The Road to Compiegne (12 page)

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.

As for Dr Pousse, he received a life pension for his services.

The Marquise de Pompadour added her congratulations to those of the Court, but these were received coldly by the Dauphin and, because she deplored his determination to regard her in the light of an enemy, she decided that she would be more ostentatious than any in the general rejoicing.

So she planned a
fête
at Bellevue.

The entertainment was to be more lavish than anything hitherto achieved. Fireworks were always popular and could be very effective; the Marquise planned a lavish display with a pageant to symbolise the Dauphin’s recovery.

There was to be a Dolphin (the Dauphin) among sea-serpents and other monsters of the deep, which were to breathe fire over the Dolphin. The fire, explained the Marquise, was to represent the small-pox. Apollo would appear to smite the fire-breathing monsters, and the Dolphin would then be seen among charming nymphs.

The Dauphin had lost none of his dislike for the Marquise during his illness; indeed he had emerged from his ordeal even more puritanical. He was not to be wooed by such pageants. However he could not refuse the invitation to Bellevue and, while the pageant given in his honour was in progress, he sat, watching it, surrounded by his friends.

‘The Dolphin bears some resemblance to yourself,’ said those companions, who greatly feared a friendship between the King’s son and the King’s mistress, ‘but how hideous the creature is! It is a caricature, meant to bring ridicule on Your Highness.’

‘Look at the sea-monsters! They breathe fire. They are meant to represent the people. This is monstrous. The people love the Dauphin. Madame Catin will never persuade the Court otherwise, however much she tries.’

‘Depend upon it the lady is trying to make the Dauphin look a fool while she pretends to honour him. This is a trick worthy of her.’

The Dauphin listening allowed himself to grow more and more furious with the Marquise.

When the pageant was over he abruptly left Bellevue for Versailles, and everyone knew that this attempt of the Pompadour to placate the Dauphin had been a miserable failure, because the Dauphin was determined not to be placated, and was going to carry on the war against the Marquise until his or her death or her dismissal from Court.

All waited for the retaliation to what he chose to consider as an insult to his dignity.

It came a few days after the
fête
at Bellevue, when the Marquise, attending a reception in the Dauphin’s apartments, was kept standing – for she could not sit without the Dauphin’s permission – for two hours.

Never before this had the Marquise allowed the Court to observe her physical weakness. This time it was impossible to do otherwise. She was almost fainting with fatigue at the end of two hours.

The King was annoyed when he heard what had happened, for he knew that, in arranging
the fête
, the Marquise had had no thought but to win the Dauphin’s friendship. That burst of affection, which he had felt for his son when he had thought he was dying, was petering out. He felt irritated with the self-righteous attitude of his son towards his father’s mistress.

There was only one way of preventing the repetition of such an occurrence. That would be to bestow the highest honour at Court upon the Marquise – the
tabouret
– which would enable her to sit in the presence of royalty.

The King hesitated. To bestow such a high honour on the Marquise would cause a rumble of discontent through the Court. He was unpopular in Paris; he did not wish that unpopularity to extend to his immediate circle.

A
tabouret
for the Marquise! He must brood for some time on such a matter for, dear as she was, he must remind himself of her origins.

There must be an official celebration of the Dauphin’s recovery, which would necessitate another journey into Paris.

There would be the ceremonial drive from the
Château
into the city, and the thanksgiving service at Notre Dame. The King’s ministers, knowing the trend of opinion in Paris and the fast continued growth of the King’s unpopularity, hastily reduced the price of bread, hoping that by so doing they could ensure a loyal greeting from the Parisians.

Louis set out without any enthusiasm for the journey. Heartily he wished that he was taking the road to Compiègne instead of the one through Paris.

The Queen in her carriage came behind him. She had no such fears, for she knew that the people regarded her as a poor ill-used woman, and that the more they hated the King, the greater was their sympathy for her.

A few people at the roadside shouted ‘
Vive le Roi!
’ as the King drove by, but that happened outside the city; as soon as they entered the streets of the capital there was nothing but sullen silence.

The service over, the drive back began, and again that sullen silence was encountered. The King’s carriage passed, and as the Queen’s came near to the Pont-du-Jour a man with haggard face and ragged coat broke through the guards and leaped on to it.

He threw a piece of black bread into the Queen’s lap and shouted: ‘Look, Madame! This is the sort of bread we are asked to pay three sous the pound for!’

The Queen stared at the bread on her lap while the man was dragged from the coach.

The horses were whipped up, a sullen murmur broke from the crowd. The King and the Queen heard the words: ‘Three sous the pound for bread we cannot eat! Bread . . . bread . . . give us bread . . .’

It seemed that there could not be a royal visit to the city these days without some such demonstration.

When the Infanta, Louis’ eldest daughter, arrived at Versailles on a visit, he was delighted.

She would comfort him, he said, for the loss of his dear Anne-Henriette. Adelaide, observing the affection between them, was jealous, for since the death of her sister she had felt herself to be firm in the role of the King’s favourite daughter.

It was difficult however to compete with the fascinating and worldly Infanta. Louis revived a pet name of her babyhood and referred to her as his Babette. Babette was wiser than Adelaide and immediately consolidated a friendship with the Marquise, which pleased the King.

She now had a son and daughter and was therefore to be allowed to spend a year at Versailles. ‘My home,’ she said, ‘for which I have never ceased to long.’

In the first weeks of her return the King was so delighted with her that he forgot his depression; but once she had charmed him, Babette could not help showing that there were ulterior motives in this great show of pleasure in being with her father.

‘I am your daughter,’ she told Louis, ‘your eldest daughter. And I am condemned to spend my days in that dismal hole of Parma!’

Louis promised that, if he could do anything at any time to raise her state, he would do so.

She was dissatisfied. Her ambitions were limitless. Now she had children for whom to plan, she wanted a throne for her son and nothing less than the Imperial crown for her daughter.

Young Joseph, son of Maria Theresa, was the husband she needed for her child. Imperiously she suggested that, if need be, France should go to war to bring about this marriage.

Louis might listen to his daughter’s plans with an indulgent smile, but he began to grow a little restless in her company.

He was heading for one of those moods of melancholy from which it seemed only the Marquise could save him.

But many were speculating as to the change in the relationship between the King and the Marquise who, they noted, was now significantly installed in the rooms which had once belonged to Madame de Montespan; could that mean that nothing but friendship existed between her and the King?

It was said that young girls – often of the lower classes – were brought to his apartments in secret.

Could such a state of affairs go on?

Quite clearly it was time some enterprising and ambitious person brought to the notice of the King a woman who could take the all-important role of
maîtresse-en-titre
which Madame de Pompadour seemed so gracefully to have abandoned.