‘They guard me so well,’ she said, ‘that I feel the need to escape on nights like this one.’

‘Tell me your name. Please tell me that. What may I call you?’

‘You may call me Marie.’

‘Marie … There are many Maries, but I never heard the name sound so sweet.’

‘Will you tell me yours?’

‘Axel.’

‘A strange name.’

‘It is common enough in my country.’

‘And your country is?’

‘Sweden.’

‘I shall remember …. Axel from Sweden.’

‘May we meet again here to-morrow?’

‘I do not think that will be possible.’

‘You have another engagement? Break it, I beg of you.’

‘I … It is with my grandfather.’

‘Then you must tell him that you have arranged to meet another.’

‘I could not tell my grandfather that.’

‘He is despotic?’

‘He expects and demands absolute obedience.’

‘Odious man!’

She laughed. ‘You should not say that,’ she said. ‘You really should not.’

‘I will call any man odious who keeps you from me.’

‘One would think you had known me for a long time instead of half an hour.’

‘It is sometimes possible to know in the first moments of a meeting that that meeting is like no other which has ever taken place in one’s life … nor ever will.’

‘You speak with fervour, Monsieur.’

‘Marie … chère Marie … I mean to make you agree with me that what I said is true.’

‘You mean that ours is an important meeting. How can that be? To you I am Marie … of the Opéra ball, and you to me are Axel of Sweden.’

‘Comte Hans Axel de Fersen at your service always.’

‘I … I shall remember.’

‘I have given you my confidence. You must give me yours.’

He had led her to an alcove where they were hidden from the dancers by the palms and flowers.

With a quick gesture he removed her mask. She flushed scarlet and snatched at the mask in his hand.

He had turned very pale. ‘You … you are afraid to show your face … when it is the most beautiful in all Paris,’ he said. ‘I understand why, Madame la Dauphine.’

‘You … you know me then?’

‘I have seen the pictures of you in the shop windows.’

With trembling fingers she adjusted her mask.

He bowed stiffly. ‘Madame,’ he said, ‘I will conduct you to your party.’

She took his arm and he led her back to where Artois and Provence were anxiously looking for her.

Fersen bowed curtly and turned away.

‘Come,’ cried Artois, ‘we will dance together; but I do not think, Antoinette, that you should dance with others. It should be one of us.’

Josèphe and Thérèse, who were of the party, were looking at her strangely. She was aware of their looks. They see everything, she thought.

And in that moment her desire to dance left her. The only person she wished to dance with was Comte Hans Axel de Fersen.

‘I am tired,’ she said. ‘It is time we went home.’

‘Tired? You?’ cried Artois.

‘Do you not see,’ said Josèphe, ‘that something has happened to make her tired?’

‘I want to go home,’ said the Dauphine imperiously. ‘I want to go back at once.’

And in the rumbling carriage all the way back to Versailles she thought of him, remembering each word he had said. If he had not recognised me, she told herself, when he removed my mask, he would have kissed me.

She tried to imagine what that would have been like. Of one thing she was certain; it would be quite unlike the fumbling embrace of the Dauphin.

Josèphe and Thérèse sat with the aunts.

‘She insists on going into Paris often. There is scarce a night when she does not go,’ Josèphe murmured.

‘Paris is a wicked city,’ said Victoire.

‘Papa hates it,’ Sophie declared. ‘That is why he never goes there.’

‘She goes there,’ said Adelaide, her eyes narrowed. ‘She flaunts herself about the city, and the people come out and call her their beautiful Dauphine.’ She turned to her sisters. ‘The people of Paris hate Papa. They blame him for their famines and the taxes,’ she continued as though she were teaching backward children their lessons. ‘When the price of grain goes up they accuse Papa of hoarding it. They are very angry then.’

‘Why?’ asked Sophie.

‘Because they cannot afford to buy bread when the price of grain is so high.’

‘What a pity,’ said Victoire, with sympathetic tears in her eyes, ‘that they cannot be persuaded to eat pastry crust. I hate it myself, but it would be better than nothing for the people.’

Sophie nodded, but Adelaide said sharply: ‘If they could not get bread they could not get pastry either. You are being foolish, Victoire, and your nieces are laughing at you.’

‘Oh, dear,’ said Victoire unhappily, and Josèphe and Thérèse assured her that they were not laughing; they felt nearer tears, on account of the disgraceful behaviour of their sister-in-law.

‘What has she done now?’ asked Adelaide eagerly.

‘You know, do you not,’ said Josèphe, ‘that she goes disguised to Paris. Why, do you think? She goes to the ball, and there she dances with strange men. She was there last night and there was one masked man with whom she danced and with whom she disappeared for a while. She seemed most upset when she said goodbye to him.’

‘So this is how the Dauphine spends her time!’ said Adelaide. ‘Come, my dear Josèphe, and you, my dear Thérèse, you should tell your aunts all that you know.’

They sat talking for a long time; and later they called the Sardinian Ambassador that they might tell him of the Dauphine’s conduct.

He shook his head sadly and said how much happier it would be for France if the future Queen had the wisdom and prudence of his Princesses.

So they sat together, whispering and nodding, pretending to deplore while they delighted in what they called the légèreté of the Dauphine.


* * *

One April day in the year 1774 the King, who was at that beautiful house, the Petit Trianon, which he had given to Madame du Barry, felt suddenly more ill than usual.

His servant, Laborde, helped him to bed and, when Madame du Barry came to sit by his bedside, she was alarmed by his fever and his shivering fits.

Terrified she called in Lemoine, his physician, and so alarmed was Lemoine that he immediately summoned the surgeon-in-chief, La Martinière, to the King’s bedside.

La Martinière examined the royal body and declared that the King must be removed immediately to the château. It was assumed from this that he believed the King to be in imminent danger, for the etiquette of the Court would be seriously hurt if its monarch died anywhere but in the royal apartments in his own Palace.

The King, while submitting to custom, was thoroughly alarmed. His condition was by no means improved by the move; the next day his fever had increased, and bleeding helped him not at all. Before that day was over it was discovered that Louis Quinze was suffering from smallpox.

The château was in a turmoil of excitement. Everyone believed that the King was too old and infirm to survive such an illness. Du Barry came hurrying to his bedside. She would nurse him, she declared. The three aunts came into the sick-room. They too would nurse him, declared Adelaide. They knew they risked infection of this most dreaded disease, but he was their father and it was their duty to remain at his bedside.

The Dauphin and the Dauphine were forbidden the sick-room. There was too much danger there for the heirs to risk death.

The King lay on his bed and knew that his last hour was not far off, and he was filled with remorse as he had been so many times before. He thought of the country he had inherited from his great-grandfather, and he thought of the country he was leaving to his grandson.

‘A not very glorious reign,’ he murmured, ‘though a long one.’

Then he remembered that during it the finances of the state had deteriorated, that the government was in debt to the extent of seventy-eight million livres. Where had he gone wrong? He had squandered much on his mistresses and the upkeep of such places as the Parc aux Cerfs; he had made heavy demands on the taxpayer.

The Seven Years’ War had ended in disaster for France. She had been forced to give up her Canadian possessions to England; the same thing had happened in India. He knew that the French did not take kindly to a King who engaged in wars and did not lead his people in battle. He had heard the whispers about the greatness of Henri Quatre. There had been comparisons, and the great Henri had gleaned even greater honour from these. There had been famine, and certain men – including the King – had been accused of hoarding grain in order to get higher prices for it. During his reign the common people had become more and more wretched. They complained bitterly and continually against the levied taxation. They growled in the streets of Paris about the imposition of the salt tax, that gabelle, and the wine tax, the banvin. The people declared that those who had the least paid the most in taxes, which was iniquitous. The peasant paid taxes for his King, for his seigneur and for the clergy. ‘We will not do this for ever,’ growled the hungry people.

Louis had lived during the last years in a state of indifference. The kingdom will last my lifetime, he had told himself. The old phrase rang in his head now: Après moi – le déluge.

He would not be here to see it. That would be for poor Berry and that bright young girl he had married.

Now, with death close, he saw how wrong he had been to shrug aside his responsibility with a ‘Poor Berry!’