The Road to Compiegne (39 page)

The King retired from the bedside and sat in one corner of the room. He could hear the strong voice of the Cardinal, the feeble responses of the Dauphin.

Death! thought the King. There is too much death at Versailles. It is little more than a year since I lost my dear Marquise, and now my only son . . .

Death! the spectre that haunts us all . . . Kings cannot hide from it. It beckons, and perforce one follows.

The voices had ceased. The King knew, before the Cardinal came towards him.

He stood up, and said: ‘It is over?’

‘Yes, Sire. The Dauphin is dead.’

Even into this sombre chamber etiquette had intruded. The Dauphine must be told. The new Dauphin must be proclaimed.

The King turned from the Cardinal and said in a loud voice: ‘Bring the Dauphin to me here.’

In a few minutes the Duc de Berry was standing before him – shy,
gauche
, eleven years old. Louis looked at his son’s eldest surviving boy and thought: God pity you who will one day be King of France.

‘You know why I have sent for you?’ he asked.

‘Yes, Sire.’ The boy spoke in a whisper.

‘You know that you are Dauphin of France?’

‘Yes, Sire.’

‘There are many duties waiting for you, grandson. Some pleasant and some unpleasant. The first you must perform as Dauphin is, I hope, one of the saddest that will ever fall to your lot. Come with me now.’

The King walked solemnly out of the chamber of death; the Dauphin, fitting his steps to those of his grandfather, looked bewildered rather than sorrowful.

Those courtiers and servants whom they passed bowed low, and the boy was aware that a new respect was accorded him.

They arrived at his mother’s apartment, and the page announced: ‘His Majesty the King and His Royal Highness the Dauphin.’

Marie-Josèphe started up from her bed, and her eyes went from the King to the figure of her eleven-year-old son who was now significantly ushered into her presence as the Dauphin of France.

What could be done to comfort a woman so stricken with grief? The King asked himself and his courtiers how he could lift Marie-Josèphe from the despondency into which she had fallen.

He could think of nothing he could give her but power.

He summoned her to his presence and talked to her.

‘Daughter,’ he said, ‘I would not have you think that your position has been altered one jot by the death of my son. I still regard you as my beloved daughter.’

She thanked him in her quiet, listless way.

He reminded her that she had mourned the customary two months and that she must not mourn for ever,

‘Sire,’ she answered, ‘I shall mourn until I die.’

‘That will not be long delayed if you continue as you are now.’

‘Then I shall be happy, Sire. Alas for me, God has willed that I should survive him for whom I would have given a thousand lives. I hope that He will grant me the grace to spend the rest of my pilgrimage in preparing myself, in sincere penitence, to rejoin his soul in Heaven, where I do not doubt he is asking that same grace for me.’

The King remembered how she had always advised the Dauphin, and he believed her to be an intelligent woman. That she was without gaiety and had little wit seemed unimportant. He himself was in no mood for wit or gaiety. He believed that he needed a companion, someone who could fill that empty space in his life which had been left by Madame de Pompadour.

There were many pretty girls and beautiful women eager to supply his physical needs. Could it be that this bereaved daughter-in-law could be his friend and
confidante
?’

He needed a woman friend. He trusted none of his ministers. He had always cared more for women than for men; only a woman, he believed, could give him disinterested friendship. Men were constantly thinking of their own advancement – as indeed were many women; but he was convinced that the divine spark of disinterested friendship could only come from a woman.

‘My daughter,’ he said on impulse, ‘you have lost one who meant everything in your life. I have recently lost a very dear friend. We both suffer. Let us endeavour to help each other over this difficult period in our lives. Perhaps in seeking to soothe the other’s grief we shall find a modicum of contentment. Let us be friends. We have much to talk of together. We must think of the future of your family. You will talk of them to me, and I will talk of matters of State which I used to discuss with my dear Marquise.’

She was crying quietly. ‘Why, dear Sire and Father,’ she said, ‘I already feel a little happier than I did before. It is the prospect of being of some use to you.’

‘Then we are both a little happier. You shall occupy a suite of rooms immediately below my own. Be prepared to move into them at once.’

She felt her spirits lifting because she was thinking of those meetings which had taken place in her husband’s apartments. If the King had shown this friendship for her when her husband had been alive, how pleased he would have been! He had cultivated the friendship of his sisters because they had shared the King’s confidence.

Was it possible that she, Marie-Josèphe, might discuss State policy with the King? If that were so, she would never forget her husband. She seemed to feel him beside her now, urging her to accept the friendship of the King, to comfort the King, to win his regard. Thus could she carry on the interrupted policies of her husband.

She thought of the Duc de Choiseul, who had been so insolent to the Dauphin not very long ago, at the time when the poor Jesuits had been suppressed.

Willingly, assiduously would she work as the late Dauphin had; she would do all that he had done; thus it could seem as though he lived on.

What would he have done, had he been alive and had the power?

Chapter XVI

DEATH AT VERSAILLES

A
t this time there was a great deal of excitement throughout France on account of the Calas affair which had been dragging on for years, and concerning which Voltaire, from his refuge at Ferney in Gex, had been thundering forth his abuse of intolerance.

During the reign of pleasure-loving Louis XV, there had been little persecution of Protestants in Paris and the North, but in the South of France, which was remote from the centre of culture, persecution had gone on, and Protestants were tortured and executed.

The Calas family who were Protestants had become prominent some three years previously. Monsieur Calas was a wealthy merchant of Toulouse; his wife was a noblewoman. They were the happy parents of several children and they might have continued in happy obscurity but for the fact that one of these, Louis, a boy of seven, was greatly loved by a servant of the household who was a Catholic.

This servant believed that, unless she could turn this beloved child into a Catholic, his soul would be lost. This being intolerable to her peace of mind she sought to convert him, so she began by secretly taking him with her to Mass; but later she dared to take him away from his family to a Catholic hairdresser and wigmaker in the town who agreed to hide him from his parents.

The loss of their little son brought great sorrow to the household, who sought for him in vain. But their uncertainty did not last long for, as it was a law of the Catholic Church that any child of seven or over was old enough to proclaim himself a Catholic, Louis did this, to the delight of the Catholic population of Toulouse and the consternation of his parents.

His father was summoned to appear before the Archbishop and ordered to pay certain sums of money for the boy’s keep while he had been in hiding, and to pay for him to be brought up in a Catholic household. Little Louis was then ordered to write a letter to the Archbishop demanding that two of his sisters and a young brother be taken from their home to be educated with him as Catholics.

Louis had an elder brother, Marc Antoine, a stern Protestant and bachelor of law who was debarred from practising because, to do so, he needed a certificate proving that he was a Catholic; and naturally he could not obtain this unless he changed his religion.

The problem which confronted him – either to deny his faith or give up his profession – had so depressed him that he developed unwise drinking habits in order temporarily to relieve his depression.

One of his friends, a certain Lavaysse, was also a member of a Protestant family but, because he had been brought up by Jesuits, he had not found any difficulty in following the career he wanted. Lavaysse had belonged to the Navy in which he had excelled; and a rich relation had left him a plantation in Saint Domingo to which he was about to go.

Before leaving he called at the Calas house to say his farewells. He did not exactly boast but it was natural that the depressed Marc Antoine should compare his own career with that of the successful Lavaysse, and he suddenly left the company, went up to his room and hanged himself.

When his body was discovered, the family was horrified, not only at the loss of their son, but because it was the Catholic custom to take the body of a Protestant suicide – or suspected suicide – and drag it naked on a hurdle through the town. This was considered to be a stigma which would be attached to the rest of the family for years after the event.

The lamentations of the Calas family, when they cut down the body of Marc Antoine, attracted the attention of neighbours, who came into the house to see what was wrong.

‘He has killed himself!’ cried one.

Monsieur Calas, visualising the naked body of his son being subjected to humiliation, cried out: ‘No, no! It was not suicide.’

‘So . . . it was murder!’

One of the neighbours went into the streets and shouted: ‘Citizens, come quickly! Here is a Protestant family who have murdered their son.’

Soon there was a crowd outside the house. They stormed into it, took the body of Marc Antoine, stripped it and dragged it through the streets. They seized every member of the Calas family and forcing them to march through the streets behind the body, they cried: ‘See! Here are Protestants who have strangled their own son.’

The family was thrust into prison, and the Catholic priests concocted a case against them. Marc Antoine had declared his intention of becoming a Catholic, they said, and because of this his family had strangled him. Special services were held to eulogise Marc Antoine, for the priests saw an opportunity of inciting the citizens of Toulouse against the Protestants, and such opportunities were never ignored.

They declared that the Protestants held secret tribunals in which they decided to murder all of their number who expressed the wish to be converted to Catholicism. The people of Toulouse were called upon to show their love of the true faith, which meant that they must demand persecution of the Calas family.

The case of Calas might have been merely another which chained France to the dark ages of intolerance, but for the so-called atheist of Ferney who poured out his scorn for his fellow countrymen. ‘The judgement of this Protestant family,’ declared Voltaire, ‘is all the more Christian in that it is incapable of proof.’

Calas, a man of sixty-four, was broken on the wheel. In the midst of his agony he was asked to confess, but he only declared his innocence and prayed for the forgiveness of his tormentors.