The Dauphine nodded and lay back in her chair, her body still racked by coughing.
The King half turned but did not look at Choiseul. Louis was shaken; he had thought that his daughter-in-law had looked wan for some time, but that that was due to her mourning for her husband. Now he could not meet the expression he feared to find on Choiseul’s face. The Duc would draw his conclusions as to the meaning of this bout of coughing, and he would be unable to hide his satisfaction and triumph.
Here was Death – inescapable Death come to haunt him again. He would read in Choiseul’s eyes that Death was his ally, standing by, eagerly waiting to rid him of an enemy.
‘Send for her confidential woman,’ he said over his shoulder.
Choiseul strode to the door to do his bidding.
The woman came into the room, alarmed.
‘Take the Dauphine to her apartments,’ said the King. ‘I think she should be put to bed, and there she should rest awhile.’
‘Yes, Sire.’
The King went to the woman and laid his hand on her arm.
‘She has had a bad turn. Has she been in this condition before?’
‘There have been occasions, Sire.’
‘Recently?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
‘I was not told.’
‘It was Madame la Dauphine’s desire that none should be told, Sire.’
‘Now take her to her apartments. I will send physicians to her.’
He went to the Dauphine who was lying back in her chair, her eyes half closed.
‘Come, my dear,’ he said. ‘Here is your woman. She will take you to your bed. I shall visit you there.’
The Dauphine rose unsteadily to her feet. The eagerly watching Choiseul saw that her face had that flushed look which he had noticed in the Dauphin’s; he saw too that she had lost a good deal of weight in the last weeks.
He had seen two people look like that recently. One was the Dauphin, the other the Marquise de Pompadour. Was it possible that the pulmonary scourge was about to afflict her?
When she had gone the King turned to him.
‘Leave me now,’ he said. ‘I wish to be alone, for a great fear has come to me and I have no more heart for business just now.’
Alone the King paced up and down his apartment.
‘Madame la Marquise,’ he murmured, ‘I would that you were with me now. You would know how to comfort me. I have seen you die, my dearest friend, and I have felt the bitter loneliness which followed. I have seen my son die. I did not love him, but at least he was my son, my only son. And today I have seen Death in the face of the Dauphine. Death . . . It is all about me. The Queen is slowly dying, poor woman. Am I to lose all who have lived about me for so many years? Marquise . . . why did you leave me? Who can comfort me now you are gone?’
Was there not some woman – someone who combined beauty with understanding?
If there were, she was hard to find. The little grisettes of the Parc aux Cerfs had lost their power to charm. When he entered the place he sometimes wondered what would happen to him if he died in the midst of his pleasures, with all his sins upon him. He had to face the fact that he was no longer as virile as he had once been. His visits to the Parc aux Cerfs among those young uninhibited creatures often exhausted him.
He wanted a friend who was also a mistress. She must have all the qualities of the Pompadour, and the beauty which had been hers in the first weeks of their acquaintance. But where could he find her? Did she exist?
The Duchesse de Gramont had none of her qualities; Madame d’Esparbès hardly any.
Was it possible that one day he would find her? Could he then settle down to serenity when occasions like this one would not depress him so completely?
Somewhere in Paris, in France, such a woman existed. He would be ready to cherish her for the rest of his life and richly reward the one who brought her to him.
Choiseul had the satisfaction of knowing his enemy grew weaker every day.
The Dauphine was no longer well enough to share the King’s counsels. All through that winter she was seen to be suffering from the complaint which had ended her husband’s life.
The doctors shook their heads over her. One who nursed a patient as she did the Dauphin, insisting on doing every menial task herself, ran great risks of being infected. And this is what had happened. She had survived the small-pox when she had nursed him; but this time she was not to escape.
The doctors were right. With the coming of spring the Dauphine died.
Her passing seemed to bring her great contentment for, as she said, she had no desire to live after her husband had died, and now she was to join him and this had been her greatest wish since he had departed this life.
The next victim, said the courtiers, would be the Queen.
Then, thought Choiseul, we will get the King married again. A new and lively Queen will change everything at Court. She will sweep away melancholy and if she is an Austrian bride she will be my friend. Choiseul had begun to think that he was destined to remain in power for the rest of his life. Even fortune favoured him. As soon as the Dauphine had begun to oppose him she had been stricken with illness and shortly after conveniently removed from his path. That was a sign, he told his sister.
‘And the King shows no indication of his fondness for you?’
The Duchesse declared vehemently: ‘It is that foolish d’Esparbès. She is constantly with him. Her very absurdity makes him laugh.’
‘When a woman makes the King laugh, that is dangerous for that woman’s enemies.’
‘Even though there is ridicule in his laughter?’
‘Louis so desperately seeks laughter that he is prepared to accept any kind. My dearest, I think it is time we arranged the dismissal of that woman. She is a fool, I know. But let us not be too complacent.’
Before he could plan a campaign against her, Madame d’Esparbès visited him and indicated that she wished him to give a command in the Army to a relative of hers.
Choiseul insolently refused this; whereupon she told him to beware. ‘Very soon,’ she said, ‘you will use all your efforts to please me. Everything I ask, you will be eager to give me.’
‘That,’ said Choiseul, ‘is an interesting prophecy. How long, I wonder, before we shall know whether it is to be fulfilled?’
She swept angrily away, and when he was alone some of Choiseul’s bravado deserted him. He believed she must feel very sure of herself to speak as she did. Could it be that the King, out of sheer boredom, was going to give her what she was clearly demanding and have her accepted at Court as maîtresse-en-titre?
He must be stopped at once.
Choiseul considered the methods which had been used so successfully by Madame de Pompadour, and he proposed to use similar ones. He was quite unscrupulous and immediately drew up an account of what he believed had happened when the King spent the night with Madame d’Esparbès. This he took to the King and told him that it had been written by a friend of Madame d’Esparbès whom she had secreted in a closet next to the bedchamber. In this account it was stated that the King had failed as a lover in spite of the use of an aphrodisiac.
Louis, who was almost as terrified of impotence as he was of death, was furiously angry.
So, thought Choiseul slyly, his guess had not been far from the truth, for only if this was so could the King be quite so furious.
‘I cannot be blamed for growing old,’ he said coldly, ‘but I could be blamed if I continued to receive people who allowed such foolish gossip to be circulated about my Court.’