‘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.