The Road to Compiegne by Jean Plaidy

. It will mean destroying the Ambassador’s staircase . . . but we will do it . . .’
    Adelaide knelt awkwardly and embraced her father’s knees.
    ‘I will be all that you ask of me,’ she cried; and her eyes were gleaming with triumph; she had already forgotten the death of Anne-Henriette.

Chapter VI
    COMTESSE DE CHOISEUL-BEAUPRÉ
    D eath seemed to be hovering over Versailles that year. The hot summer had come and the King with Madame de Pompadour was staying at his château of Compiègne for a spell of hunting.
    One morning early the Dauphine awoke with a sense of foreboding, perhaps because it had been a restless night. Several times she had awakened to find the Dauphin muttering in his sleep; and when she had spoken to him he had answered incoherently.
    Touching his forehead she had thought it to be over-hot; thus she had spent a very disturbed night; and as soon as the light was strong enough she sat up in bed and studied the sleeping Dauphin.
    His face was flushed, and she had no doubt now that he had a fever. She rose, called his servants and sent for his physicians.
    In a few hours, the news spread through the Palace and beyond. The Dauphin is suffering from small-pox.
    There was scarcely a disease more dreaded – highly contagious, swift in action, it had been responsible for the end of thousands.
    The Dauphine was terrified. She could not imagine her life without her husband; and she was fully aware of the danger in which he lay.
    The physicians told her that she must leave the apartments. Already she may have caught the disease. She must understand that by remaining at her husband’s bedside she was courting death; and even if she escaped death she might be hideously marked for the rest of her life.
    She said firmly: ‘It is my place to be at his side. More than any other I belong here, and here I shall remain.’
    She would allow no one to dissuade her and, dressing herself in a simple white dress, she performed all the necessary menial and intimate duties which were required. Her lips were firmly set; she had not wept, but she constantly murmured prayers as she moved about the apartment, and again and again she said to herself: ‘If I do everything for him I shall save him, for I shall do these things better than any other. I must, because I love him so much.’ Then she began to say: ‘I will save him. He shall not die.’ And with that a great peace came to her because she believed that anyone who wanted to succeed so much and who put every effort into her task could not fail.
    Again and again she was warned to leave the sickroom; again she was reminded of the horrors of the disease, of its terrifying results; and she merely smiled wanly.
    ‘What price would be too great to pay for his recovery?’ she asked.
    And after that they knew it was no use trying to dissuade her.
    The news was carried to Compiègne and reached the King when he had returned to the château after the hunt.
    Louis was horrified. ‘I must return at once to Versailles,’ he declared.
    The Marquise ventured: ‘My dearest Sire, there is great danger at Versailles.’
    The King answered sadly: ‘Madame, my son, the Dauphin, lies near to death.’
    The Marquise merely bowed her head. ‘We will prepare to leave immediately,’ she said.
    Death! thought the King. It is like a spectre that haunts me. It hangs over my family – a grey shadow from which we cannot escape. Only in February I lost my dearest daughter; am I now to lose my son?
    He was glad that he had built a road from Compiègne to Versailles. At such a time the covert looks which implied ‘this is the retribution’ would have been intolerable. The people would attribute the illness of the Dauphin to the same Divine wrath to which they had credited the death of Anne-Henriette. No, at such a time he could not bear the sly triumph of his people.
    If the Dauphin were to die, the heir to the throne would be the baby Duc de Bourgogne. And if he, Louis, himself died, there