Виктория Холт - The Road to Compiegne

‘Why, of course you can,’ said Jeanne. ‘Do you want to join the party?’

‘Madame is kind,’ he said.

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Jeanne. ‘One more makes little difference.’

She was studying him with pleasure. She saw an ageing man who even now was very handsome. He was more distinguished-looking than any man in this room; and he was looking at her with . . . Oh, well, Jeanne knew that look. She had seen it many times before.

Le Bel was stammering: ‘Madame du Barry, you are in the presence of His Majesty.’

‘Well!’ cried Jeanne laughing loudly, ‘I thought I had seen your face somewhere before.’

There was an awed silence in the room. Then the King began to laugh.

‘I am so glad,’ he said. ‘That makes us seem less like strangers, does it not?’

‘Oh, there’s a joke for you!’ said Jeanne. ‘I never thought of the King and me as strangers.’

‘It is a thought which makes me desolate,’ said Louis. ‘We must make nonsense of it by becoming friends.’

‘You’re a nice man, Your . . .’ She turned to Le Bel and Jean Baptiste, and she cared nothing to see that they were positively writhing in their embarrassment. ‘What do I call him?’ she said.

Le Bel began to stammer, but the King took her hand. ‘Call him your friend,’ he said; ‘that would please him more than any other name.’

Jeanne raised her beautiful eyes to the ceiling. She said as though to someone up there: ‘The King is my friend. Well, I never thought to see the day . . .’

‘Nor I,’ said Louis, ‘when I should meet someone who gave me such pleasure merely to look at and listen to.’

Jeanne had turned to the others as though to say: ‘Listen to him!’

But Louis had waved his hand.

‘Madame du Barry and I would prefer to be alone,’ he said.

‘The King has a new grisette ,’ said Choiseul to his sister. ‘A very low creature. I give her to the end of the week.’

‘Then clearly we need not bother ourselves about her.’

‘Oh no,’ murmured the Duc. ‘She is of the lowest type. The King’s taste does not improve with age.’

‘Yet,’ said the Duchesse, ‘I have noticed that Louis looks happier than he has for a long time. He was very gay at the promenade today, and he had an air as though he were watching the clock, eager to be gone to some rendezvous.’

‘I will send for Le Bel and ask him about the woman,’ said the Duc.

‘Do so now; I am less complacent than you. It is due to something I have seen in Louis’ face.’

Choiseul sent for the valet de chambre .

‘Now, Le Bel,’ he said, ‘who is this new little bird who sings. so gaily in the trébuchet ?’

‘You refer, Monsieur le Duc, to Madame du Barry?’

‘Madame du Barry! Is she the wife of that disreputable creature who pestered me in the past?’

‘His sister-in-law, Monsieur le Duc.’

‘And you brought her to the King?’

‘Monsieur le Duc, I have my duty to perform.’

‘I wish it would lead you to look a little higher than the gutters of Paris.’

‘Monsieur, she is the sister-in-law of the Comte du Barry. One could hardly describe her as from the gutter.’

‘The Comte du Barry? He is no Comte. He should be forced to abandon a title to which he has no right. I hear the woman is low . . . very low . . .’

‘Very low, Monsieur le Duc.’

‘Such a woman could not possibly amuse His Majesty for more than a night or two.’

‘She could not, Monsieur le Duc.’

Choiseul bowed his head. ‘Very well. But Le Bel, you could consult me before you bring these very low creatures to the attention of His Majesty.’

‘In future, Monsieur le Duc, that is what I will do.’

Le Bel retired. He was more perturbed than he would have wished Choiseul and his sister to see. He had not for years known the King so pleased with a woman.

Choiseul was not the only member of the Court who was disturbed.

Richelieu, who knew from personal experience how attractive Jeanne could be, had been ready enough to see her brought to the King for a few nights; he would not have objected to her staying in the secret apartments of Versailles for a week – but no longer.

It was incredible that Louis could become so infatuated. Admittedly the girl possessed rare beauty, but her speech belonged to the faubourgs and nowhere else; yet since it issued from those charming lips the King seemed to find every word she uttered comparable with the wit of a Richelieu or a Voltaire.

He was quite enraptured. She had already been presented with many precious jewels; and the whole Court was expected to make much of her. She appeared at the intimate supper parties in the petits appartements , although of course, never having been presented, she must not appear in the State apartments.

At these parties the King was as merry as he had been in those days when Madame de Pompadour had been there to gratify all his wishes and to provide him with elegant and witty entertainment.

It was an extraordinary phenomenon, but the fifty-eight-year-old Louis was in love, as he had not been since the days of his boyhood.

Madame de Pompadour had been his dear friend, but she had never enjoyed the health which was clearly Madame du Barry’s. She was not a sensual woman as Madame du Barry was. It was obvious that this young woman of the outstanding beauty and vitality was as experienced as the King himself in the art of making love.

Richelieu sought to point out to Louis – in a perfectly respectful manner – that he was behaving like a callow youth.

‘It is impossible for me to see, Sire,’ he said, ‘why you should feel so enamoured of this woman. Oh, she is beautiful, but so are many others.’

‘You must be blind,’ said the King, ‘if you compare her beauty with that of others.’

‘Yet,’ murmured Richelieu, ‘it is said that love makes us blind.’

The King was too happy to be irritated, and that gave Richelieu the courage to go on.

‘What has she, Sire, which others lack?’

‘The secret of making me forget I am an old man. She, so young, has taught me much I did not know before.’

‘Your Majesty was never in a brothel, that is obvious,’ said Richelieu with some asperity.

And still Louis did not reprove him.

‘I know,’ he said, ‘I am not the first. I believe I have succeeded Sainte-Foix.’

‘Your Majesty succeeded Sainte-Foix as you succeeded Pharamond.’

The King merely laughed at this allusion to one of the first Kings of the Franks, who lived in the fifth century.

Then it was clear to Richelieu that Louis did not care how many lovers Madame du Barry had had; he did not care how humble were her origins. He was so happy that he had found a woman who possessed all that he sought, a woman who could make him laugh again, forget he was fifty-eight years old; a woman who could make him feel young and gay because he was in love.

Choiseul’s uneasiness grew. He had seen how precarious his position had become during the King’s friendship with the Dauphine; he was not prepared to allow another woman to come between him and the King.

How wise Madame de Pompadour had been to keep him supplied with uneducated little beauties while she remained his friend and adviser. But what was this woman, more than an uneducated grisette? The King must be in his dotage.

As for the Duchesse de Gramont, she was furious.

‘If he keeps this woman with him,’ she declared, ‘every Court lady will consider herself to be insulted.’

Choiseul was not the man to let himself be easily defeated. He could use his tremendous energies to discredit a woman such as Madame du Barry, as readily as he would to settle some political dispute.