Виктория Холт - The Road to Compiegne

‘But what position will you, a great lady, be putting yourself into, that’s what I ask!’

‘A great lady,’ mused the Marquise. ‘The outcome of this matter may well decide my greatness. So far I have done little but raise myself to an envied position and amuse the King.’

Madame du Hausset said: ‘How is the King?’

The Marquise smiled sadly. ‘He is deeply repentant of his behaviour towards Louise-Julie de Mailly.’

‘The saint of Paris!’ murmured Madame du Hausset cynically.

‘Oh, she was good to the poor. She visited them and sewed for them . . . and had so little for herself.’

‘She did not visit them nor sew for them when she was in favour with the King, did she?’

‘My dear Hausset, amusing the King, as you know, gives a woman little time for aught else. Now do not look so despondent, I beg of you. Let me tell you this: when I was nine years old a fortune-teller told me I should be the King’s mistress. That came true. Sometimes I think that between us my mother and I made it come true. Now I will tell you something else: I am going to die, the King’s very dear friend. I am as certain of that as I was that I should one day be his mistress. And oh, Hausset, I could so much more happily be his dear friend than his mistress. I would be his confidante, the friend to whom he would come to discuss everything . . . State matters, scandal, plans for building . . . everything. That is what I would be to the King, Hausset. And at night I would retire to my apartment here in Versailles, and sleep and sleep that I might be fresh the next day to entertain the King.’

Madame du Hausset shook her head. ‘There would be those to provide the nightly entertainments, and they would be the ones who would get their wishes fulfilled. Depend upon it, the first of those wishes would be to have you dismissed from Court. Did not Madame de Châteauroux, who seemed secure in his affection, demand the dismissal of Madame de Mailly, even though she was her own sister?’

‘There is no need, Hausset, to follow in the footsteps of one’s predecessors. One travels along untrodden paths. Therein lies success.’ The Marquise laughed, but Madame du Hausset detected a note of nervousness in the laugh. ‘My enemies are all about me. My reception in Paris . . . to what is it due? To the poissonades. And who writes the poissonades?’

‘We said it was the Comte de Maurepas until you had him dismissed from Court.’

‘Depend upon it, he writes them still. He can do so as easily in exile at Bourges as he could in favour at Versailles. Others no doubt write them too. The Dauphin’s party are my enemies. They circulate stories about me in the streets. They plan to have me ousted from the Court.’

‘If you drew the King’s attention to those meetings in the Dauphin’s apartments . . .’

‘I should merely irritate Louis. He knows of the meetings. He is angry because the Dauphin and he are no longer good friends. It is not my task to remind the King of what he wishes to forget. This is my battle – mine alone, Hausset; and alone I must fight it.’

‘And the Church party is against you!’

‘The Church party is the Dauphin’s party, and at times such as this – Holy Year itself, with the Jesuit Père Griffet preaching his sermons at Versailles – I am uneasy. The determination of Paris almost to canonise Madame de Mailly does not make life easier for me. Do you not see that it is all part of the plot against me? They wish to bring Louis to a repentant mood, to make him review his life – and my part in it – and see it as a deadly sin in his life. They want to bring him to such a state of repentance that he will have no alternative but to dismiss me from Court.’

‘Dismiss you! He could not do it. Whom does he turn to when he is tired and bored? To you . . . always you.’

‘Yet he dismissed Madame de Châteauroux when he was at Metz.’

‘That was because he thought he was dying and in imminent need of repentance.’

‘The life of the King’s mistress is full of hazards, dear Hausset. Yet the life of the King’s dearest friend and confidante, who was not his mistress, could, I believe, be a very pleasant one.’

‘It terrifies me,’ murmured Madame du Hausset.

‘And now we are back at that point where we started.’

‘And His Majesty is with your enemies; they are telling him that Madame de Mailly was a saint, that he should be repentant. That although her soul has been washed white over years of piety, his is stained with his recently committed sins.’

‘Poor Louis, they will make him very melancholy.’

‘They’ll drive him to repentance.’

‘It is possible that his melancholy will be so great that he is ready to employ any means to disperse it. If that is so, we shall hear him mounting the stairs to my apartment.’

‘And you will comfort him.’

‘I and another. Have you prepared her?’

Madame du Hausset nodded.

‘How does she look?’

‘Pert.’

‘And pretty – very pretty?’

‘She looks what she is – a serving-slut.’

Madame de Pompadour laughed. ‘That, my dear Hausset, is exactly how I would have her look. I believe I am right. Listen! Do you hear footsteps on the stairs?’

‘He is coming,’ cried Madame du Hausset; and her face was illumined by a smile. ‘Try as they might,’ she muttered, ‘they would never keep him from you.’

* * *

‘I arranged that we should be alone,’ she told him, smiling gently. ‘I guessed your mood. Hausset of course is in her little alcove room.’

Louis nodded. ‘I cannot forget Louise-Julie,’ he confessed. ‘Memories assail me continually. She was living in that poor place, and I hear that she had not enough to feed her servants adequately.’

‘Doubtless she was happy.’

‘Happy, in such a condition?’

‘She was a saint, we hear. Saints are happy. They do not ask for worldly possessions. They only ask to mortify their flesh and do service to others. She was happy, happier than you are now, so you have nothing with which to reproach yourself.’

He looked at her and smiled. ‘You were always my comforter.’

She took his hand and kissed it. ‘I would ask nothing more than to continue so for the rest of my life.’

‘My dear, is it not significant that in this mood of depression I must come to you, and when I have been with you but a few minutes I feel my spirits rising?’

‘May it always be so. Will you do something to please me? I have had a little supper prepared – for the two of us only. We will eat bourgeoises tonight if you will have it so. And while we eat I would have you forget Madame de Mailly, but only after you are reassured that there is nothing with which you could reproach yourself. You made her happy while she was with you by your favour ; and afterwards she made herself happy by her exemplary life. What a fortunate lady she was! Hers must have been one of the happiest lives ever lived.’

‘I cannot forget the way she looked at me when I dismissed her from Court.’

‘She would have understood. It was her sister, Madame de Châteauroux, who dismissed her – not you.’

‘It was I who spoke the words. She looked at me with anguish in her eyes and then she looked away because she knew that her sorrow would give me pain.’

‘Come, I am going to have supper brought to us. I have a new maid – the prettiest creature you ever saw. I am eager for your opinion of her.’

‘My opinion?’

She laughed. ‘It is amusing, is it not – the King of France to give his opinion of a humble serving-maid? But . . . she is innocent at the moment, yet if ever I saw a wanton it is that girl.’ She rose and called to Madame du Hausset. ‘His Majesty is supping with me. We shall be alone. Is all ready?’

‘Yes, Madame.’

‘Then will Your Majesty come to the table? I have had it set in one of the anterooms. It would be more cosy there, I thought.’

‘You have a surprise for me,’ said the King. ‘My dear Marquise, it is so like you to seek to divert me.’

‘This little diversion meets your Majesty’s needs tonight rather than a grand entertainment. Moreover had I planned a masque or a play, Père Griffet would have railed against me more than ever.’

‘He has certainly brought an air of melancholy to us . . . but perhaps we need it.’

The Marquise had led him into the small room and they had sat down.

She signed to Madame du Hausset, and the serving-girl appeared.

The Marquise, watching intently, saw the immediate interest in the King’s face. She had known that this girl, with the peculiar mingling of innocence and sensuality, could not fail to inspire it. She had chosen wisely. So far her plan could succeed, but she must act with the utmost wariness. Madame de Pompadour must retain her dignity. She must not appear as the King’s pander. Everything that followed must be gracious and performed with the utmost delicacy.

The girl showed no awe of the King. She bent over him as she served him; she smiled her innocent yet sensual smile. Louis patted her arm and the Marquise noticed that his hands lingered on the girl.

When she had gone, the Marquise said: ‘You must forgive her. She does not know who you are. She has never been to Versailles before. Louis, I am going to ask a favour.’

‘It is granted,’ he told her.

‘You would say that before you have heard what it is?’

‘My wish is to please you. I sincerely hope that it will be in my power to grant this favour.’

‘I wish to leave this apartment.’

He was surprised. They had planned its decorations together; it was a delightful set of rooms and worthy of the King’s mistress.

‘There are rooms on the ground floor of the north wing . . .’

His eyes seemed to glitter as they met hers. He knew the rooms to which she referred. Madame de Montespan had occupied them when she had ceased to be the reigning favourite of his great-grandfather, Louis Quatorze.

He remembered that his great-grandfather had allotted that apartment to Madame de Moutespan when he had married Madame de Maintenon.

The eyes of the Marquise were pleading with him; they were wise, serene and very loving.

How like her to act with such delicacy! He understood perfectly.

She was resigning her place as mistress because she knew she could not adequately fill it. She wanted to devote her days to his comfort and her nights to the rest she so desperately needed.

Indeed she was a wonderful woman – so wonderful that she made virtues of her inadequacies.

He was excited. The pretty little waiting-girl who did not know he was the King could be dismissed from the Palace with a present which would be more than she could earn in a lifetime. It would all be discreet and sedate; he could trust the Marquise to arrange that.

What a situation! Who but the Marquise could have conjured up something which was so necessary to them both and planned it with such finesse? Who but the Marquise could have brought about such an exciting and amusing state of affairs?

Nothing could have drawn him out of his mood of brooding melancholy more quickly than this little plan of Madame de Pompadour’s.

He took her hand and kissed it. His eyes were shining with amusement.

‘My dear, dear friend,’ he said ‘Never did I have such a good friend. Remain so, I beg of you, while we both have life in our bodies.’

The Marquise laughed lightly.

The first step had been taken. Now she had started the new way of life. Nights of glorious rest and peace lay before her.

Each day she would rise – fresh, full of vigour, ready to be the King’s good friend and confidante, ready to help in State affairs, ready to plan his pleasure.

There was all that excitement in the Palace which attended a royal birth. It was a great occasion, for the Dauphine had been brought to bed and this time she had not disappointed all those who had wished for a boy; on the twelfth day of September in the year 1751 the little Duc de Bourgogne was born.

The Dauphin and his friends were delighted. So were the King and Queen. Marie Leczinska had treated her daughter-in-law very coldly when she had first arrived in France, because Marie-Josèphe was a daughter of the man who had taken the throne of Poland from Stanislas. However, the gentle manners of the Dauphine, her piety and her determination to win the affection of the French royal family had very quickly overcome the Queen’s prejudices.