The Road to Compiegne (56 page)

There will be trouble one day. Oh, but not in my time.
Après moi le déluge
.

He wanted to go back. He wanted to live his life again. He wanted to ask pardon of so many people but, oddly enough, chiefly of his grandson.

There were tears in his eyes. He needed laughter, gaiety. He wanted to dispel melancholy thoughts.

He called a page to his bed.

‘Send for Madame du Barry,’ he commanded.

‘Sire,’ the page replied, ‘she has left Versailles.’

‘So soon,’ he murmured and closed his eyes.

In the Cour de Marbre the drums sounded as the Viaticum was carried through the Chapel to the King’s bedroom. With it came the Dauphin and the Dauphine and other members of the royal family; but only the Princesses Adelaide, Victoire and Sophie accompanied the priests into the chamber of death.

Those who waited heard the ringing tones of the Grand Almoner and the feeble responses of the King.

‘His Majesty asks God to grant pardon for his sins and the scandalous example he has set his people. If he should be spared he swears he will spend his time penitently improving the lot of his people.’

The King lay back on his pillow greatly relieved. That fate, which he had always feared, had not been his. He was to die but his sins had been forgiven.

Outside the
Château
the crowd waited. In Paris there was almost a festive air. The citizens were already talking of the new King, who was young and, so they had heard, not interested in women. He was quiet too and kind.

Would to God, they said, that the old one had died years ago, and the new one had been our King.

They already had a name for him. Louis the Longed For.

Everything, they said, would be different when he came to the throne.

There was one woman who waited in the crowd about the
Château
. She was six feet tall and very beautiful. She was the wife of an officer named de Cavanac, but before her marriage she had been Mademoiselle de Romans.

For years she had been searching for the son who had been taken from her; she believed now that she would find him, for when the King was dead there would be no one to care if that boy bore a striking resemblance to his father.

Madame de Cavanac believed that Louis XVI, who was said to be so kind, would help her to find her lost boy.

So she waited in the crowds, tense, expectant. She had loved the dying man; but she longed for the return of her lost child.

The Duc de Bouillon stood in the doorway of the bedchamber.

‘Messieurs,’ he said, ‘the King is dead.’

There was a brief silence; and then the silence was no more.

The stampede had begun.

The ladies and gentlemen of the Court were all eager to show how quickly they had rallied to the new King and Queen. Through the State rooms, through the anterooms, they ran to fall at the feet of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

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