It was not easy to shout abuse at the King when he was among them. There, in his robes of State, he was an impressive figure; and the Queen beside him, lacking that dignity, a plain stout woman with very little that was royal in her manner, made them proud of their King in spite of themselves.
They remembered that he was Louis de Bourbon, belonging to a great family of Kings, a descendant of their beloved Henri Quatre, who, they had to admit, had had as many mistresses as – if not more than – any King of France. They might remind themselves later that Henri Quatre, lecher though he was, loved his people and served them well, but as the carriage passed on its way to Notre Dame they momentarily forgot their hatred of the King.
But the old resentments were not sufficiently suppressed for them to show pleasure at seeing him. They had complained against him too much among themselves. The road to Compiègne had been too recently made. It was not easy to forget that this occasion was one of those when he could not avoid visiting Paris.
Thus there were few to call ‘Vive le Roi!’ as the procession passed along the road from Versailles to Notre Dame de Paris; and it was said that those who did so had been paid by certain members of the Court, in order to rouse enthusiasm in the crowd.
So on rode the King, to give thanks to God for the birth of his grandson, blandly serene as though oblivious of his unpopularity, as though he had forgotten that he had ever been received with joy by the citizens of Paris who had once called him the Well-Beloved.
The Dauphine sat back in her carriage, the Dauphin beside her.
This, she was telling herself, should be one of the happiest days of her life. The husband, whom she had sought to please, loved her and the whole of France was celebrating the birth of their son, who might one day be King of France.
This was the very purpose for which she had come to France as a little girl of fifteen – a very frightened little girl who had been told that she must please the royal family of France, because to be accepted into it was the greatest honour she could hope for.
She would never forget her cold reception by the Queen and her future husband. He had hated her because he had so loved his first wife that he would have resented anyone who attempted to take her place. If it had not been for her sister-in-law, Anne-Henriette, she would never have understood. She would always love Anne-Henriette for explaining to her; she would always love the King for being kind to her.
She wished that there need not be this rift between the King and the Dauphin; she would always serve the interests of the Dauphin, but she was very fond of the King, and he of her. Although he knew of those gatherings in their apartments which she attended, he bore no resentment towards her. He understood her need and wish to follow the Dauphin in all things, and she knew that, fond of her as he was, Louis thought her a little dull because she had neither the wit nor charm of women such as the Marquise de Pompadour.
The fact that she and her husband were voted dull by all the brilliant people of the King’s Court accentuated the kindness of the King towards her, for he always listened to what the Dauphine said, as though she were being as amusing and witty as the Pompadour.
‘How fortunate you are,’ the King had said to her, ‘to possess such a faithful husband.’
Fortunate indeed. There were few faithful husbands at the Court of France, and it was a secret dread of hers that one day the Dauphin would conform to fashion and take a mistress.
There should not be such fears on such a day. But all was not as it should be. How silent were the people! They did not shout as the King’s carriage went by. They stood staring in sullen groups.
She noticed how thin some of them were, how ragged their clothes. It was said that there was great poverty in Paris and that this was due to the high taxes. The price of bread was continually rising and there were many stories of riots outside the bread shops.
They had left the church and were making their way back to Versailles when, approaching the Pont de la Tournelle, she noticed that the crowds were greater. The coach, carrying the King and Queen, drove on in a silence which could only be called hostile. The Dauphine involuntarily moved closer to her husband.
There was a murmur among the people, and the Dauphine, glancing out of the window, saw that the crowd was mainly composed of women who were trying to come nearer to the coach; and it was all the guards could do to restrain them.
Then one of the women disengaged herself from the crowd and threw herself at the carriage; she clung to it, her face pressed close against the window.
‘Bread!’ she cried. ‘Give us bread. We are starving.’
The guards would have removed her, but the Dauphin restrained them.
‘Throw them money,’ he commanded.
‘Money!’ The crowd took up the cry. ‘We do not want a few louis, Monseigneur. We want bread.’
‘Bread!’ chanted the crowd. ‘Bread!’
The Dauphin put his head out of the window and said: ‘I understand your sufferings. I do my best to serve you.’
There was a silence. The people had heard of the piety of the Dauphin. He did not live extravagantly; he did not fritter away money, wrung from the people by taxes, on building fine châteaux. It was said that he gave a great part of his income to the poor.
One woman shrieked: ‘We love you, Monseigneur. But you must send away the Pompadour, who governs the King and ruins the Kingdom. If we had her in our hands today there would be nothing left of her to serve as relics.’
The Dauphin said: ‘Good people, I do what I can for you.’ He then commanded the Captain of the guard to scatter money among the crowd, and the carriage passed on.
The Dauphine was white and trembling. She had difficulty in restraining an impulse to throw herself weeping into her husband’s arms.
The Dauphin however was sitting erect against the satin upholstery thinking: that woman spoke for the people of Paris. She said, ‘We love you. Send away the Pompadour.’
This was proof that these people had transferred their allegiance from his father to himself. He knew that his father could win back their respect, for the King had a natural charm and dignity which the Dauphin did not possess. Even now it was not too late for the King to change his mode of life, to let his people see him often, to wipe out the implication of the road to Compiègne.
If his father did that, if he worked for his people, if he showed himself ready to be a good king then they would not turn so eagerly to the Dauphin.
But he would not do it. He had decided on the road he would take. He had decided when he made the road to Compiègne.
And now the people are waiting, thought the Dauphin. They are praying that soon it will be my turn.
It was a cold winter and the east winds sweeping across Paris brought sickness to the city. The Palace was not spared.
Since the exile of Charles Edward Stuart, Anne-Henriette had become more and more frail. Her father and her sisters remonstrated with her. They tried to make her eat but she had little appetite. There were times when she would remain looking out of the window, across the gardens or the Avenue de Paris in those big draughty rooms, seeming not to feel the cold.
Those members of her family who loved her – and all her sisters did so very dearly, even Adelaide whom her listlessness irritated – grew more and more worried concerning her health.
The Queen was the least sympathetic. She deplored the weakness of her daughter which had made her give way to her feelings so spinelessly. If life were difficult one should meet the disappointments with prayer. That was the Queen’s advice.