Louis the Well-Beloved by Jean Plaidy

change?’
    ‘Your father hopes you will make a good marriage.’
    ‘I?’ Marie laughed and, as she stared at the garment in her hand, a flush touched her cheeks. ‘What chance of making a brilliant marriage has a penniless Princess, daughter of an exiled King, without dowry, without grace, without beauty?’
    ‘Marie Leczinska, do not say such things.’
    Marie knew that her mother was really angry when she called her Marie Leczinska; for in the heart of the family she was affectionately called by her nickname Maruchna.
    ‘Should not one say what is true?’ she asked quietly.
    ‘Many less beautiful than you have made grand marriages.’
    ‘What use to delude ourselves?’ demanded Marie. ‘I have not forgotten the words of Anne of Bavaria when she heard that there were plans to marry me to the Duc de Bourbon.’
    ‘These Bourbons!’ cried Queen Catherine. ‘They have too grand an opinion of themselves. Anne of Bavaria, Princess Palatine, does not forget that she was the widow of a Condé – and, so, thought her grandson too good for you. She forgets that the Condés are not what they were in France since the death of the great Condé.’
    ‘Oh, Mother, let us not talk of greatness and marriages for me which can only take place in our imagination. We are here in this house and we are together. We love each other; why cannot we content ourselves with being a little family of no importance?’
    ‘Because the throne of Poland belongs to your father, not to Augustus Elector of Saxony; and he will never be resigned. He will always hope to regain it. Maruchna, each night he prays that his greatest desire may be granted. Kings can never be reconciled to living in poverty, dependent on the help of friends. It is too humiliating to be borne.’
    ‘Yet to me,’ said Marie, taking her needle and beginning to work on the worn-out garment, ‘it seems even more humiliating to be hawked round Europe as a prospective bride – and rejected.’
    ‘It has happened to Princesses more fortunate than you are.’
    ‘All the same I would prefer it not to happen to me. I would rather stay here, living as we do, turning old dresses to give them a new lease of life. I hope I shall be offered to no one else. I felt sick with shame when Father tried so hard to marry me to Ludwig Georg of Baden. He would have none of me; and now you see I am not considered good enough for the Duc de Bourbon.’
    Catherine smiled secretly. ‘There has been much correspondence going on between Bourbon and your father. Madame de Prie sends letters regularly.’
    ‘Madame de Prie?’
    ‘Yes. She acts on behalf of the Duc de Bourbon. She is a lady of some influence at the Court.’
    Marie did not answer; she was certain that the arrangements for the Bourbon marriage would end as had all others. She was thinking that she would probably marry Le Tellier de Courtenvaux, who was merely in charge of a regiment of cavalry in Wissembourg. He had asked for her hand but her father had indignantly refused it. His daughter to marry with a man who was not a peer of France! Yet, thought Marie, Father should forget his grand illusions; he should realise our position and accept it.
    She pictured herself never marrying at all, remaining in this house – if they were allowed to remain here – all the days of her life.
    Her mother read her thoughts. ‘Your father will never consent to a marriage which he considers it beneath your dignity to make.’
    ‘Then, Mother, let us cease to think of marriage.’
    ‘If you married the Duc de Bourbon,’ mused Queen Catherine, ‘we should at least be lifted from this wretched poverty. How your father has suffered! To be dispossessed of his crown and his country and to live on charity! It is more than his proud spirit can endure.’
    ‘He has long endured it and, if perforce he must continue to do so, he will.’
    ‘You should not be so resigned, Maruchna. How do we live here – in a house borrowed from a Councillor of the