke, but at last she could endure the silence no longer and she said: ‘I am sorry. I did not want to marry any more than you did. I did not want to come to France. I cannot help it. It was not my wish.’

Still he said nothing. Then she saw that the tears were quietly falling down his cheeks.

To see him cry like that made her feel that he was younger than she was, in more need of comfort, and she forgot the greater part of her fears.

She stretched out a hand and timidly touched his arm.

‘I am sorry,’ she said. ‘I know how you feel.’

He turned slightly towards her then. ‘How can you know?’

‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘because I love my family. I know what it is to love people and to lose them.’

‘You cannot know what it is to lose Marie-Therese.’

‘I do know. You loved her dearly, and she died. You feel you will never be happy again.’

He nodded, and suddenly he threw himself down upon his pillow and began to sob. ‘No one understands . . . no one . . . no one!’

‘I understand,’ she said, and stroked the hair back from his forehead. ‘Poor little Dauphin, I understand.’

He did not reject her caress and she continued to stroke his hair.

‘You . . . you will despise me,’ he said.

Then it seemed to the young girl that she had acquired new wisdom. ‘No,’ she told him, ‘I shall not. I respect you for loving her so much. It shows me that you are a good person . . . that . . . that if I am a good wife to you I shall have nothing to fear. You might in time love me like this. That makes me happy, for when she first came you did not love her any more than you love me.’

The Dauphin turned his face away from her, and every now and then his body heaved with his sobs.

She bent over him. ‘Please . . . you must not try to suppress your grief. It does not matter if you show it to me. I understand. It makes me happy that you loved her so much.’

The Dauphin did not answer. But he took her hand and held it to his hot, damp cheek.

And that night the Dauphin, mourning his first wife, cried himself to sleep in the arms of the second.


* * *

So necessary had the Marquise de Pompadour become to the King’s comfort that she found herself rich, courted and almost first minister of France. In every château she had her special apartments, and she had already acquired the châteaux of Selle and Crécy and had spent a great deal of money in embellishing them.

She became noted for her extravagance, for the desire to possess beautiful things had always been with her, and in the past she had often dreamed of what she would do when she was in that position which was now hers.

Abel was now at Court and had been given the title of Marquis de Vandières; but he was uneasy.

‘I find it embarrassing,’ he told his sister, ‘to be treated as such an important person, not because I have done anything to make me so, but because of my relationship with you.’

‘You are important,’ she told him gaily. ‘If anyone shows disrespect to you, I shall be very angry with them.’

‘That is the point,’ he told her sadly. ‘They do not show their contempt, but I feel they despise me all the same.’

Poor Abel! He lacked the ambition of herself and her mother.

‘I should be content,’ he told her, ‘if I might become Director of Public Works when Lenormant gives up. That would be enough for me.’

‘I am angry with my family,’ she told him. ‘I want to help them so much, and they will not let me.’ She was sad thinking of the loss of her mother and her little son, who had died recently. She would have insisted on their joining in her good fortune. There was her little daughter Alexandrine; a good marriage should be made for her.

As for François Poisson, he could have had a title had he wished.

He had laughed when she had suggested this to him; he told her he was happy enough on his country estates, and asked for nothing more.

‘The Marquis of this . . . the Comte of that! Oh, that’s not for me. I’ll stay plain Poisson. Don’t worry about old François. You get on with your whoring at the Palace. I’ll keep out of the way, but I’ll remain old Poisson.’

Surely, she thought, a woman in my coveted position had never had a family which demanded less!

Meanwhile she continued to reign at Court, and how happy she was when she and the King could escape from the wearying Etiquette of Versailles. What pleasure to sit down to a meal in the petits appartements without the presence of the officiers de la bouche – those five servants who must taste every dish before it was served to the King – or of the officiers du goblet, five others whose duty it was to taste the wine.

The poor Queen had not the opportunity of escaping from Etiquette as had the King. Perhaps she was more patient and accepted it more readily. She had not been at Trianon for many months because a dispute was in progress, between her governor there and her fruit-woman, as to who should supply the candles for the house. It was a fine point of Etiquette, as candles must not be supplied by the wrong person; and until the dispute was settled there could be no candles for Trianon.

The whole Court had heard of the affair of the Queen’s counterpane on her official bed, and no one thought it extraordinary. She had noticed that the counterpane was dusty and pointed this out to one of her ladies. The complaint was passed on to the valet de chambre tapissier who declared that it was not his duty to remove such dust, as the counterpane was not tapisserie but meuble, and must therefore be removed by a garde meuble. A controversy then ensued, between the guards of the furniture, to discover whose duty it was to dust the counterpane; for, if a servant had performed this duty when it was another’s, it would have been considered a breach of Etiquette, and it was the constant desire of the lower stratum at Versailles punctiliously to ape the upper.

Thus again and again ridiculous situations ensued; but Etiquette was sacred and no one did anything about reforming such silly rules.

There was one occasion when the Marquise feared that she and the King would find themselves in a very difficult situation and that they might be guilty of one of the worst breaches of Etiquette it was possible to make.

They had supped in the petits appartements; the King had eaten well and drunk even better. It was one of those delightful occasions when, as far as possible, Etiquette was ignored at the feast.

The Marquise had been at her most vivacious and delightful, and the King had early given the order ‘Allons nous coucher’ that he might be alone with her.

The formal coucher in his state bedroom had been completed and the King joined Madame de Pompadour in her own apartment.

‘Ah,’ he cried, stretching himself out on the bed, ‘what pleasure it is to escape! My dearest Marquise, I grow more and more weary of the formality of Versailles. I love my château beyond all, but always there is the unbidden tutor at my elbow: Etiquette.’

‘Your Majesty should dispense with it.’

‘I do on every possible occasion.’

‘On all occasions, perhaps,’ she told him.

‘The people would never allow it. They think of us as puppets . . . always clad in brocade and velvet, continually receiving the bows, curtsies and homage of those about us, and that is what we are doing.’ He yawned. ‘The wine was good tonight.’

‘And Your Majesty showed his approval of it.’

‘Was I somewhat intoxicated?’

She knelt by the bed and looked at him with that adoring expression which gave him such delight.

‘As usual your manners were perfect. It would be impossible for them to be otherwise.’

‘My dear,’ he said, ‘how beautiful you look! Why do you kneel there? I would have you come nearer.’

She smiled and rose.

While she removed her gown she said: ‘One day I shall show you my little Alexandrine.’

‘You love this daughter of yours dearly,’ he said. ‘Is she as beautiful as you are? But that is impossible.’

‘Alexandrine is remarkably ugly. I am not sorry. I do not wish her to be a great beauty.’

‘That is a strange thing for a fond mother to say.’

‘No,’ said the Marquise, half closing her eyes. ‘Great beauties have many enemies. I should like Alexandrine to live quietly and peacefully. My mother had ambitions for me, and I achieved them. Mine for my daughter are quite different. I hope I shall achieve them too.’

‘I suppose,’ said the King, ‘you want a noble husband for her.’

‘I shall want to choose him with care,’ she said. ‘He must be worthy of her.’

‘Rich, noble . . . powerful,’ murmured the King.

‘And kind,’ she added. ‘I would have her husband as kind to her as my King has been to me.’

Now the King’s eyes glistened, for there was nothing but her abundant hair to cover her exquisite form, and charmingly it failed to do so.

The King held out his hand and she went to him.

It was an hour later when she discovered that all was not well with Louis. He was gasping for breath, and hastily lighting a candle she saw his face was purple.

She cried: ‘Louis . . . Louis . . . what is wrong?’

He managed to stammer: ‘Hurry . . . Send for a doctor.’ But immediately he remembered Etiquette was intruding upon them. ‘Say it is you who are ill,’ he added urgently.

She nodded, understanding, and called to one of her women. ‘Bring Dr Quesnay at once,’ she told her. ‘Do not say that the King is ill. Say that I am.’

The doctor arrived and was astonished to be greeted by the Marquise. ‘Madame,’ he stammered, ‘what is this illness of yours?’

‘Hush, I pray you. It is His Majesty.’

Quesnay went to the bed and examined the King. He gave Louis a pill and asked for cold water with which to bathe his face.

The Marquise stood trembling by the bed.

‘Monsieur,’ she cried, ‘I pray you tell me . . . how bad is he?’

The doctor looked grim. ‘Too much indulgence must be paid for. The King takes too much pleasure.’ He lifted his shoulders. ‘He is still a young man, and that is fortunate. If he were sixty you would have had a dead man in your bed this night, Madame.’

Louis called to the doctor. ‘Help me to rise,’ he said. ‘I must go back to my own bedchamber. If I am going to be ill it must not be here.’

When he had drunk several cups of tea which the Marquise’s woman had prepared on the doctor’s orders, Louis was taken back to his bedchamber by Quesnay. The Marquise, anxious as she was about the King’s health, could not help shuddering to contemplate the awful calamity which the scandal of the King’s dying in his mistress’s bed would have caused, for Etiquette would be outraged if any king of France died elsewhere than in the state bed. All that night Quesnay was with the King, and in the morning the Marquise received a tender note from her lover.

‘My dearest,’ wrote Louis, ‘what a fright we both had! But I send this note to you by the doctor so that he may assure you that all is well . . .’

It seemed strange that Etiquette could have seemed so important to them both at such a time; yet such was its hold over the Court that it could dominate all occasions.

It was no small part of the life at Versailles. None would have been surprised to hear that the King and the Marquise had spent the night together; indeed had they not done so the Court would have been buzzing with the news. Yet one of the greatest scandals possible would have been for the King to die in his mistress’s bed.

Remove such unreasonable conventions? As easy to take away the foundations of the magnificent honey-coloured château itself.