Виктория Холт - The Road to Compiegne

‘No, my dear,’ said Louis. ‘But tell me. The fellow is so outrageous. How does he manage at his age to remain like an eager boy? Tell me that.’

The Marquise laughed lightly. ‘We should remember, Sire,’ she said, ‘that these stories of his prowess are invariably related by himself. This could mean that the powers of Son Excellence are even more amazing after the event than during it.’

Now the King was laughing with her, the Marquise was relieved.

She remembered other scandals with which to amuse Louis, and when he left her he was a great deal brighter than when he had come. It was often thus. He would mount the stairs to her apartment in a melancholy mood, and retire with raised spirits, very often smiling to himself on recalling some amusing anecdote.

Left alone, the Marquise lay down on a couch and tried to suppress the cough which she had been fighting during the interview with the King.

As she lay there the door of the apartment opened and a woman tiptoed in.

‘Is that you, Hausset?’ asked the Marquise.

‘It is I, Madame.’

‘And you were in your little alcove scribbling away while the King was here?’

‘Within reach, should you have needed me, Madame.’

The Marquise smiled rather wanly; there was no need to keep up appearances with her confidential woman who was also her good friend.

Madame du Hausset threw herself on her knees and took the hand of Madame de Pompadour. ‘You’ll kill yourself. You’ll kill yourself,’ she declared passionately.

‘Poor Hausset, then you will be dismissed from the Palace; and how will you then continue with your memoirs? I suppose you could continue with them, though they would not be so interesting, would they? Now you can write about the King and your mistress who is also the King’s. I wonder for how long that will be.’

‘That’s no way to talk,’ said Madame du Hausset.

‘No way indeed. But I am aware of it all the time, you see.

Those people at the toilette . . . did they think I could not read their thoughts?’

‘This dieting of yours, Madame – it is no good to you,’ said Madame du Hausset. ‘Nothing you eat can make you a match for the King. Few women could be.’

‘I fear, Hausset, that I am not a very sensual woman. I must tell you something. There have been nights when the King has slept on the couch in my room. What does that mean?’

‘It means that he has a great regard for you, Madame.’

‘He says, “I will not disturb you.” What does that mean?’

‘That he considers your comfort.’

‘For how long, Hausset, does such a man continue to consider the comfort of his mistress?’

‘It would depend on how deep was his affection for her. Can Monsieur Quesnay do nothing for you?’

‘He has given me drugs and pills, but I remain . . . as has been said . . . as cold as my name.’

‘Then, Madame, take my advice. Give up truffles and diets and doctors’ pills. Eat heartily and what you fancy. I feel sure that will bring you good health more quickly than anything; and with health will come that warmth which the King asks of you.’

‘My dearest Hausset,’ said the Marquise, ‘I am glad to have you with me. I can speak to you as to no one else.’

‘Madame, you know I am your friend.’

‘Then pity me, Hausset. The life I lead is not to be envied. Such moments as this are rare, as you know. I have never a minute to myself. I must think constantly of my duties. There is no rest. You should pity me, Hausset, from the bottom of your heart.’

Madame du Hausset nodded slowly. ‘I pity you, Madame la Marquise. I do pity you with all my heart. Everyone else at the Court, in Paris, in France, envies you. But I who see most have only pity for you.’

‘My good Hausset, it gives me great comfort to have you with me and to think of you in your alcove room scribbling away concerning the day’s doings. Do I figure much in those memoirs of yours? Does the King?’

‘Very much, Madame. It could not be otherwise.’

‘No. I suppose not. But what am I thinking of? I must change my dress. I am to entertain the King at Bellevue this afternoon. Come . . .’

She was seized with a fit of coughing which she could not suppress. She held her handkerchief to her mouth, and when she had finished coughing lay back exhausted, while Madame du Hausset took the bloodstained muslin from her hand.

Neither of them mentioned it; it was a secret which so far they kept between them; but both knew that such a secret could not be perpetually kept.

The Marquise was suddenly gay. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘There is no time to lose. I must be at Bellevue in time to greet His Majesty.’

When he left the Marquise Louis went to the petits appartements which he had created for himself round the Cour des Cerfs. It was here that he could enjoy solitude and the pursuit of his hobbies; here he felt that he could achieve one of his ambitions, which was to separate Louis de Bourbon from Louis XV of France.

He wished now that he could cast off his mood of melancholy. Life seemed to have nothing of real interest to offer him. It was a wearying round of ceremony and adulation; of brilliant entertainments which were so like one another that he could not remember which was which.

He was forty years old – not such a great age; and yet he felt that life had nothing fresh to offer him. He was jaded and there were very few people who could rouse him from his melancholy. The Marquise was certainly one; Richelieu was another; his daughter Adelaide could amuse him because she was such a wild and unaccountable creature; his daughter Anne-Henriette could touch his pity because she was so fragile and as melancholy as himself.

Poor Anne-Henriette, she still mourned for her lost lover, Charles Edward Stuart. It would have been folly to have allowed such a marriage, yet he could not help feeling a twinge of conscience every time he saw Anne-Henriette. It was for this reason that he avoided seeing her; he hated to have his conscience stirred.

Adelaide interested him more nowadays. She was eighteen and still pretty; it was amusing to listen to her talking of State matters. She really believed that she had a great influence over her father. Perhaps that was why she was so fond of him. She was indeed fond, and no one dared criticise him in her presence, so he had heard. If she suspected any of doing so, she would scream in anger: ‘Take that creature away to the dungeons!’

At Court people were beginning to wonder whether the violent and vivacious Adelaide was mentally unbalanced. They were asking whether the King intended all his daughters to remain unmarried. There was Anne-Henriette now twenty-three, Victoire seventeen, Sophie sixteen, and Louise-Marie thirteen, all – as eighteen-year-old Adelaide herself – marriageable, and yet the King did not stir himself to make marriages for them.

There were naturally those who looked on the King’s relationship with his daughters with some suspicion. Particularly as Adelaide was so blatantly and passionately devoted to him. But Louis did not care. He had grown lethargic. He did not care what was said of him either in the Court or in that sullen city of Paris which had withdrawn its affection from him since whenever possible he had avoided visiting it.

He liked to have his daughters at Court. It was pleasant to see how devoted they were to him and ready – no, almost eager – to neglect their mother for his sake.

Oh, there was intrigue in plenty going on about him. He did not mind in the least. There was even some amusement to be drawn from it.

He was disappointed in the Dauphin, who had now become a fat, rather self-righteous young man of twenty-one. Quite obviously he was in the grip of the Jesuit party, and the Dauphine with him.

Strange how such an unattractive young man had managed to inspire devotion from both his wives. It seemed that Marie-Josèphe, the present Dauphine, was as much in love with her husband as her predecessor, Marie-Thérèse-Raphaëlle who had died in childbirth, had been.

Louis could see that as time passed the Dauphin might be an embarrassment to his father. If he was going to support the Jesuits, and through them the Church, against the Parlement – and there had been controversy between Church and State in France since the Bull Unigenitus had been issued by Pope Clement XI in 1713, and particularly so when this had been condemned by the civil authorities in Paris in 1730 – he might place himself at the head of a powerful party and thus cause serious friction in the country.

Louis did not wish to look ahead at such unpleasantness. He preferred to live from day to day.

Still he could not help his thoughts going back to his family. He did not consider the Queen. He rarely thought of her now. He had long tired of her since she had come to France, much to the astonishment of all Europe, a penniless daughter of the exiled King of Poland, to mate with the King of one of the greatest countries. But he had loved her in those first years because he was an inexperienced boy of fifteen, and she was the first woman he had known. She had borne him ten children, seven of whom were living; so they had both done their duty to the State and need not concern themselves with each other. Let her continue with her devotions, her incredibly dull life, her infantile efforts on the harpsichord and with a paintbrush; let her go on leading her pious life among her own court which was made up of people who were as uninteresting as herself.

He would go on his way, his melancholy way, desperately seeking to chase away boredom in the company of such gay spirits as Madame de Pompadour.

When he compared his mistress with the Queen he told himself that he could never exist without her. Dear Jeanne-Antoinette, his little fish. Ah, fish! It was a pity she was so cold – yet fortunate that he understood such coldness was by no means due to her feeling for him.

He longed for a mistress who would share his eroticism and at the same time be as charming a companion as his dear Marquise.

Was that possible? Perhaps not. That was why he must be content with his dear friend who charmed him so completely in all ways but one.

Perhaps it was not possible to find complete satisfaction in one person. He loved Anne-Henriette but her melancholy for the loss of her Bonnie Prince Charlie irritated him besides bothering his conscience. He had quickly tired of Victoire when she had come home from Fontevrault; Victoire was really a silly little thing; as for Sophie she was sillier. Louise-Marie was brighter but, poor child, she was not very prepossessing with her humped back. No, Adelaide was his favourite daughter at the moment – mad Adelaide who could always be relied upon to amuse by her very outrageousness.

And thinking of his family and his mistress he was reminded of the animosity between them.

It was natural enough perhaps that they would resent the Marquise. But why could they not behave with the dignity and decorum which she displayed?

It was incredible. She, with her humble beginnings, could behave as a lady of the Court, and if she felt any rancour towards these young people how successfully she hid it!

He was ashamed of his family: Adelaide’s wild schemes for turning the Marquise from Court, the stupid acquiescence of her sisters, who could do nothing it seemed but wait for their cue from Adelaide. As for the Dauphin, he had behaved like an ill-mannered schoolboy. The King had actually seen him put out his tongue at the Marquise’s back.

Yes, when he considered his family, he was not very pleased with their conduct. He was even glad that Madame Louise-Elisabeth, Anne-Henriette’s twin whom they always considered the eldest member of the family, had left Versailles, although when she had arrived on a visit so recently he had been delighted to have her with him.

Compared with their sister, known as Madame Infanta, the other girls seemed gauche, and he felt ashamed of them and of himself for not more seriously considering their educations.

Adelaide had immediately become jealous of the attention he paid Louise-Elisabeth, and in her wild way had formed a party to work against her. Moreover Louise-Elisabeth had made friends with Madame de Pompadour – perhaps to spite her sisters and brother – and thus had given further pleasure to her father.

But very soon he understood that it was the ambitions of Madame Infanta which were largely responsible for the affection she had shown for her father. She longed for a throne; she was disgusted that a daughter of a King of France was asked to be content with the Duchies of Parma and Placentia which had come to her through the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. She had grandiose ambitions; she would like to see France go to war once more in order that conquests should be made and a throne secured for herself; and she wanted Joseph, the son of the Empress Maria Theresa, as a husband for her little daughter.