The ecstasy which had touched her face was very fleeting; then, although she smiled at him, there was a certain sadness in that smile.
The King received his guest with accustomed charm.
‘I trust,’ he said, ‘that you are comfortable in the Faubourg St Antoine.’
‘Very much so, Sire.’
‘I am glad to hear it.’
‘I owe so much to Your Majesty’s munificence, and having tasted your generosity, Sire, there is one other matter about which I dare approach you.’
Louis looked embarrassed. He guessed the nature of this request, and it was going to be unpleasant to refuse it. He thought too of Anne-Henriette, his dear daughter who, when her friendship with this young man began to blossom, had ceased to mourn the loss of the Duc de Chartres.
‘It concerns the Princesse, Sire,’ went on Charles Edward.
Louis looked at him steadily. ‘I hope soon to receive a visit from my eldest daughter,’ he said. ‘That will give me great pleasure. I often regret having given my consent to her marriage. It was not a brilliant one, and I have promised myself that I will not part with any of the other girls – unless of course it is a match so important to the state that I am forced to accept it. France would have to derive great benefit before I would lose another of my daughters.’
‘Then only for an alliance which would make her a Queen . . .’
‘No less, no less,’ said Louis. ‘I am a King, but I am also a father. I like to have my family about me. And you . . . I hear you are causing a great flutter in the hearts of some of our ladies.’ Louis laughed. ‘Take my advice. Enjoy life while you have a chance. You are young, and youth passes, you know . . . so quickly.’
Louis’ eyes were friendly, but they held a warning. You are here as my pensioner, they told the young Prince. You failed to regain your throne in ’45 as your father failed in ’15. We have to make up our minds to accept these Germans as Kings of Britain. In the circumstances you are no fit husband for a Princesse of France, and of course in no other circumstances could you become my daughter’s lover.
The Prince read those thoughts.
The King, he knew, frowned on any who approached his daughters. He himself could take a mistress; he was amused by the amours of such as Richelieu and Clermont. But his daughters were sacred. Woe betide the man who attempted to seduce one of them.
An exile must constantly bear these matters in mind.
The King smiled suddenly. ‘I hear the Princesse de Talmond has declared that she thinks you the most charming man at Court. She is forty, I hear, but I should think she would be interesting . . . very interesting.’
‘Thank you, Sire,’ said the Prince.
And when he left the King’s presence he knew that all was over between him and Anne-Henriette, unless by some miracle King George abdicated and the people restored the Stuarts to the throne, as they had in that glorious year, 1660 – nearly a hundred years ago – when another Stuart had come back in triumph to the land he was to rule.
Louis was sorry for Anne-Henriette. The poor creature had become very melancholy once more. He decided that, as he had on two occasions been obliged to deny her the man she wished to marry, he would make a great effort to bring her back to happiness.
He often summoned her to his apartments where they would drink coffee, which he prepared himself. He would take her round his workshop and show her his ivories, then to the still-rooms that she might taste his concoctions.
‘You are growing up fast,’ he told her. ‘You shall have your own household.’
Since he exerted all his charm, Anne-Henriette quickly succumbed to it, and father and daughter were so much together that it began to be said that the King cared more for his daughter than for Madame de Pompadour.
For many years there had been in France a conflict between the Jansenites and the Jesuits. The Jansenites took their name from their founder, Cornelius Jansen, the Dutch theologian who had protested vehemently against the love of comfort which was prevalent among high officials of the Catholic Church. The followers of this creed were stern men who sought to bring austerity back to religion; but under cover of Jansenism certain groups in France had made an effort to strike at the Church. These men did not concern themselves with Augustinian theories; they were anxious to make France independent of Rome. It was another phase of the struggle for supremacy between the State and the Papacy; thus the dispute lay between the Jesuits and Rome on one side, and the Parlements and those who wished to see the state supreme on the other.
As long ago as 1713, Clement XI had denounced Jansenism in his Bull Unigenitus; and there was now a party in France which sought to maintain the power of the Jesuits.
To this party the Dauphin had given his support; he had become very devout and in this was joined by the Dauphine, for whom he was beginning to have an affection which almost equalled that which he had felt for his first wife. The Queen also supported the Jesuits.
Louis himself was not very pleased with the clergy. Quite recently the Bishop of Soissons had taken it upon himself to reproach him for his association with Madame de Pompadour.
He had dared to write to Louis deploring the fact that the nation expressed no horror when the sin of adultery was committed. ‘If,’ wrote the Bishop, ‘Your Majesty were a private person in my diocese I should feel it my duty to deliver a public rebuke. I now ask Your Majesty to remember your repentance when you believed yourself to be on your deathbed at Metz. Then you swore to mend your ways. But God gave you back your life, and what has happened? You have taken as mistress the wife of one of your subjects.’
Louis, reminded of the nearness of death which he believed he had faced many times, might have been impressed, but the Bishop had spoilt the effect of his little homily by his next words.
‘Now we see at Court in the highest of all ranks, a person of the lower class, a woman without breeding or birth, who has been elevated in the name of debauchery.’
Louis was angry with the Bishop then, and when he compared his Marquise with any of the Court ladies he could assure himself that the Bishop talked nonsense. No, the King was definitely not pleased with the clergy.
As for Madame de Pompadour, she was terrified of that body. Those men who were always exhorting kings to repent were a menace to the kings’ mistresses. Repentance meant returning to the pious life, and that could only mean dismissal from Court for such as she was.
Therefore the Jesuits could expect no friendship from her. And as her ascendancy over the King was becoming more and more apparent, a party began to gather about the Dauphin, the object being to strengthen the clergy and the Jesuits, and eventually to oust the mistress from the Court.
And since Anne-Henriette was so favoured by the King, she found that she was invited to the Dauphin’s apartments and there courted and honoured by his friends.
Anne-Henriette was a little bewildered; but these attentions did prevent her brooding on the scandalous behaviour of Charles Edward, who was now deep in a tempestuous love affair with the forty-year-old Princesse de Talmond.
Madame de Pompadour was perpetually watchful. Life was exhausting but highly enjoyable. Louis was delighted to find that she shared his interest in architecture, and many a happy hour was spent discussing plans for embellishing and altering existing buildings or acquiring new ones.