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they already are. Let us go.’
    They left the King’s bedchamber and, as they came into the Oeil-de-Boeuf, the King stepped on a paper which lay directly in his path.
    He paused to look at it. Richelieu stooped to pick it up. He glanced at it and was silent. He would have screwed it up had not the King held out his hand for it.
    ‘I see,’ said Louis glancing at it, ‘that it is addressed to me.’
    ‘Some foolish lackey has put it there,’ said the Duc.
    Louis read:
Louis de Bourbon, once you were known in Paris as Louis the Well-Beloved. That was because we were then unaware of your vices. You are now going to Choisy to be with your friends. It is the wish of your people that you were going to Saint-Denis to be with your ancestors.
    Louis stood still for a few seconds. So, he was thinking, there were some among his people who hated him so much! It was incredible that such a short time ago he could do no wrong in their eyes. He thought fleetingly of his return to Paris after he had been with the Army in Flanders; he could still hear the applause of the people ringing in his ears; he could see the smiling faces of the crowd, the adoration they had shown for their handsome King. Then they had blamed his mistresses for his extravagances, his Ministers for his State policies. Now they blamed the Marquise de Pompadour for everything; but they blamed Louis also.
    It was the reference to the tomb of his ancestors which momentarily unnerved him. They wished him dead. He was afraid of death, afraid of dying suddenly, before he had had time to repent.
    They had spoilt his sojourn at Choisy. While he was there in those delicately blue, gold-mirrored rooms, he would now and then be reminded of his ancestors who had once lived as luxuriously as he was living now, but whose corpses now lay in the tomb at Saint-Denis.
    His dislike of Paris was intensified. How glad he was that a road was being built to skirt the city.
    Never would he enter his capital unless forced to do so. He had said that he would not, perhaps in a moment of pique; but events such as this strengthened his determination.
    He screwed up the paper.
    ‘Come,’ he said; ‘to Choisy.’

Chapter IV
    THE APARTMENTS OF THE MARQUISE
    I n the Dauphin’s apartments on the ground floor of the Palace of Versailles his friends were assembling in accordance with their custom.
    It could be said that there were three courts at Versailles: the King’s, the Queen’s and the Dauphin’s.
    Young Louis was in his twenty-third year; and his character was entirely different from that of his father. In appearance he was more like the Queen. He lacked Louis’ good looks and courteous manners, was too plump, and took little exercise; he was extremely pious and more than a little self-righteous.
    For this reason he had a great dislike of Madame de Pompadour, which, even had she not possessed such influence with the King, he would still have retained. It was shocking, he thought, to see a relationship, such as that which existed between his father and the woman, allowed to be carried on openly; and that she, not highly born, should be more or less First Minister of France was scandalous.
    It was natural that the woman should be ranged against him. He wanted to see a return to power of the Jesuits, for he believed that the Church should hold sway over the State. She was bitterly opposed to such a policy because a Court in which the Church reigned supreme would very soon make the position of a woman such as herself intolerable.
    Watching his guests – who treated him on such occasions as though he were already King of France – he felt a deep resentment against his father. He had forgotten the days of his childhood when the greatest pleasure he could experience was a visit from his kindly and handsome father. The King was no longer proud of his son. In fact he saw the Dauphin through cynical eyes and had accused him of dreaming of the day he would be King, as he sat with a theological