The little Princesses had been away for a year, and Adelaide often forgot their very existence for days at a time. When she did think of them she pitied them in their grim old abbey. It was so much more fun to be at Versailles where she was often with her father. Sometimes he came to her nurseries to see her; sometimes she accompanied him to the apartments of the Dauphin – although she did not like this so much as her brother was apt to command her father’s attention and divert it from herself.
Adelaide adored her father, and everyone knew of this adoration. Not that Adelaide attempted to hide it. That would have been foolish. Her father was the most important person at Court, and while he loved her Adelaide could see that she was important also.
To her mother she was almost indifferent. She had sensed the rift between the King and Queen, and gave her allegiance to her handsome, charming and all-powerful father, rather than to her fat and too pious mother.
Louis was growing more interested in his children, for as they grew away from babyhood they attracted him more strongly. Both Adelaide and the Dauphin had spirit, and he admired them for that quality.
Adelaide was a pretty little girl and therefore delightful, but Louis the Dauphin, being the heir to the throne, was the important member of the family.
News was brought to the King that someone must speak to the boy because he was growing too headstrong. There was no one who had the authority to do this but the King, for the young Dauphin had declared to his tutors that he would one day be King and therefore it was they who should take orders from him, not he from them.
When Louis visited the Dauphin in his apartments on the ground floor of the Château, the ten-year-old boy, seeing his father approach, bowed low.
The King smiled. The Dauphin usually greeted his father by leaping into his arms and asking for a ride on his shoulders. The Dauphin was feeling his dignity and growing up.
Louis tried to remember himself at the age of ten. How did he behave then? Was he as wilful as the Dauphin? He did not think so; but if he had been, there was some excuse for him, because he was then already King.
‘Well, my son,’ said Louis, ‘I have been hearing reports of your conduct.’
The Dauphin turned to his tutor who was standing by, and said: ‘You may leave us.’
The tutor looked at the King, and Louis nodded to confirm the boy’s order. The Dauphin knew he was going to be reprimanded and did not want this to happen before his tutor. When he had gone, the King sat down, and drawing the boy to him said: ‘Was that the man whose face you slapped?’
‘Yes, Papa. He deserved it!’
‘In your judgement or his own?’
The boy looked astonished. ‘He is a man who will not listen to reason,’ he said haughtily.
The King was secretly amused.
‘Your reason, naturally,’ he said.
‘Reason!’ said the Dauphin firmly.
Louis laughed. ‘My son,’ he said, ‘one day you will rule this kindom. A King is unwise who does not listen to the advice of his counsellors.
‘I am ready to listen, Papa.’
‘Listening is not enough,’ said the King. ‘Advice must be also considered and, usually when one is very young, taken. When I was your age . . .’
The boy’s expression had changed. He drew closer to his father. ‘Tell me, Papa, about when you were a boy. Tell me about the day they carried you into the Grande Chambre and you asked for the Archbishop’s hat, or when little Blanc et Noir came to the Council meetings.’
Louis told the boy, projecting himself into those days of his childhood, hoping that by so doing he was giving a boy, who was destined to be a King of France, a glimpse of the duties of kingship.
The boy’s face glowed; his eyes softened.
When Louis had finished, he said: ‘Papa, if you were my tutor instead of the Abbé de Saint-Cyr . . .’
‘I know, my son, you would not slap my face. Is that it?’
‘I would not,’ said the boy gravely.
‘Even though I would not listen to your reason?’
‘I would love my tutor so much that reason would not matter,’ said the boy.
Louis could not help boasting about his son’s intelligence; he would repeat his sayings, so that the Court began to smile when they had heard them a few times. Louis was becoming a fond father, infinitely proud of his Dauphin.
A few shrewd people would approach the boy and ask him to put in a good word for them with his father. The young Dauphin, enjoying the feeling of importance, would do his utmost to have these requests granted; and as Louis wanted the Court to know in what esteem he held his son, unless they were very outrageous, he invariably concurred.
It was charming to have a family about the Court. Louis often regretted the absence of the four little girls at Fontevrault. The twins delighted him, and it was sad to think that they were nearing the age when marriages should be arranged for them.
Louise-Elisabeth and Anne-Henriette were twelve years old, and Don Philip, the son of Philip V and his second wife Elisabeth Farhese, was looking for a bride.
With seven daughters for whom husbands should in time be found, the marriage problem must be tackled early. One of the twins must go to Spain.
The twins knew this and they were anxious.
They liked to walk together in the gardens of the Château, talking of the future when they would be parted.
On this day in the year 1739 they were strolling under the lime trees when Louise-Elisabeth said: ‘The Spanish Ambassador has been so much with Papa lately.’
Anne-Henriette nodded. She stared at the fishpond with its porcelain tiles on which were painted birds looking so natural that they might have been real.
She did not say that he had called on their father this morning, and that he was even now closeted with him and the Cardinal and other important people. She was afraid, because Louise-Elisabeth was considered to be the elder and she felt sure that if this marriage were arranged it would be for her sister and not for her.
‘I wonder what it is like in Spain,’ she said.
When Louise-Elisabeth answered there was a note of hysteria in her voice: ‘They say it is very solemn there.’
‘That was long ago. The King is a relation of ours. I have heard that the Court of Spain is more French than Spanish since the Bourbons ruled.’
‘It would be only natural that it should be.’ Louise-Elisabeth looked back at the honey-coloured stones of the Château which was home to her, and a great love for it and all it contained swept over her.
‘Perhaps,’ went on her sister, ‘it is not very much different from Versailles.’
‘But you would not be there . . . our brother and mother would not be there. And Papa . . . There would be another King . . . not Papa. Imagine that! Can you? I cannot. A King who is not our father.’
‘He may be very kind, all the same.’
‘He could not be like our father.’ There was a sob in Louise-Elisabeth’s throat.
‘One would grow used to him. And perhaps in time be Queen of Spain.’
‘No,’ said Louise-Elisabeth, ‘there are too many to come before Don Philip.’ But her eyes had begun to glisten, her sister noticed; and she felt glad.
Gentle Anne-Henriette would suffer more if she were dragged away from her home. She had not Louise-Elisabeth’s desire for power. The elder twin had always been the more imperious, the more ambitious, the leader. Anne-Henriette had been content to be led by those she loved.
She believed now, that as one of them had to go it would be better if Louise-Elisabeth did. She would be unhappy for a while but she would soon begin to make a place for herself in her new country; whereas if she, Anne-Henriette, were made to leave Versailles, her heart would break. She would be sad enough at parting with Louise-Elisabeth, but at least the rest of the family would be left to her. She would have her beautiful and beloved home in which to nurse her grief, and gradually grow away from it.