Виктория Холт - Flaunting, Extravagant Queen

‘I must repent,’ he cried, ‘for I feel the weight of sin heavy on my conscience.’

* * *

His priests were at his bedside.

‘If you would repent, Sire, you must show first a humble heart, a true desire for forgiveness,’ he was told.

‘I do desire it. I do,’ cried the suffering King.

‘Then, Sire, first you must dismiss your courtesan from your bedside.’

‘No,’ cried du Barry. ‘We have been together, France, these many years. I’ll not be parted from you now.’

‘You must go, my dear,’ said the King. ‘It is not good for you to be here. This is a vile place – this room. The stench is fearful. I smell it myself. Go, my dear. It is best.’

‘I’ll not leave you. I myself will nurse you.’

‘So you loved me truly,’ said the King.

‘I will stay with you.’ She clung to his hands, and the tears ran down her cheeks. ‘I’ll never leave you … never … never …’

The priests looked on. ‘There can be no hope of saving your soul, Sire, while this woman remains; and time grows short. Will you go to hell for the sake of dying in her arms?’

Du Barry saw his distress and went weeping from the room.

The doors of the sick-room were closed while the priests required the dying man to recount all the sins of his life. This was necessary, the King was told, if he would win absolution.

So he lay on his bed, scarcely able to breathe, scarcely conscious, while he tried to remember all the wickedness of the past. He thought of the carelessness, the indifference, the rule which had touched with decay the very roots of a great kingdom, so that he was leaving a tottering throne to his grandchildren.

But it was not these sins of which he must unburden himself. It was those exploits in the Parc aux Cerfs, the heinous act of living in open sin with such as Madame de Pompadour and Madame du Barry, and thus contaminating the morals of all France.

The confession was made and the Host was carried under a canopy from the chapel to the room in which the King lay dying. Soldiers were stationed on the Palace steps, and the Swiss Guards lined the route through the Palace to the room of death.

Spectators crowded into the ante-room to see the King receiving Holy Communion. The Cardinal who had officiated came to the door of the room and declared in a loud voice:

‘Gentlemen, the King instructs me to tell you that he asks God’s pardon for the scandalous example he has set his people; and to add that, if God vouchsafes his return to health, he will give himself up to repentance and to relieving the lot of his people.’

A few days later Louis Quinze was dead.

* * *

In the streets the people shouted: ‘Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi.’

The citizens of Paris were wild with joy. They had hated Louis whom they had once called the Bien-Aimé. Now they turned to one whom they christened Louis le Désiré.

Antoinette, waiting with the Dauphin in a small room, knew that the King was dying. She knew that, at any moment now, crowds would burst upon them; she knew that the life of reckless gaiety was over, and that the careless Dauphine must not be a carefree Queen.

The door opened suddenly. Madame de Noailles was hurrying into the room. She knelt, never forgetting for one moment the correct posture, although she was visibly moved.

‘Long life to the King and Queen of France!’ she cried.

At that moment others were bursting in upon them. There were many seeking to kiss their hands, to swear to serve them with their hearts and bodies.

Antoinette turned to look at her husband. She saw the fear in his eyes and she understood.

A flash of wisdom came to her then, and she found that she was offering up a silent prayer.

‘Lord God, guide us and protect us, for we are too young to rule.’

Madame du Barry was weeping bitterly in her own apartments. She thought of the years when she and Louis had been lovers. They were over and what she had feared for so long had come to pass; this was the end, as she had known it must come to her.

What was there left to her now? Nothing, but to wait on events. And what had she to hope for from Louis’ stolid successor, a man who would never have known the pleasures in which she and her lover had indulged with such abandon. What had she to hope for from a young Queen who had openly declared herself her enemy?

She could not stay here at Rueil, on the estate of the Duc d’Aiguillon, where Louis had told her to find a haven while the priests set about saving his soul. D’Aiguillon would soon be out of favour, she doubted not.

She would go to the Petit Trianon, that charming little home which Louis had given her; there she would stay among her treasures, awaiting her doom.

She said farewell to the Duchesse. ‘For if I stay here I may bring the royal wrath upon you also,’ she explained.

The Duchesse lifted her shoulders; she said she thought that the departure of Madame du Barry could not save them from that.

‘Oh, I am not sure,’ said du Barry. ‘Antoinette is a haughty piece but she is too careless to sit brooding on revenge. As for the new Louis, he is like a bar of iron out of his own workshop. Nothing will dent him. Still I think it would be better if I left you.’

So she came to the Petit Trianon, that house in which she had known such happiness. When she had first seen it she had loved it; even she had recognised it as in exquisite taste, with its windows facing the beautiful lawns, and the gardens making a show of glorious colour. It was not a big house when compared with the palaces of kings, for there were only eight rooms. Versailles could not be seen from it, nor could Versailles see it, and yet it had been so conveniently near. Louis Bien-Aimé had called it a little love-nest, and she knew that before her day he had entertained many of his mistresses there.

Now it was hers, her beloved little home; and she had not realised how beloved until she feared she might lose it.

She had been in residence but a few days when the messenger came to her. She saw him approaching through the garden across the green lawn.

‘Madame, a message from His Majesty.’

She accepted the scroll and went into the house, taking it into the bedroom where she and Louis had so often spent many interesting and unusual hours. She guessed its contents before she read it.

His Majesty was telling her that her presence would no longer be required at court. He was suggesting that she retire to a convent.

She walked about the house, seeing afresh every small detail.

‘Well,’ she told herself, as she prepared to leave for her convent, ‘I am not the first. It has happened to many before and so often that it should not surprise me.’

So the glittering du Barry, once the most influential woman of the Court, was robbed of her glory and slipped away into retirement.

* * *

The three aunts were excited. Adelaide was wondering how best she could dominate the new King; her sisters watched her, hanging on her words.

They could not help being relieved that their father was dead. Led by Adelaide they had remained in the sick-room until the end, insisting on performing even the most menial tasks, ostentatiously risking infection. They felt now as though they wore halos about their heads; they were convinced that all their mischief-making and backbiting was righteous behaviour. How could it be otherwise when they had taken such risks in their father’s sick-room?

But now the King was dead, the King who had despised his Loque, Coche and Graille; and they, who had risked their lives to nurse him, had had the pleasure of giving him those significant martyred looks as he lay dying, to impress upon him, as they had never been able to during his life, how sinful he was to have laughed at saints such as they were.

‘The next task,’ said Adelaide, ‘is to see that the new King does not make the mistakes of the old.’

Victoire and Sophie looked at each other. ‘Poor Berry!’ said Sophie.

‘He is no longer Berry,’ said Adelaide sharply. ‘He is Louis Seize. Remember that. You must not call him Berry now; and remember too that you must not treat him like a little nephew. He is the King. What we have to do is prevent that wicked wife of his from influencing him and so ruining the country.’

Victoire and Sophie glanced at each other and nodded.

‘I am going to see him,’ said Adelaide.

‘Shall we go too?’ asked Victoire.

‘You may not go. You forget we have so recently been in the sick-room of our father.’

Victoire and Sophie looked astonished: they wanted to say that, if they had nursed their father, so had Adelaide; but they never questioned Adelaide’s decisions.

‘They will need me,’ said Adelaide, ‘and I must go to them.’

Victoire was ready to fly into one of her panics, for, although she and her sisters had been allowed to accompany the Court to Choisy, they had, on account of their recent proximity to the infection, been installed in a house outside the Palace. She knew that fifty people had already caught the smallpox from the King and that several of them had died: for it was a particularly virulent variety which had brought about the end of the King.

Sophie looked from one sister to the other, not knowing what to make of this situation. Adelaide was clicking her tongue in exasperation.

‘Do you not understand that Louis will be completely under the control of that foolish girl? And what will she do? She will bring Choiseul back. She was always a friend of his. At all costs we must stop her.’