Louis the Well-Beloved (22 page)

Louis, returning from Mass, felt uneasy – as he always did at such times. He wanted to lead a virtuous life and, much as he enjoyed the society of Madame de Mailly, there were times when he was deeply conscious that in such pleasure was sin.

He tried to raise his spirits by reminding himself that soon he would be leaving for Choisy, that delightful château lying among beautiful wooded country watered by the Seine, which he had bought that it might provide a refuge for himself and Madame de Mailly: and having bought it he could not resist embellishing it. Now it was indeed beautiful with its blue and gold decorations and the mirrored rooms.

He longed for the peace of Choisy whither he and his mistress might go with a few chosen friends; he wished that he need not feel these stirrings of conscience. Surely he could be forgiven. Marie, his Queen, had no physical satisfaction to offer him, and he was a healthy man of twenty-eight.

‘Time enough for repentance in forty years’ time,’ the Duc de Richelieu would say; but Louis had a conscience which from time to time could be very restless.

He was therefore thoughtful as he made his way towards his bedchamber; and as he came into the ante-room, he was astonished to see a small figure running towards him.

His knees were caught in a wild embrace and a voice, strangled with sobs, cried: ‘Papa! Papa! It is your Madame Adelaide who speaks to you.’

He lifted the child in his arms. There were real tears on her cheeks. As soon as her face was on a level with his, her arms were round his neck and her wet, hot face buried against him.

‘What ails my dearest daughter?’ asked Louis tenderly.

‘They are going to send Adelaide away from her Papa.’

‘And who is doing this terrible thing?’ he asked.

‘They say
you
are.’

‘
I?
Would I send my dearest Madame Adelaide away from me?’

‘No . . . no . . . Papa. That is why you must stop them before
they
do.
They
are going to send us to the nuns for years . . . and years and years . . .’

‘It is because lessons have to be learned, my darling.’

‘I’ll learn them here . . . quicker.’

‘Oh, but this matter has been well thought out, and it is decided that the nuns will make the best teachers for you and your sisters. It will not be long before you are all home again.’

‘Years and years,’ she cried; and burst into loud sobs.

‘Hush, my little one,’ said Louis, looking about him in consternation for someone to take the sobbing child from him; but Adelaide was not going to let him escape as easily as that. She tightened her grip on him and sobbed louder than ever.

‘Hush, hush, hush!’ cried Louis.

‘But they will send me away from my Papa . . . Stop them, please. Please . . . please . . .
please
!’

‘But my dear . . .’

‘You are the King. You
could
!’

‘Adelaide . . .’

She began pummelling his chest with her small fists. ‘Could you? Could you?’ she demanded.

‘You see, Adelaide . . .’

‘You will send me away, and I shall die,’ she wailed. ‘I
will
die, because I won’t live away from my Papa . . .’

Then she began to sob in earnest. This was no feigned distress. She was older than the other children and she knew that if she left Versailles for Fontevrault it would indeed be years before she returned.

The Duc de Richelieu had stepped forward and murmured: ‘Shall I send for Madame’s
gouvernante
, Sire?’

‘No . . . no!’ screamed Adelaide. ‘I will not let my Papa leave me.’

‘What can I do?’ asked the King helplessly.

‘Sire, since the lady declares she will not release you, you can only go with her to Fontevrault or keep her here with you at Versailles.’

‘Or,’ said the King, ‘insist that she goes without me.’

‘I do not think, Sire, that it is in your nature to refuse the loving request of a beautiful young lady.’

Adelaide was alert, but she continued to sob and cling to her father.

‘Well,’ said the King, ‘one more at Versailles cannot cost the Exchequer so very much.’ He kissed his daughter’s hot cheek. ‘Come, my child, dry your eyes. You are to stay with your Papa at Versailles.’

Adelaide’s answer was a suffocating hug. ‘My new dress is the colour of Your Majesty’s eyes,’ she said. ‘That is why I love it.’

‘How charming are ladies . . . when their requests are granted,’ murmured Richelieu.

The King laughed; he held Adelaide high above his head so that the carvings on the ceiling seemed to rush down to meet her.

‘Madame Adelaide,’ he cried, ‘it pleases me as much as you that you are to stay with us.’

And the next day Adelaide watched her four little sisters driven away to Fontevrault with the Marquise de la Lande. She wept a little to lose them, but she was filled with gratification because she was staying behind and because she had discovered that, if she wanted something, it was possible to get it by asking for it in a certain manner in a certain quarter.

The little Princesses had been away for a year, and Adelaide often forgot their very existence for days at a time. When she did think of them she pitied them in their grim old abbey. It was so much more fun to be at Versailles where she was often with her father. Sometimes he came to her nurseries to see her; sometimes she accompanied him to the apartments of the Dauphin – although she did not like this so much as her brother was apt to command her father’s attention and divert it from herself.

Adelaide adored her father, and everyone knew of this adoration. Not that Adelaide attempted to hide it. That would have been foolish. Her father was the most important person at Court, and while he loved her Adelaide could see that she was important also.

To her mother she was almost indifferent. She had sensed the rift between the King and Queen, and gave her allegiance to her handsome, charming and all-powerful father, rather than to her fat and too pious mother.

Louis was growing more interested in his children, for as they grew away from babyhood they attracted him more strongly. Both Adelaide and the Dauphin had spirit, and he admired them for that quality.

Adelaide was a pretty little girl and therefore delightful, but Louis the Dauphin, being the heir to the throne, was the important member of the family.

News was brought to the King that someone must speak to the boy because he was growing too headstrong. There was no one who had the authority to do this but the King, for the young Dauphin had declared to his tutors that he would one day be King and therefore it was they who should take orders from him, not he from them.

When Louis visited the Dauphin in his apartments on the ground floor of the Château, the ten-year-old boy, seeing his father approach, bowed low.

The King smiled. The Dauphin usually greeted his father by leaping into his arms and asking for a ride on his shoulders. The Dauphin was feeling his dignity and growing up.

Louis tried to remember himself at the age of ten. How did he behave then? Was he as wilful as the Dauphin? He did not think so; but if he had been, there was some excuse for him, because he was then already King.

‘Well, my son,’ said Louis, ‘I have been hearing reports of your conduct.’

The Dauphin turned to his tutor who was standing by, and said: ‘You may leave us.’

The tutor looked at the King, and Louis nodded to confirm the boy’s order. The Dauphin knew he was going to be reprimanded and did not want this to happen before his tutor. When he had gone, the King sat down, and drawing the boy to him said: ‘Was that the man whose face you slapped?’

‘Yes, Papa. He deserved it!’

‘In your judgement or his own?’

The boy looked astonished. ‘He is a man who will not listen to reason,’ he said haughtily.

The King was secretly amused.

‘
Your
reason, naturally,’ he said.

‘Reason!’
said the Dauphin firmly.

Louis laughed. ‘My son,’ he said, ‘one day you will rule this kindom. A King is unwise who does not listen to the advice of his counsellors.

‘I am ready to listen, Papa.’

‘Listening is not enough,’ said the King. ‘Advice must be also considered and, usually when one is very young, taken. When I was your age . . .’

The boy’s expression had changed. He drew closer to his father. ‘Tell me, Papa, about when you were a boy. Tell me about the day they carried you into the Grande Chambre and you asked for the Archbishop’s hat, or when little Blanc et Noir came to the Council meetings.’

Louis told the boy, projecting himself into those days of his childhood, hoping that by so doing he was giving a boy, who was destined to be a King of France, a glimpse of the duties of kingship.

The boy’s face glowed; his eyes softened.

When Louis had finished, he said: ‘Papa, if you were my tutor instead of the Abbé de Saint-Cyr . . .’

‘I know, my son, you would not slap my face. Is that it?’

‘I would not,’ said the boy gravely.

‘Even though
I
would not listen to
your
reason?’

‘I would love my tutor so much that reason would not matter,’ said the boy.

Louis could not help boasting about his son’s intelligence; he would repeat his sayings, so that the Court began to smile when they had heard them a few times. Louis was becoming a fond father, infinitely proud of his Dauphin.

A few shrewd people would approach the boy and ask him to put in a good word for them with his father. The young Dauphin, enjoying the feeling of importance, would do his utmost to have these requests granted; and as Louis wanted the Court to know in what esteem he held his son, unless they were very outrageous, he invariably concurred.

It was charming to have a family about the Court. Louis often regretted the absence of the four little girls at Fontevrault. The twins delighted him, and it was sad to think that they were nearing the age when marriages should be arranged for them.

Louise-Elisabeth and Anne-Henriette were twelve years old, and Don Philip, the son of Philip V and his second wife Elisabeth Farhese, was looking for a bride.

With seven daughters for whom husbands should in time be found, the marriage problem must be tackled early. One of the twins must go to Spain.

The twins knew this and they were anxious.

They liked to walk together in the gardens of the Château, talking of the future when they would be parted.

On this day in the year 1739 they were strolling under the lime trees when Louise-Elisabeth said: ‘The Spanish Ambassador has been so much with Papa lately.’

Anne-Henriette nodded. She stared at the fishpond with its porcelain tiles on which were painted birds looking so natural that they might have been real.

She did not say that he had called on their father this morning, and that he was even now closeted with him and the Cardinal and other important people. She was afraid, because Louise-Elisabeth was considered to be the elder and she felt sure that if this marriage were arranged it would be for her sister and not for her.

‘I wonder what it is like in Spain,’ she said.

When Louise-Elisabeth answered there was a note of hysteria in her voice: ‘They say it is very solemn there.’

‘That was long ago. The King is a relation of ours. I have heard that the Court of Spain is more French than Spanish since the Bourbons ruled.’

‘It would be only natural that it should be.’ Louise-Elisabeth looked back at the honey-coloured stones of the Château which was home to her, and a great love for it and all it contained swept over her.

‘Perhaps,’ went on her sister, ‘it is not very much different from Versailles.’

‘But you would not be there . . . our brother and mother would not be there. And Papa . . . There would be another King . . . not Papa. Imagine that! Can you? I cannot. A King who is not our father.’

‘He may be very kind, all the same.’

‘He could not be like our father.’ There was a sob in Louise-Elisabeth’s throat.

‘One would grow used to him. And perhaps in time be Queen of Spain.’

‘No,’ said Louise-Elisabeth, ‘there are too many to come before Don Philip.’ But her eyes had begun to glisten, her sister noticed; and she felt glad.