‘I left you once,’ Jeanne reminded him.
He strode to her, put his arms about her and held her tightly. ‘Do not even speak of it,’ he cried.
‘Well, I did not agree to go to her,’ she said soothingly.
‘I should think not . . . when Fortune is about to smile on you as she never has before.’
‘And who is Fortune . . . this time?’ she asked.
‘One whose name I will not mention lest you laugh me to scorn for a pretentious old fool. Le Bel is coming to supper with us. I want you to sparkle for him. I want you to dazzle him. Jeanne, this is the most important night of your life.’
She was accustomed to his flights of fancy. She was fond of him; she wanted to please him; so she promised him that she would be as charming as she knew how to be to his friend Le Bel.
‘Le Bel,’ said Louis, ‘you are not attending. What is on your mind?’
‘A thousand apologies, Sire.’ Le Bel helped the King into his coat. ‘My thoughts were with a certain . . . woman.’
‘At your age, Le Bel!’ said Louis smiling.
‘Such a woman, Sire. I have never seen the like before.’
The King yawned. ‘I remember the last one you brought here.’
‘This, Sire, is quite a different type, I can say, with honesty, that neither I nor Your Majesty has ever seen such a beauty.’
‘I fear I am growing tired of such pleasures,’ murmured the King. ‘My doctors advise me to be more moderate.’
‘Yet . . . I should like to show her to Your Majesty.’
‘I am in no mood for more of your grisettes.’
‘Sire, she is no grisette. She is the sister-in-law of the Comte du Barry. The loveliest creature I ever set eyes on. And her husband, I have heard, is quite complacent. He never bothers his wife and is quite happy to know that she is universally adored.’
‘I have rarely known you so eulogistic, Le Bel.’
‘Sire, wait until you have seen her!’
‘I do not think I wish to see her.’
‘I know, Sire, these girls are brought to you, and you are too kind, too courteous to turn them away when they disappoint you. But I should like to show you this one. You would only need to look. I have invited her to my apartments tomorrow night. If Your Majesty would consent to be hidden in the apartment, you could see this woman for yourself, and if you did not like what you saw she would be dismissed and need never know that you have seen her.’
‘This is a new game you have invented for me to play,’ said the King.
‘Sire, does it appeal?’
‘Not overmuch. But I believe that your taste is not what it once was. I do not believe that this creature has anything more to offer than a hundred others. So I will put you to the test.’
‘Tomorrow night, Sire. I’ll wager you will change your mind.’
‘Do not let the woman know she is observed. She should not be warned to be on her best behaviour. I would see her as she really is.’
Le Bel bowed his head.
So Jeanne was taken to that fateful supper party in the company of Jean Baptiste who called himself her brother-in-law. It was a very gay party, and Jeanne, supping for the first time within the Palace of Versailles, was as excited as a child.
She wore a dress which far surpassed in elegance any she had ever had. However, she quickly forgot Jean Baptiste’s instructions about her behaviour and, since the guests kept filling her glass with wine, she very soon became her abandoned self.
Jeanne could, at such times, throw off her ladylike manners as lightly as though they were a cloak Jean Baptiste had wrapped about her. She could become what she once was – what neither he nor the stern nuns of Sainte Aure had been able to eradicate – a lighthearted, generous and vital girl of the lower class of Paris.
Louis was seated on a chair behind curtains through which he could see without being seen and which had been placed over a door so that he could, if the proceedings became tedious, quietly open the door and slip away.
From the first he had thought her very lovely and had determined that for her beauty alone she should spend the night with him; but when he saw her throw aside the manners which had been so clearly grafted on, when he heard that loud and abandoned laughter, the epithets of the streets, the ability to laugh at everything, he found himself watching, alert, while a smile curved his lips.
She was of the streets of Paris no doubt, but she was quite different from any of the little girls who had found their way to the Parc aux Cerfs. She was unique in her character as well as in that perfect face and form.
He was torn between the desire to remain and watch, and to go into the room and send all the others away that he and she might be alone.
Le Bel was right; this girl had something that others of her class lacked. He would amend that: she had something which he had never discovered in anyone before.
He was excited as he had not been for years. He felt happy as he had not been since the death of Madame de Pompadour.
Was he so old? Fifty-eight. Why, in the presence of that girl he could feel twenty!
Louis parted the curtains and stepped into the room.
Everyone about the table rose, except Jeanne. Louis felt exultant. It was characteristic of her that she should not rise.
He ignored them all and went to her.
‘Madame,’ he said, ‘as none of these people will present you to me, may I present myself to you?’
‘Why, of course you can,’ said Jeanne. ‘Do you want to join the party?’
‘Madame is kind,’ he said.
‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said Jeanne. ‘One more makes little difference.’
She was studying him with pleasure. She saw an ageing man who even now was very handsome. He was more distinguished-looking than any man in this room; and he was looking at her with . . . Oh, well, Jeanne knew that look. She had seen it many times before.
Le Bel was stammering: ‘Madame du Barry, you are in the presence of His Majesty.’
‘Well!’ cried Jeanne laughing loudly, ‘I thought I had seen your face somewhere before.’
There was an awed silence in the room. Then the King began to laugh.
‘I am so glad,’ he said. ‘That makes us seem less like strangers, does it not?’
‘Oh, there’s a joke for you!’ said Jeanne. ‘I never thought of the King and me as strangers.’
‘It is a thought which makes me desolate,’ said Louis. ‘We must make nonsense of it by becoming friends.’
‘You’re a nice man, Your . . .’ She turned to Le Bel and Jean Baptiste, and she cared nothing to see that they were positively writhing in their embarrassment. ‘What do I call him?’ she said.
Le Bel began to stammer, but the King took her hand. ‘Call him your friend,’ he said; ‘that would please him more than any other name.’
Jeanne raised her beautiful eyes to the ceiling. She said as though to someone up there: ‘The King is my friend. Well, I never thought to see the day . . .’
‘Nor I,’ said Louis, ‘when I should meet someone who gave me such pleasure merely to look at and listen to.’
Jeanne had turned to the others as though to say: ‘Listen to him!’
But Louis had waved his hand.
‘Madame du Barry and I would prefer to be alone,’ he said.
‘The King has a new grisette,’ said Choiseul to his sister. ‘A very low creature. I give her to the end of the week.’
‘Then clearly we need not bother ourselves about her.’
‘Oh no,’ murmured the Duc. ‘She is of the lowest type. The King’s taste does not improve with age.’