Виктория Холт - Louis the Well-Beloved

In the Place de Greve were the rotting bodies of those who had led the revolt; they were not the only guilty ones. There were thousands in Paris who had marched through the streets, who had destroyed the houses, who were responsible for the murders and who poured insults on the name of the King and his mistress.

They saw him differently now. He was not their innocent Louis. He was to blame. He squandered money on fine buildings and his mistress, while they were starving.

No one shouted Long live Louis, Louis le Bien-aimé .

They received him in silence which was broken only by one voice, which cried ‘Herod!’

Several others took up the cry. They were determined to believe the worst of him. It was a ridiculous story that he should have had children kidnapped so that he, or his mistress, might bathe in their blood. But such was the mood of the people that they were ready to accept this even while he rode among them.

Louis gave no sign that he noticed their indifference. His dignity remained unimpaired. He looked neither to right nor left.

Thus for the first time the King rode unacclaimed through his city of Paris.

Had he been more in tune with his people, had he attempted to explain – even then they would have listened to him.

They were still prepared to say: he is young even yet. Let him dismiss his mistress, let him spend his time governing the people, finding means to alleviate their suffering instead of frittering away time and money on building fine palaces. They were still prepared to make up their differences, to take him back after this coolness, this little quarrel between them and their beloved King. Would he but make the right gesture, would he but assure them that he was ready to be their King, they in their turn would be ready to welcome him back to their esteem, to believe in him, to accept his rule, to continue to serve the Monarchy.

It was for him to say. Two roads stretched out clearly before him. If he followed the one his people asked him to, very soon in the streets they would be shouting again: Long live Louis, Louis the well-beloved.

Louis returned to Versailles.

He was hurt by his reception. ‘Herod’, they had called him, those sullen, glowering people.

He told the Marquise of his reception.

‘I shall never again show myself to the people of Paris, never again shall I go to Paris for pleasure. I will only enter that city when state ceremonies demand it.’

‘It will soon be necessary to go through Paris on our way to Compiègne,’ she reminded him.

‘There should be a road from Versailles to Compiègne which skirts Paris.’ Louis paused. ‘There shall be such a road,’ he added.

The King and the Marquise smiled at each other. The prospect of building was always so attractive to them both.

‘A road to Compiègne,’ cried the King. ‘It shall be made immediately.’

And when the new road was made it was lightly referred to by the people of Paris as La Route de la Révolte .

Louis had chosen. Never again would the streets of Paris echo with the cry of ‘Louis the Well-Beloved’.

Pierre Gaxotte. Translated from the French by J. Lewis May. Louis the Fifteenth and His Times .

M. Guizot. Translated by Robert Black, MA. The History of France .

Lieut-Colonel Andrew C. P. Haggard, DSO. The Real Louis the Fifteenth (2 volumes).

G. P. Gooch. CH, D Litt, FBA. Louis XV. The Monarchy in Decline .

Iain D. B. Pilkington. The King’s Pleasure. The Story of Louis XV .

Ian Dunlop. With a foreword by Sir Arthur Bryant. Versailles .

Casimir Stryienski. Translated by H. N. Dickinson. Edited by Fr. Funck-Brentano, with an Introduction by John Edward Courtenay Bodley. The National History of France. The Eighteenth Century .

Baron Ferdinand Rothschild, MP. Personal Characters from French History .

Lieut-Colonel Andrew C. P. Haggard, DSO. Women of the Revolutionary Era .

C. A. Sainte-Beuve. Translated by Katherine P. Wormeley, with a critical introduction by Edmond Scherer. Portraits of the Eighteenth Century, Historic and Literary .

William Henry Hudson. France .

Louis Batiffol. Translated by Elsie Finnimore Buckley. National History of France .

Catherine Charlotte, Lady Jackson. Old Paris, its Courts and Literary Salons .

Louis Adolphe Thiers. Translated with notes by Frederick Shoberl. The History of the French Revolution .

An abridgement of Louis Sébastien Mercier’s Le Tableau de Paris . Translated and edited with a preface and notes by Helen Simpson. The Waiting City .