Виктория Холт - The Road to Compiegne

The doctors were right. With the coming of spring the Dauphine died.

Her passing seemed to bring her great contentment for, as she said, she had no desire to live after her husband had died, and now she was to join him and this had been her greatest wish since he had departed this life.

* * *

The next victim, said the courtiers, would be the Queen.

Then, thought Choiseul, we will get the King married again. A new and lively Queen will change everything at Court. She will sweep away melancholy and if she is an Austrian bride she will be my friend. Choiseul had begun to think that he was destined to remain in power for the rest of his life. Even fortune favoured him. As soon as the Dauphine had begun to oppose him she had been stricken with illness and shortly after conveniently removed from his path. That was a sign, he told his sister.

‘And the King shows no indication of his fondness for you?’

The Duchesse declared vehemently: ‘It is that foolish d’Esparbès. She is constantly with him. Her very absurdity makes him laugh.’

‘When a woman makes the King laugh, that is dangerous for that woman’s enemies.’

‘Even though there is ridicule in his laughter?’

‘Louis so desperately seeks laughter that he is prepared to accept any kind. My dearest, I think it is time we arranged the dismissal of that woman. She is a fool, I know. But let us not be too complacent.’

Before he could plan a campaign against her, Madame d’Esparbès visited him and indicated that she wished him to give a command in the Army to a relative of hers.

Choiseul insolently refused this; whereupon she told him to beware. ‘Very soon,’ she said, ‘you will use all your efforts to please me. Everything I ask, you will be eager to give me.’

‘That,’ said Choiseul, ‘is an interesting prophecy. How long, I wonder, before we shall know whether it is to be fulfilled?’

She swept angrily away, and when he was alone some of Choiseul’s bravado deserted him. He believed she must feel very sure of herself to speak as she did. Could it be that the King, out of sheer boredom, was going to give her what she was clearly demanding and have her accepted at Court as maîtresse-en-titre?

He must be stopped at once.

Choiseul considered the methods which had been used so successfully by Madame de Pompadour, and he proposed to use similar ones. He was quite unscrupulous and immediately drew up an account of what he believed had happened when the King spent the night with Madame d’Esparbès. This he took to the King and told him that it had been written by a friend of Madame d’Esparbès whom she had secreted in a closet next to the bedchamber. In this account it was stated that the King had failed as a lover in spite of the use of an aphrodisiac.

Louis, who was almost as terrified of impotence as he was of death, was furiously angry.

So, thought Choiseul slyly, his guess had not been far from the truth, for only if this was so could the King be quite so furious.

‘I cannot be blamed for growing old,’ he said coldly, ‘but I could be blamed if I continued to receive people who allowed such foolish gossip to be circulated about my Court.’

Choiseul bowed his head.

He could not resist an open rebuff to Madame d’Esparbès. Passing her on the staircase in the ceremonial promenade, he said to her in a loud voice so that all could hear: ‘Well, ma petite, and how does the affaire progress?’

The King, who heard this, was horrified and it was noticed how coldly he received Madame d’Esparbès.

Everyone knew that that lady need no longer be feared as a rival for the position of maîtresse-en-titre. All except the lady herself were certain of her downfall. She however was surprised when, immediately after the promenade, a letter was brought to her apartments. She was to leave Court at once for the estates of Monsieur d’Esparbès, her husband’s father, since her presence was no longer required at Court.

Bewildered and powerless to protest or even to ask the reason for her dismissal, she departed.

* * *

During the following summer Marie Leczinska died.

Louis, who had certainly not loved her, was very sad as he went to her room and quietly kissed her cold forehead.

Yet another death! This was not going to relieve the depression.

The King would sit at the table in the petits appartements and say nothing; and since the King was silent, so were the guests.

What a contrast to those days when Madame de Pompadour had dominated the company and gaiety and wit had prevailed!

The King closed the Parc aux Cerfs. He had no heart for such pleasures, he told Le Bel. Moreover, as Death seemed to have become a permanent guest at the Château, he was considering living a reformed life.

‘For who knows, my friend,’ he said, ‘where Death will strike next?’

Le Bel said: ‘It will not be Your Majesty. Your Majesty has surely discovered the secret of eternal youth.’

‘Do not think to please me with such blatant falsehoods,’ said the King abruptly.

And Le Bel looked solemn. He saw great profits lost to him, and he sighed for the days when it was his duty to search Paris and Versailles for charming girls to please the King.

The Court too was solemn. A repentant King meant a dull Court. Who knew what would happen in the King’s present mood! He might people the Court with priests and insist that religious services take the place of balls and banquets.

Louis might feel the need to repent. His friends did not. For them it was more than probable that there were many years of delicious sin on Earth left to them before they began to consider preparing themselves for the life to come.

Why, said some pessimists, he might even marry the Duchesse de Gramont. The lady was irrepressible. The whole Court knew of what had been called the rape of the King. If that could happen to him, might he not be led unresisting into marriage?

Something must be done. A new mistress must be found. She must be so gay, so enchanting, that she would be able to charm the King from his present mood.

Somewhere in France she existed, and it was the desire of every ambitious and pleasure-loving man at Court to find her.

* * *

None of the candidates aroused more than a flicker of interest in the King, and then one day Le Bel was cornered by a man who assured him that he would end the search.

This man was a hanger-on at Court, a man who had taken part in many a shady adventure, who lived by his wits and owned an establishment in which he trained beautiful young women to be suitable mistresses for men in high places, and then concluded profitable transactions.

This man was the Comte du Barry.

Jean Baptiste du Barry, rake, rogue, adventurer, was feeling very pleased with himself as he left Le Bel. He was by nature an optimist: he could not have succeeded in his way of life if he had not been so. He lived by the expediency of the moment and his unwavering belief in the future.

He was now certain that, although many powerful men at Court – headed by Choiseul – had failed to provide the King with a mistress, he, living on the fringe of the Court, a man with an unsavoury past and a doubtful future, was going to succeed.

‘This time,’ he said to himself, ‘there shall be no failure. The woman is mine. Ha! From Jean Baptiste Comte du Barry, to Louis de Bourbon King of France. Not such a great step for her as some might think!’

Le Bel was not very enthusiastic; du Barry would admit that. He could only believe that the Comte might provide the King with amusement for a night or so.

‘Oh no, no, my friend,’ murmured Jean Baptiste. ‘I will provide him with the successor to Madame de Pompadour.’

He could not prevent himself from laughing aloud. Once before he had come near to success. Had they forgotten that? He certainly had not. But for Madame de Pompadour he would have succeeded too.

He would not count that a great failure. Many men, even at Court, had found a formidable adversary in that woman; but now she was where she could not foil the plans of Jean Baptiste du Barry. And that clever purveyor of woman had a creature to offer who greatly excelled even la belle Dorothée.

Yes, he was certain of that. Jeanne was the most delicious creature who had ever fallen into his hands.

Dorothée also had been delightful after he had trained her. After, of course. They all owed so much to Jean Baptiste.

He had secured a meeting between the King and Dorothée as he now proposed to arrange between Jeanne and the King. The King had been delighted with the lovely Dorothée.

‘Perhaps for one night . . . two nights,’ Le Bel had hinted.

One night! Two nights! Girls were well brought up in the establishment of Monsieur le Comte du Barry. La belle Dorothée was no little bird for the trébuchet, no candidate for the Parc aux Cerfs. He had meant her to reign at Court, and so she would have done, daughter of a Strasbourg water-carrier though she was, but for Madame de Pompadour.

That woman! She was clever, he would grant that; but she would not have succeeded against the Comte du Barry except for the fact that he could not approach the King, and she was beside him every hour of the day.

She did not do the damage herself. She would not soil her aristocratic hands (aristocratic! snorted Jean Baptiste. Was the daughter of a meat-contractor in Paris so much superior to one of a water-carrier in Strasbourg?). No; others told the King that la belle Dorothée had been the mistress of a man who was suffering from a painful disease, the very mention of which, considering the life he led, could throw the King into a panic.