The Loves of Charles II (45 page)

La Vallière raised her tear-filled eyes to Henriette’s face. “Madame, where shall I go? I have nowhere to go. Please Madame, let me stay here until I can see the King. Please see His Majesty yourself. He will tell you how he insisted …”

Henriette turned away; she was afraid that the girl would see the anguish in her face. “I have said Go!” she told her. “I never want to see your face again.”

La Vallière rose, curtsied and hurried from the room.

When she had gone, Henriette threw herself onto a couch. She did not weep; she had no tears. There was no happiness left for her in the world. She had been brutal to La Vallière but her jealous fury had commanded her to be so. She hated herself and the world. She understood that Louis could not maintain their rarified devotion; he was not made for such idealism; he was young and lusty; he needed physical satisfaction. It was wrong to blame La Vallière, but how could she bear to see the girl daily!

“I wish I were dead!” she murmured. “I can see that life has nothing to offer me.”

Her restless fingers plucked at the golden lilies embroidered on the velvet of the couch, but she did not see them; she saw nothing but Louis and La Vallière, locked in a lovers’ embrace.

Montalais brought her the news.

“The King is distracted, Madame. He has heard of the flight of La Vallière. He has himself gone in pursuit of her. Who would have thought that His Majesty would have cared so much for our silly little Vallière!”

“So,” said Henriette, “he has gone in pursuit of her!”

“He is determined to find her,” continued Montalais. “He is urging all his friends to join in the search. There will be rewards for those who uncover the hiding place of His Majesty’s little inamorata.”

“His Majesty has not mentioned the girl’s flight to me.”

“Has he not, Madame?” said Montalais, not without a trace of malice. “That is indeed strange. One would have thought you might have been able to tell him something of the girl’s possible whereabouts, considering she was in your service.”

Henriette said: “Doubtless the matter slipped his memory when he was with me.”

“Doubtless, Madame,” said Montalais.

They know! decided Henriette. They all know of my love for the King. They know he has turned from me to my maid of honor!

A
calèche
drew up outside the Tuileries. From it alighted a man in a long concealing cloak and hood, and with him was a shrinking girl. The man demanded audience of Madame.

There were some who wanted to know how he dared storm the Tuileries at such an hour and peremptorily demand to see Madame d’Orléans.

But when the man threw back his hood and revealed his features, those who had asked the question fell on to their knees before him. They hastened to Madame’s apartment to tell her that the King was on his way to see her.

Louis was already there, and Henriette saw that the shrinking creature who accompanied him was La Vallière.

Louis waved aside ceremony as Henriette would have knelt. He took her hand, looking earnestly into her eyes. “I have found little Mademoiselle de la Vallière,” he said. “She was in a convent near Saint-Cloud whither she had taken refuge. Poor child! She was in a state of great distress. I know you will help me, Henriette.”

“I … help Your Majesty!”

“I ask you to take her back into your service, to look after her, as your maid of honor. I want it to be as though she has never run away.”

He turned to La Vallière, and Henriette felt as though her heart was breaking as she saw the tender looks he bestowed upon the frightened girl. Louis was so frank; he was incapable of deceit; he could not hide from her the fact that he was in love with this girl.

This is too much to be borne! thought Henriette. It is more than I can endure. Can it be that he has no understanding? Can he be as obtuse as he seems?

“Your Majesty,” she said, steeling herself to speak calmly, “I cannot take this girl back. She admits that she has been guilty of an intrigue with a gentleman in a high place at Court.”

“It was no fault of hers,” said Louis.

“Your Majesty, I did not understand that she was the victim of rape.”

Louis’ eyes were full of anguish. He loved Henriette; she was the perfect woman, he told himself. If she could have been his wife he would have asked nothing more of life. But she was the wife of his brother; and between them there could never be the kind of love which was so necessary to him. His eyes pleaded with her: Understand me, Henriette. I love you. Ours is an ideal relationship. It is unique. You are my love. And the affair with this girl … it is nothing. It happens today and is forgotten tomorrow. But I am fond of her. She is so small and helpless. I have seduced her, and I cannot desert her now.

Poor Louis! He was so simple, so full of the wish to do right.

Help me, Henriette, said his pleading eyes. I beg of you show me the greatness of your love for me by helping me now. Surely love that exists between us is beyond the pettiness of an affair like this.

How I love him! thought Henriette. I love him for his simplicity. He has not yet grown up. Our great Sun God is but a child.

“Louis …” she murmured brokenly. “Louis …”

He laid his hands on her shoulders and gently kissed her cheek. Then he turned and, drawing La Vallière towards him, put an arm about her.

“Have no fear, my little one,” he said. “You should not run away. Do you think you could hide from the King?”

Even as he looked at her, his desire was apparent.

What can she give him that I cannot? Henriette asked herself. The answer was clear: All that is so necessary to a man of his appetites.

“Madame is the kindest and greatest lady in the world,” Louis was saying. “I give you into her care. She will love you and cherish you … for my sake.”

Henriette said: “It is my one desire to serve Your Majesty.” And she thought: I can do this for him … even this … so much do I love him.

She did not sleep; she could eat very little. A great melancholy filled her.

Her mother visited her and was shocked by her appearance.

“What has happened?” she demanded. “You look so tired, and you are thinner than ever. And what is this I hear about your refusing to eat? This will not do, my child. I see that you need your mother to look after you.”

Henrietta Maria was seriously disturbed. She could not forget that in a
comparatively short time she had lost three of her children. “You are coughing too much!” she cried. “How long have you coughed thus?”

Henriette wearily shook her head, but the sight of her angry mother, the quick rebukes, the tapping of the little foot, the bright darting eyes, had the effect of unnerving her. She, who had not shed a tear during all the weeks of jealous heartbreak, now burst into bitter weeping.

Once again she was held in her mother’s suffocating embrace. Of all her children, Henrietta Maria loved best her youngest daughter. Henriette had been her darling since she had been brought to France from England and had become a Catholic.

“Oh, Mam … Mam … I wish we could go away together … you and I … just the two of us … to be together as we used to be. Do you remember, when we were at the Louvre and I had to stay in bed because it was too cold to be up? Oh, Mam, I wish I was your little girl again!”

“There, my love, my dearest,” crooned the Queen. “You shall come with Mam. We will be together, and these hands shall nurse you, and this Queen, your mother, shall wait upon you. There has been too much gaiety … too many balls, and in your condition … ah, in your condition … But Mam will nurse you, my darling. You shall be with Mam and no one else. Not even Philippe, eh, my darling?”

“No, Mam. No one but you.”

So Henrietta Maria sent for a litter and had her daughter conveyed from Saint-Cloud to the Tuileries, and there she nursed her.

During those weeks Henrietta had no wish to see anyone but her mother. She thought often of Charles. Her other love! She called him to herself. Charles … Louis! How different they were, those two men whom she loved beyond all in the world. Charles so adult, Louis such a boy; Charles the ugliest, Louis the most handsome King in Christendom; Charles clever and subtle, Louis so often naïve for all his grandeur, a man with a boy’s mind, a man who had not yet grown up mentally.

There is only one thing which could make me happy now, she mused. To go to England … to be with Charles.

During her illness he wrote often. His letters were a source of great delight; he alone could make her laugh.

He wrote: “Do you suffer from a disease of sermons, as we do here? ‘Od’s Fish! What piety surrounds us! Dearest Minette, I hope you have the same convenience that the rest of the family has, of sleeping out most of the time, which is a great ease to those who are bound to hear them. But this sleeping has caused me some regret. South—he’s an outspoken fellow, that one—had occasion to reprove Lauderdale when preaching last Sunday’s sermon. Lauderdale’s a man who can snore to wake the dead, and South
stopped in the middle of his sermon to rouse him. ‘My Lord,’ he cried in a voice of thunder, ‘you snore so loud you will wake the King!’”

Oh, to be with him! thought Henriette. Oh, to hear his voice again!

Her child—a daughter—was born prematurely. She had so longed for a son, and so had Philippe. Marie-Thérèse had borne a Dauphin; Philippe would be jealous now because Louis had a son while he had a daughter.

Perhaps, thought Henriette, my little daughter will one day marry Louis’ son. In the years ahead mayhap I shall find peace, and these turbulent years will seem of no importance then.

It was thinking of Charles that made her aware of the compensations life had to offer. She longed to be with him, to hear his merry laughter, to listen to his witty comments on life, to enjoy that cynicism which veiled the kindest heart in the world.

A few weeks after the birth of her child, Montalais came to Henriette to tell her that the Comte de Guiche was begging for an interview with her. His father, the Maréchal de Gramont, had arranged for him to be given command of the troops, and he was required to leave the Court at once.

Henriette, who had found the handsome young man a cultured companion, declared herself sorry that he was leaving, and received him.