by Jean Plaidy
‘He suffers from pleurisy,’ said the doctors and they bled him again and again.
An ulcer had appeared on his upper lip. It was a malignant growth and no ointments would cure it, and although at times it seemed about to heal it always broke out again.
There came a day when he took the Dauphine’s handkerchief to hold to his mouth after a fit of coughing, and when he handed it back to her it was stained with blood.
She remembered the sickness of Madame de Pompadour, and that she had seen the comely figure waste away almost to nothing. Thus was the Dauphin wasting before her eyes.
But she would save him. She was determined to; she loved him as she loved no one else in the world, and she would fight with all her skill to save him.
She remembered that wedding night when he had cried in her arms for the loss of his first wife. She had known at that time that he was a good man, a man of sensibility and deep feeling; then she, a frightened child, had become a woman determined to win what she desired, determined to hold it. And what she had desired was the love of her husband.
She believed she had won that in some measure. She had perhaps been too sure. That was why she had suffered so acutely when she had discovered his love for Madame Dadonville.
She remembered that tragedy – the loss of their eldest son, the Duc de Bourgogne, her little Louis Joseph, at the age of eleven. That had been a bitter blow to them both and to the child’s grandparents. His death had been one of the really big sorrows of her married life; another son had died at the age of three months and that had been a bitter blow. The loss of these children, the affair of Madame Dadonville – they had marred what could have been such a happy life.
He had consoled her at the time of the Duc de Bourgogne’s death. They had other children, he reminded her.
Yes, theirs had been a fruitful union. She had three sons: the Duc de Berry, the Duc de Provence and the Duc d’Artois; and two daughters, the Princesses Clotilde and Elisabeth. And she had looked after them herself, because she had believed that she could give them more love and care than any governesses could.
The King had considered her in some amazement. ‘My daughter,’ he said, ‘you are an example to every wife and mother in France.’
She fancied he spoke a little ironically, for she would seem very dull, very unattractive in his eyes; but at the same time she had glimpsed his genuine approval and affection.
But who should care for her child, but a mother? she asked herself. Who should nurse a husband in sickness, but a wife?
She prayed for long hours at night on her knees; she murmured prayers beneath her breath in the sickroom. But in spite of her unfailing care, in spite of her prayers, the Dauphin’s condition did not improve.
The King sent for her, and when they were alone he put his arms about her and embraced her.
‘My dear daughter,’ he said, ‘I am anxious.’
‘He is very ill, Sire,’ she answered.
‘I am anxious for him and I am anxious for you.’
‘For me?’
‘I do not think that you should spend so much time in the sickroom, my dear. You know what ails him. Oh my daughter, I see how disturbed you are. But you are brave – you are one of the bravest women in France, I believe – so I will speak the truth to you. I fear, daughter, that I shall not much longer have a son, nor you a husband.’
She clenched her fist and her mouth was firm. ‘I shall nurse him back to health,’ she said. ‘I did it before when everyone despaired of his life. I shall do it again.’
The King studied her affectionately. She had a strong will, this Marie-Josèphe. He was surprised now that he had ever thought her colourless. Because she was a good woman, that did not necessarily mean that she was a stupid one.
‘My dear,’ he said emotionally, ‘you will. I know you will. But I want you to hear what the doctors have told me. They say that this disease of the lungs, from which my son is suffering, can be infectious. Those who live constantly in the heated sickroom could in time be smitten by it.’
‘My place is with him,’ she said.
‘You exhaust yourself. Others could share this burden of nursing.’
Her eyes were fierce. ‘It is no burden and none shall share it with me,’ she answered.
The King laid his hand on her shoulder.
‘I shall join my prayers with yours, my child,’ he told her. He took her hand and kissed it. ‘Let us hope that the prayers of a sinful old man and the most virtuous young woman at Court may be answered.’
Each day the Dauphin grew weaker, but he was uneasy if, when he opened his eyes, he did not see Marie-Josèphe.
‘I am sorry,’ he told her one day, ‘sorry for the unhappiness I have caused you.’
She shook her head. ‘You gave me great happiness,’ she said.
‘I love you,’ he told her. ‘You, as no other . . .’
‘Do you say so because you know it is what I long to hear?’
‘I say it because it is the truth. It is long since I saw her. Oh Marie-Josèphe, how I wish I had been entirely faithful to you. You deserve so much more than I have given you.’
She shook her head. ‘Please . . . please do not speak of it . . . Now we are together . . .’
‘For the short time that is left,’ he began.
‘No,’ she cried. ‘It shall not be a short time. I nursed you through small-pox. I will nurse you through this.’
‘Marie-Josèphe, always beside me when I need you. My nurse, my comforter, my wife, my love . . .’
‘I am so happy,’ she said. ‘I wish that I could die at this moment.’
He knew that he was dying. He had become very gentle, very patient.
How was it, the Court wondered, that a man who knew himself to be so near to death could face the future with such serenity.
The King answered the question. He said: ‘My son’s life has been without reproach. He has no fear of what awaits him. If we had all lived as virtuously as he has lived, it would be so with us when we faced death.’
The Court must stay at Fontainebleau because the Dauphin was too ill to be moved.
The Dauphin knew that it was on his account that they remained and he apologised, for he was aware that it must be the desire of most to return to the more comfortable and luxurious Versailles.
‘I fear,’ he said, ‘that I am causing trouble to the Court. It is a pity that I am so long in dying.’
He was eager to save his doctors work and would lie still, pretending to sleep that they might doze in their chairs as they, with the Dauphine, kept the nightly vigil at his bedside.
December had come and he would lie in his bed watching the snowflakes falling outside the windows. He knew he would not see the spring again.
The doctors came to the King and told him that the Dauphin’s life was slowly ebbing away. Louis said: ‘My heart is troubled for the poor Dauphine. She insists on believing that he will live. Poor soul! I think she deliberately deceives herself because she cannot bear to think of life without him. She is exhausted. I do not want her to be with him at the end. It will be too painful, and I fear that she is on the verge of collapse. I shall go to her and insist on her resting awhile in her own apartments. When she has gone, let the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld be brought to my son’s bedside, to administer the last rites. Come, I will accompany you now to the sickroom.’
He went there with the doctors and, approaching the Dauphine, he took her face in his hands and smiled gently at her. He saw the dark circles under her eyes and the marks of exhaustion.
‘My child,’ he said, ‘I am going to issue a command. You are to go to your room. One of your women will bring you a soothing drink and then you will rest.’
‘I shall remain here,’ she said.
‘The King speaks to you. He commands you to go to your room and rest.’
‘My father . . .’
The King’s voice shook a little as he took her hand. ‘My daughter,’ he said, ‘obey me. It is
my wish.’ He put his lips to her forehead.
‘You will wake me if he asks for me . . .’
‘Rest assured I will have you awakened at once.’
So the Dauphine went to her room, and when she had gone the Cardinal de la Rochefoucauld came to the Dauphin’s bedside to administer the last rites.
The King retired from the bedside and sat in one corner of the room. He could hear the strong voice of the Cardinal, the feeble responses of the Dauphin.
Death! thought the King. There is too much death at Versailles. It is little more than a year since I lost my dear Marquise, and now my only son . . .
Death! the spectre that haunts us all . . . Kings cannot hide from it. It beckons, and perforce one follows.
The voices had ceased. The King knew, before the Cardinal came towards him.
He stood up, and said: ‘It is over?’
‘Yes, Sire. The Dauphin is dead.’
Even into this sombre chamber etiquette had intruded. The Dauphine must be told. The new Dauphin must be proclaimed.
The King turned from the Cardinal and said in a loud voice: ‘Bring the Dauphin to me here.’
In a few minutes the Duc de Berry was standing before him – shy, gauche, eleven years old. Louis looked at his son’s eldest surviving boy and thought: God pity you who will one day be King of France.
‘You know why I have sent for you?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Sire.’ The boy spoke in a whisper.
‘You know that you are Dauphin of France?’
‘Yes, Sire.’
‘There are many duties waiting for you, grandson. Some pleasant and some unpleasant. The first you must perform as Dauphin is, I hope, one of the saddest that will ever fall to your lot. Come with me now.’
The King walked solemnly out of the chamber of death; the Dauphin, fitting his steps to those of his grandfather, looked bewildered rather than sorrowful.
Those courtiers and servants whom they passed bowed low, and the boy was aware that a new respect was accorded him.
They arrived at his mother’s apartment, and the page announced: ‘His Majesty the King and His Royal Highness the Dauphin.’
Marie-Josèphe started up from her bed, and her eyes went from the King to the figure of her eleven-year-old son who was now significantly ushered into her presence as the Dauphin of France.
What could be done to comfort a woman so stricken with grief? The King asked himself and his courtiers how he could lift Marie-Josèphe from the despondency into which she had fallen.
He could think of nothing he could give her but power.
He summoned her to his presence and talked to her.
‘Daughter,’ he said, ‘I would not have you think that your position has been altered one jot by the death of my son. I still regard you as my beloved daughter.’
She thanked him in her quiet, listless way.
He reminded her that she had mourned the customary two months and that she must not mourn for ever,
‘Sire,’ she answered, ‘I shall mourn until I die.’
‘That will not be long delayed if you continue as you are now.’
‘Then I shall be happy, Sire. Alas for me, God has willed that I should survive him for whom I would have given a thousand lives. I hope that He will grant me the grace to spend the rest of my pilgrimage in preparing myself, in sincere penitence, to rejoin his soul in Heaven, where I do not doubt he is asking that same grace for me.’
The King remembered how she had always advised the Dauphin, and he believed her to be an intelligent woman. That she was without gaiety and had little wit seemed unimportant. He himself was in no mood for wit or gaiety. He believed that he needed a companion, someone who could fill that empty space in his life which had been left by Madame de Pompadour.
There were many pretty girls and beautiful women eager to supply his physical needs. Could it be that this bereaved daughter-in-law could be his friend and confidante?’
He needed a woman friend. He trusted none of his ministers. He had always cared more for women than for men; only a woman, he believed, could give him disinterested friendship. Men were constantly thinking of their own advancement – as indeed were many women; but he was convinced that the divine spark of disinterested friendship could only come from a woman.
‘My daughter,’ he said on impulse, ‘you have lost one who meant everything in your life. I have recently lost a very dear friend. We both suffer. Let us endeavour to help each other over this difficult period in our lives. Perhaps in seeking to soothe the other’s grief we shall find a modicum of contentment. Let us be friends. We have much to talk of together. We must think of the future of your family. You will talk of them to me, and I will talk of matters of State which I used to discuss with my dear Marquise.’
She was crying quietly. ‘Why, dear Sire and Father,’ she said, ‘I already feel a little happier than I did before. It is the prospect of being of some use to you.’
‘Then we are both a little happier. You shall occupy a suite of rooms immediately below my own. Be prepared to move into them at once.’
She felt her spirits lifting because she was thinking of those meetings which had taken place in her husband’s apartments. If the King had shown this friendship for her when her husband had been alive, how pleased he would have been! He had cultivated the friendship of his sisters because they had shared the King’s confidence.
Was it possible that she, Marie-Josèphe, might discuss State policy with the King? If that were so, she would never forget her husband. She seemed to feel him beside her now, urging her to accept the friendship of the King, to comfort the King, to win his regard. Thus could she carry on the interrupted policies of her husband.
She thought of the Duc de Choiseul, who had been so insolent to the Dauphin not very long ago, at the time when the poor Jesuits had been suppressed.
Willingly, assiduously would she work as the late Dauphin had; she would do all that he had done; thus it could seem as though he lived on.
What would he have done, had he been alive and had the power?
Chapter XVI
DEATH AT VERSAILLES
At this time there was a great deal of excitement throughout France on account of the Calas affair which had been dragging on for years, and concerning which Voltaire, from his refuge at Ferney in Gex, had been thundering forth his abuse of intolerance.
During the reign of pleasure-loving Louis XV, there had been little persecution of Protestants in Paris and the North, but in the South of France, which was remote from the centre of culture, persecution had gone on, and Protestants were tortured and executed.
The Calas family who were Protestants had become prominent some three years previously. Monsieur Calas was a wealthy merchant of Toulouse; his wife was a noblewoman. They were the happy parents of several children and they might have continued in happy obscurity but for the fact that one of these, Louis, a boy of seven, was greatly loved by a servant of the household who was a Catholic.
This servant believed that, unless she could turn this beloved child into a Catholic, his soul would be lost. This being intolerable to her peace of mind she sought to convert him, so she began by secretly taking him with her to Mass; but later she dared to take him away from his family to a Catholic hairdresser and wigmaker in the town who agreed to hide him from his parents.
The loss of their little son brought great sorrow to the household, who sought for him in vain. But their uncertainty did not last long for, as it was a law of the Catholic Church that any child of seven or over was old enough to proclaim himself a Catholic, Louis did this, to the delight of the Catholic population of Toulouse and the consternation of his parents.
His father was summoned to appear before the Archbishop and ordered to pay certain sums of money for the boy’s keep while he had been in hiding, and to pay for him to be brought up in a Catholic household. Little Louis was then ordered to write a letter to the Archbishop demanding that two of his sisters and a young brothe
r be taken from their home to be educated with him as Catholics.
Louis had an elder brother, Marc Antoine, a stern Protestant and bachelor of law who was debarred from practising because, to do so, he needed a certificate proving that he was a Catholic; and naturally he could not obtain this unless he changed his religion.
The problem which confronted him – either to deny his faith or give up his profession – had so depressed him that he developed unwise drinking habits in order temporarily to relieve his depression.
One of his friends, a certain Lavaysse, was also a member of a Protestant family but, because he had been brought up by Jesuits, he had not found any difficulty in following the career he wanted. Lavaysse had belonged to the Navy in which he had excelled; and a rich relation had left him a plantation in Saint Domingo to which he was about to go.
Before leaving he called at the Calas house to say his farewells. He did not exactly boast but it was natural that the depressed Marc Antoine should compare his own career with that of the successful Lavaysse, and he suddenly left the company, went up to his room and hanged himself.
When his body was discovered, the family was horrified, not only at the loss of their son, but because it was the Catholic custom to take the body of a Protestant suicide – or suspected suicide – and drag it naked on a hurdle through the town. This was considered to be a stigma which would be attached to the rest of the family for years after the event.
The lamentations of the Calas family, when they cut down the body of Marc Antoine, attracted the attention of neighbours, who came into the house to see what was wrong.
‘He has killed himself!’ cried one.
Monsieur Calas, visualising the naked body of his son being subjected to humiliation, cried out: ‘No, no! It was not suicide.’
‘So . . . it was murder!’
One of the neighbours went into the streets and shouted: ‘Citizens, come quickly! Here is a Protestant family who have murdered their son.’