The Road to Compiegne Read online

‘What are you saying?’ asked Adelaide.

  ‘What is she saying?’ whispered Victoire to Sophie; and Sophie as usual looked to Adelaide to supply the answer.

  ‘It does not matter,’ said Anne-Henriette, ‘I am unlucky for lovers. But it is no longer of any consequence.’

  Louise-Marie, the youngest of the sisters, came slowly into the room. She walked with some difficulty but her face was vivacious; yet when she looked at her eldest sister the smile left her face.

  ‘Anne-Henriette,’ she cried and hastening to her sister she took her hand, ‘what is wrong? Her hands are burning,’ she cried, turning to Adelaide. ‘She has a fever. Call her women. Call them at once. Let her bed be warmed. She should be in it, for our sister is very ill.’

  Adelaide resented the interference of her youngest sister and haughtily raised her eyebrows, but Louise-Marie cried: ‘This is no time for etiquette. Our sister is ill . . . so ill that she frightens me.’

  Adelaide then commanded Victoire to go to Anne-Henriette’s apartments at once and warn her women.

  ‘Now,’ said Louise-Marie, ‘we will take her there. Anne-Henriette, sister, do you not know me?’

  Anne-Henriette smiled so patiently that Louise-Marie thought hers was the sweetest smile she had ever seen.

  ‘You see,’ said Anne-Henriette, swaying in the arms of her sisters, ‘there was no lover for me. I brought bad luck to lovers. But do not let it concern you. It is of no significance now.’

  ‘Her mind wanders,’ said Adelaide.

  ‘No,’ said Louise-Marie. ‘I think I understand.’

  Then she began to weep quietly, and the tears ran unheeded on to the satin of her gown.

  Anne-Henriette was unaware of her sisters as she was half carried from the room.

  Louis looked at the Marquise and his face was blank with sorrow.

  ‘She . . . so young . . .’ he said. ‘My little Anne-Henriette . . . dead.’

  ‘She has been ill for some time,’ said the Marquise. ‘She was never as healthy as we could have wished.’

  ‘I cannot imagine what life will be like without her.’

  ‘My dearest,’ said the Marquise, ‘we must bear this loss as best we may. You have lost one whom you loved and who loved you; but you are surrounded by others who love you no less and who, I know, are loved in return.’

  The King allowed his mistress to take his hand and kiss it gently.

  He looked at her, so elegant, so charming. And he thought: she is part of my life. My joys are hers, my sorrows also. How could I endure this tragedy if my dear Marquise were not here to comfort me?

  Seated before her illuminated skull, the Queen prayed for her daughter’s soul. She prayed also that this tragedy might turn the King’s thoughts from debauchery to piety. It should be a reminder to him that death was ever ready to strike. It had carried off this young girl; perhaps it was not so very far from her father. Perhaps he would ask himself whether he should not seek a remission of his sins while there was yet time.

  ‘If he should do this,’ she told the Dauphin, ‘the death of Anne-Henriette will not have been in vain.’

  The Dauphin nodded; he was regretting the death of his sister. He loved her gentle disposition, and Marie-Josèphe often said that her sister-in-law was the best friend she had ever had. He remembered too that she had been a useful member of that little community which gathered in his apartments and won certain privileges from the King for the Church party. Often some little post would be asked for one of its members, and there could not have been an advocate more likely to succeed with the King than his beloved Anne-Henriette.

  ‘Her death is a great loss to me,’ he told his mother; ‘it is perhaps a great loss to the Church.’

  The Queen understood and agreed. Her grief at her daughter’s death did not go as deep as that felt by other members of the family. She had often fought against the jealousy she had felt for her daughters, whom their father loved so much more than he did their mother. There had been times, Louis having summoned his daughters to the petits appartements to share an intimate supper with him, when she had knelt for hours in prayer, trying to quell the turbulent jealousy which possessed her.

  She would never forget her coming to France and those first months of the King’s undivided attention, when they had been lovers and she had appeared to him to be the most beautiful woman in the world.

  It was not easy even for the most virtuous of women to love others – even though they were her own daughters – who could please the King as she so longed to do, and never could.

  Adelaide violently mourned her sister and shed stormy tears. Victoire sat in her bergère and was more melancholy than usual. Sophie watched first Adelaide then Victoire as though to decide how long it was necessary for her to mourn her sister.

  Louise-Marie was heartbroken. She did not storm nor weep, she simply said: ‘If they had left me a little longer at Fontevrault I should never have known Anne-Henriette. Oh, why did they not leave me at Fontevrault?’

  And Sophie suddenly ceased to wonder how much Adelaide expected her to mourn her sister, and ran away into a quiet corner to cry alone.

  In the streets of Paris the death of Madame Seconde was freely discussed.

  The verdict was that the loss of this beloved daughter was God’s vengeance on the King for his dissolute way of life.

  ‘How could it be otherwise?’ the people asked each other in the cafés and the markets. ‘God would punish him for his neglect of his people and his absorption with the Marquise. This is his just reward.’

  ‘This is the result of offending God and displeasing the people. God has taken from him the daughter he loved best.’

  The Church party encouraged such observations. The sooner the King was made to realise how offensive was his conduct in the eyes of God – and the Church party – the better.

  There was hope in the apartments of the Dauphin.

  ‘Such a disaster could bring about the dismissal of the Marquise,’ said the Dauphin.

  Louis himself was very apprehensive. He was beginning to wonder whether there was some Divine warning in this loss. She was a young girl. It was true that she had been frail; but she was too young to die.

  His doctors had told him that she had no will to live, that she had refused their medicines; she had refused the food which had been prepared for her; she had turned from all her family and friends to look beyond them into the unknown.

  He dared not think of her unhappiness. There were many who would say that she had died of a broken heart. Twice she had loved, and twice been frustrated. Marriage with the Orléans family had been distasteful to Fleury and therefore had not taken place. Her love for Charles Edward Stuart had been deeper perhaps, but how could the King of France give his consent to their marriage after the defeat of the ’45? That had happened nearly seven years ago. Had she mourned a Prince, who was not even faithful, all that time?

  She died because she had no wish to live. They were tragic words to describe the passing of a young woman. It distressed him and there was only one person who could cure him of sadness such as this; yet the mood which had been engendered by the people of Paris and certain members of his Court led him to doubt whether he should seek that solace.

  Death . . . so close to them all! Who would be its next victim? What if it should strike at him, and he should suddenly pass from this world to the next – an unrepentant sinner?

  He wanted to confess his sins, but he knew that before he could receive absolution he must swear to sin no more.

  The Marquise occupied the suite of Madame de Montespan now, but she was still known as his mistress. He knew that the confessors and the bishops, aided and abetted by the Dauphin and the Church party, would withhold the remission of his sins until he had dismissed Madame de Pompadour from the Court.

  He sent for Adelaide; he embraced her warmly and they wept together.

  The King looked at this vivacious but unaccountable young woman. She was twenty years old and
her beauty was already beginning to fade, but he still found her company stimulating.

  From Adelaide he could take comfort which at the moment he felt too apprehensive to take from the Marquise.

  ‘You must fill your sister’s place,’ he told Adelaide. ‘You must be both Adelaide and Anne-Henriette to me now.’

  ‘Yes, Father,’ cried Adelaide; and there was no mistaking the adoration he saw in her eyes.

  ‘You shall have an apartment nearer to mine,’ said the King. ‘We will rebuild a part of the Château. It will mean destroying the Ambassador’s staircase . . . but we will do it . . .’

  Adelaide knelt awkwardly and embraced her father’s knees.

  ‘I will be all that you ask of me,’ she cried; and her eyes were gleaming with triumph; she had already forgotten the death of Anne-Henriette.

  Chapter VI

  COMTESSE DE CHOISEUL-BEAUPRÉ

  Death seemed to be hovering over Versailles that year. The hot summer had come and the King with Madame de Pompadour was staying at his château of Compiègne for a spell of hunting.

  One morning early the Dauphine awoke with a sense of foreboding, perhaps because it had been a restless night. Several times she had awakened to find the Dauphin muttering in his sleep; and when she had spoken to him he had answered incoherently.

  Touching his forehead she had thought it to be over-hot; thus she had spent a very disturbed night; and as soon as the light was strong enough she sat up in bed and studied the sleeping Dauphin.

  His face was flushed, and she had no doubt now that he had a fever. She rose, called his servants and sent for his physicians.

  In a few hours, the news spread through the Palace and beyond. The Dauphin is suffering from small-pox.

  There was scarcely a disease more dreaded – highly contagious, swift in action, it had been responsible for the end of thousands.

  The Dauphine was terrified. She could not imagine her life without her husband; and she was fully aware of the danger in which he lay.

  The physicians told her that she must leave the apartments. Already she may have caught the disease. She must understand that by remaining at her husband’s bedside she was courting death; and even if she escaped death she might be hideously marked for the rest of her life.

  She said firmly: ‘It is my place to be at his side. More than any other I belong here, and here I shall remain.’

  She would allow no one to dissuade her and, dressing herself in a simple white dress, she performed all the necessary menial and intimate duties which were required. Her lips were firmly set; she had not wept, but she constantly murmured prayers as she moved about the apartment, and again and again she said to herself: ‘If I do everything for him I shall save him, for I shall do these things better than any other. I must, because I love him so much.’ Then she began to say: ‘I will save him. He shall not die.’ And with that a great peace came to her because she believed that anyone who wanted to succeed so much and who put every effort into her task could not fail.

  Again and again she was warned to leave the sickroom; again she was reminded of the horrors of the disease, of its terrifying results; and she merely smiled wanly.

  ‘What price would be too great to pay for his recovery?’ she asked.

  And after that they knew it was no use trying to dissuade her.

  The news was carried to Compiègne and reached the King when he had returned to the château after the hunt.

  Louis was horrified. ‘I must return at once to Versailles,’ he declared.

  The Marquise ventured: ‘My dearest Sire, there is great danger at Versailles.’

  The King answered sadly: ‘Madame, my son, the Dauphin, lies near to death.’

  The Marquise merely bowed her head. ‘We will prepare to leave immediately,’ she said.

  Death! thought the King. It is like a spectre that haunts me. It hangs over my family – a grey shadow from which we cannot escape. Only in February I lost my dearest daughter; am I now to lose my son?

  He was glad that he had built a road from Compiègne to Versailles. At such a time the covert looks which implied ‘this is the retribution’ would have been intolerable. The people would attribute the illness of the Dauphin to the same Divine wrath to which they had credited the death of Anne-Henriette. No, at such a time he could not bear the sly triumph of his people.

  If the Dauphin were to die, the heir to the throne would be the baby Duc de Bourgogne. And if he, Louis, himself died, there would be another boy King of France. The Dauphin must not die.

  The Marquise sought to comfort him on that journey back to Versailles.

  ‘I have heard,’ she said, ‘that a doctor named Pousse knows more about small-pox than any man living. Would Your Majesty consider sending for him? He is a bourgeois and will know nothing of Court manners and procedure, but since he is considered to have saved more from small-pox than any other doctor, would Your Majesty have him brought to Versailles?’

  ‘We must seize every opportunity,’ agreed the King. ‘No matter what this man’s origins are, let us send for him.’

  ‘I will order him to come without delay,’ said the Marquise.

  Louis sat at the Dauphin’s bedside. He had waved aside all those who would have reminded him of the risk he ran.

  My son, he thought. My only son! I wish that we could have been better friends.

  How deeply he regretted those differences which had grown up between them. He tried to remember at what stage they had begun to grow apart. He saw himself going into the royal nurseries in the days of the Dauphin’s boyhood, and he remembered how the little boy would fling himself into his arms.

  Then, thought the King, he loved me as he loved no other. Now he is indifferent to me as a person and even antagonistic to me as King. There must be moments when he thinks of being in my place. Does he then look forward to the day when I shall no longer be here?

  How sad was life!

  If only we could say to time, ‘Stop! Let it be thus for ever.’ Then he would remain young – a young husband, a young father, a young King at the sight of whom the people cried, ‘Long live the Well-Beloved!’ Looking back he saw the road to Compiègne like a riband dividing his life, separating the first half from the second. The sowing, one might say, and the harvest.

  Here at the bedside of his son he felt a great desire to be a good man, a good King, beloved of his Court and his people.

  But he had grown too cynical. He knew too well these moods of regret and repentance.

  They passed as inevitably as time itself.

  Dr Pousse swept through the Dauphin’s apartments like a whirlwind. He did not ignore etiquette; he was merely unaware of its existence. He did not know the difference between a Comte and a Duc; he had no idea how deep a bow was required of him; and if he had known he would not have cared. He had one aim in life, to cure patients of the small-pox. It mattered not to him if they were heir to the lowest eating-house in the Rue des Boucheries or to the throne of France – he saw them only as patients on whom to practise his skill.

  There was only one person of whom he approved among those surrounding the Dauphin. This was a quiet young woman dressed in white.

  ‘You!’ he cried, pointing at her. ‘You will remain in attendance on the patient. The others will do as you say.’

  He liked her. She worked without fuss; she would do anything that was asked of her with a quiet efficiency.

  ‘H’m,’ growled Pousse, ‘when this young man is well again he will owe his recovery to two people: his doctor and his nurse.’

  When he barked orders at her she obeyed with speed. They had the utmost trust in each other, these two.

  ‘Now child,’ he would say, ‘make sure that the patient rests. Nobody is to disturb him, you understand. Not even his papa.’

  ‘I understand,’ was the answer.

  Pousse patted her arm affectionately. ‘A good nurse is a great help to a doctor, child,’ he said.

  The Dauphin’s condition
was giving the utmost anxiety, and the King came to the sickroom to sit at his son’s bedside.

  Pousse approached Louis and, taking hold of a button of his coat, drew him to one side.

  The few attendants who had accompanied the King to the sickroom stopped to stare at this unheard-of familiarity, and Pousse was aware of their surprise.

  He smiled grimly and allowed his attention to stray temporarily from his patient as he spoke to the King.

  ‘Now, Monsieur,’ he said, ‘I do not know how you expect me to address you. To me you are simply the good papa of my patient. You are anxious because your son is very ill. But cheer up, Papa! Your boy is going to be well soon.’

  Louis laid his hands on the doctor’s shoulders and said emotionally: ‘I know we can trust you. You respect no persons – only the small-pox.’

  ‘I have a great respect for my old enemy,’ said Pousse, his eyes twinkling. ‘But I have him beaten. I and the nurse have got the better of him this time.’

  ‘His nurse,’ said the King, ‘is the Dauphine.’

  ‘The patient’s wife, eh?’ said Pousse; and a slight grin formed on his lips. ‘I have no doubt that I have not addressed her as a lady in her position expects to be addressed. But Papa, I have a fondness for my little nurse that I could have for no grand lady. I shall send the noble Parisiennes to her when their husbands are sick, that they may learn what is expected of them. She is a good girl. And I am shocking you, Monsieur, by my lack of respect for the members of your family.’

  ‘Save the Dauphin,’ said the King, ‘and you will be my friend for life.’

  There was great rejoicing throughout the Court, for the Dauphin had recovered. This was due, it was said, to the skill of Dr Pousse and the unselfish devotion of the Dauphine.

  No one could have been more delighted than the Dauphine. She felt that this illness of her husband had bound them closer than ever; she rejoiced because, since she must always be a little jealous of her predecessor, she could say to herself: Marie-Thérèse-Raphaëlle never nursed him through small-pox at a risk to her own life. Now she had an advantage over that first wife who had commanded the young affections of the Dauphin and had died at the height of his passion after only two years of marriage, so that she was engraved for ever on his memory – perennially young, beautified by distance, an ideal.