Free The Road to Compiegne by Jean Plaidy Page A

warmed. She should be in it, for our sister is very ill.’
    Adelaide resented the interference of her youngest sister and haughtily raised her eyebrows, but Louise-Marie cried: ‘This is no time for etiquette. Our sister is ill . . . so ill that she frightens me.’
    Adelaide then commanded Victoire to go to Anne-Henriette’s apartments at once and warn her women.
    ‘Now,’ said Louise-Marie, ‘we will take her there. Anne-Henriette, sister, do you not know me?’
    Anne-Henriette smiled so patiently that Louise-Marie thought hers was the sweetest smile she had ever seen.
    ‘You see,’ said Anne-Henriette, swaying in the arms of her sisters, ‘there was no lover for me. I brought bad luck to lovers. But do not let it concern you. It is of no significance now.’
    ‘Her mind wanders,’ said Adelaide.
    ‘No,’ said Louise-Marie. ‘I think I understand.’
    Then she began to weep quietly, and the tears ran unheeded on to the satin of her gown.
    Anne-Henriette was unaware of her sisters as she was half carried from the room.

    Louis looked at the Marquise and his face was blank with sorrow.
    ‘She . . . so young . . .’ he said. ‘My little Anne-Henriette . . . dead.’
    ‘She has been ill for some time,’ said the Marquise. ‘She was never as healthy as we could have wished.’
    ‘I cannot imagine what life will be like without her.’
    ‘My dearest,’ said the Marquise, ‘we must bear this loss as best we may. You have lost one whom you loved and who loved you; but you are surrounded by others who love you no less and who, I know, are loved in return.’
    The King allowed his mistress to take his hand and kiss it gently.
    He looked at her, so elegant, so charming. And he thought: she is part of my life. My joys are hers, my sorrows also. How could I endure this tragedy if my dear Marquise were not here to comfort me?

    Seated before her illuminated skull, the Queen prayed for her daughter’s soul. She prayed also that this tragedy might turn the King’s thoughts from debauchery to piety. It should be a reminder to him that death was ever ready to strike. It had carried off this young girl; perhaps it was not so very far from her father. Perhaps he would ask himself whether he should not seek a remission of his sins while there was yet time.
    ‘If he should do this,’ she told the Dauphin, ‘the death of Anne-Henriette will not have been in vain.’
    The Dauphin nodded; he was regretting the death of his sister. He loved her gentle disposition, and Marie-Josèphe often said that her sister-in-law was the best friend she had ever had. He remembered too that she had been a useful member of that little community which gathered in his apartments and won certain privileges from the King for the Church party. Often some little post would be asked for one of its members, and there could not have been an advocate more likely to succeed with the King than his beloved Anne-Henriette.
    ‘Her death is a great loss to me,’ he told his mother; ‘it is perhaps a great loss to the Church.’
    The Queen understood and agreed. Her grief at her daughter’s death did not go as deep as that felt by other members of the family. She had often fought against the jealousy she had felt for her daughters, whom their father loved so much more than he did their mother. There had been times, Louis having summoned his daughters to the petits appartements to share an intimate supper with him, when she had knelt for hours in prayer, trying to quell the turbulent jealousy which possessed her.
    She would never forget her coming to France and those first months of the King’s undivided attention, when they had been lovers and she had appeared to him to be the most beautiful woman in the world.
    It was not easy even for the most virtuous of women to love others – even though they were her own daughters – who could please the King as she so longed to do, and never could.
    Adelaide violently mourned her sister and shed stormy