The Nicolas Le Floch affair

by Jean-FranCois Parot

  ‘Commissioner,’ he said, recognising Nicolas, ‘the devil is never very far away when you appear. Yet the Lord wishes you to be the rampart and support of …’

  All the way to his coach, he continued talking, and Nicolas was unable to tell whether this speech was addressed to him or was part of an inner monologue. The prelate did not respond to any greeting, but pontificated endlessly.

  ‘He is always about us, and it is above all at the hour of death, the moment of transition, that he redoubles his vigilance and manifests the full extent of his malice. How can a man who does not take care of his own house be expected to take care of God’s Church?’

  The Maréchal de Richelieu, barely concealing his amusement, waved the archbishop goodbye. Once the prelate had gone, he turned to Nicolas and burst out laughing.

  ‘How these churchmen do go on! He’s leaving with his head down and his bathtub with him. He pisses blood in Paris and clear water in Versailles!’

  Tuesday 3 May and Wednesday 4 May 1774

  The doctors’ bulletins continued to be issued, always with the same refrain: reassuring symptoms, effective vesicatories, moderate fever, calmer sleep, satisfactory evacuations, a perfectly straightforward rash. Nicolas, who was well placed to know the truth, could see the King getting weaker. On his camp-bed, up against the balustrade, he seemed peaceful enough, but all those who came near him were shocked by the swelling of his head, which had grown as big and red as an earthenware pot. While the King’s daughters looked on wearily, d’Aiguillon and Richelieu continued to pull the strings and to conceal the gravity of their master’s condition from him. The King began to have his suspicions: if he was not sure that he had had smallpox at eighteen, he remarked, he would think he was suffering from it now. He would ask Madame Adélaïde to undo his buttons and Madame du Barry to stroke his forehead in order to calm the itching. The whole entourage were ever alert for every eventuality.

  The following day, despite his own sufferings, the archbishop reappeared and, as before, the Duc de Richelieu did everything he could to dissuade him from his duty, even threatening to throw him out of the window if he dared mention confession to the King. Early that afternoon, with the Duc de Noailles, La Borde and Nicolas in attendance, the King examined the spots on his hands closely.

  ‘It’s smallpox,’ he said, as if stating an obvious fact. He turned to his companions. ‘What a surprise!’

  The doctors tried to get the idea out of his head, but it was no use. That evening, the King seemed normal again. The windows were open, the room was well aired and the spring smells of the park chased away the miasmas of sickness. The patient, who was very lightly covered, kept taking his hands out from under the sheet, against his doctors’ wishes. He kept up the conversation in an even tone of voice, touching on macabre topics as was his custom. Seeing him so talkative, Nicolas regained hope. Suddenly, the King turned to the Grand Chamberlain, the Duc de Liancourt, and asked, ‘This year, during the Christmas festivities, did you see the monk playing the violin in the middle of the river?’

  ‘Yes, Sire,’ replied the chamberlain.

  They all looked at each other anxiously, as though fearing that the King was losing his reason.

  Seeing their expressions, the chamberlain smiled. ‘His Majesty has a very good memory,’ he said. ‘My ancestors gave a large amount of land to the monks on the express condition that every year at Christmas one of them would get in a boat in the middle of the river and play a melody on the flute or violin. The donation would be taken back if the beneficiaries failed to keep up the tradition.’

  The King dozed for a little while, then became restless again and spoke at some length to La Borde. The latter approached the Duc de Liancourt, who announced that the King wanted to rest and asked everyone to withdraw. The grand officials and the servants left the room, and La Borde signalled to Nicolas to stay. The King looked round and, realising that everyone had gone out, beckoned the two friends to his bedside.

  ‘How is the moon?’ he asked.

  ‘Last quarter today. New moon on the eleventh, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Black moon in the Almanach?’

  ‘Yes, Sire,’ said La Borde.

  Confused as he was by his illness, the King had not lost his habit of never tackling anything directly. He sighed. ‘They’d like me to believe it isn’t smallpox. They keep trying to convince me. But from the two of you, I want the truth. I not only want it, I demand it.’

  The tone emanating from the large red head was that of a monarch in majesty concluding a lit de justice. Nicolas looked at La Borde, who bowed his head, his features tense, as if on the verge of tears.

  ‘Sire,’ he said at last, ‘it has indeed shown itself. They are currently drying you out.’

  The King fell back on the pillows. ‘Thank you, La Borde. Ranreuil, are you ready to perform one last service for your King? Come closer.’

  He looked at him for a long moment, then brought out a small inlaid box from beneath his sheet. With clumsy fingers, he pressed one of the bronze corners to release a spring. The lid popped up, revealing a velvet purse and a sealed paper.

  ‘This box contains some stones of great value and a document of even greater value for anyone who possesses it. If I die—’

  ‘Sire!’

  ‘If I die,’ the King went on in a firm voice, closing the box, ‘you must take it, at whatever risk to your own life, to the Comtesse du Barry. It is her safe-conduct to the coming reign and her guarantee against any attempt at revenge. If God allows me to come through this crisis, you will give me back the box. Check that no one is at the doors.’

  When Nicolas returned after trying the doors to the council chamber and the clock room, the King gave him the box.

  ‘In the meantime, put it somewhere safe …’

  His words became blurred and incomprehensible. The fever was returning, and his eyes stared out vacantly from his puffy face. He breathed heavily as if feeling suffocated, and his chest lifted, half opening his shirt and revealing his torso covered with spots.

  Suddenly he began singing. ‘Your King on the bloody bank / Sees Death before him / Flying from rank to rank … Ah, Voltaire! … Yes, Maréchal, it is you who command here, and I am the first to give the example.’ He sat up, crying, ‘The house of the King will give … To arms! Ranreuil in the first row … We were happy, so happy. Do you remember, Ranreuil?’

  La Borde whispered to Nicolas that the King, in his delirium, had taken him for his father, and that he should reply.

  ‘Yes, Sire. Fontenoy was a great day.’

  ‘Oh, yes, the greatest!’

  He fell silent and seemed to fall asleep. Two hours went by before he woke again. Once more, he was quite alert, and his words were clear.

  ‘La Borde, now that I am informed of my condition, we must not repeat the scandal of Metz.3 I owe it to God and my people. Send for Madame du Barry. She must leave Versailles.’

  Thursday 5 May 1774

  Thanks to Gaspard, the page, acting on La Borde’s instructions, Nicolas was able to obtain a horse from the large stables in the middle of the night. He was anxious to put the precious box entrusted to him by the King in a safe place. As he rode, he made sure that he was not being followed, using the usual stratagems to thwart any possible surveillance. Day was breaking when he reached Rue Montmartre at a gallop. His mare lifted her head, overjoyed to breathe in the cool morning. The baker’s boys, to whom he threw the reins, looked on admiringly as Nicolas ran into Monsieur de Noblecourt’s house. In his apartment, he shifted two books in his bookcase and slid the little box behind them. From the outside, nothing was visible. Who would think of looking for it there? This was where it would stay while there was still any uncertainty about the outcome of the King’s illness. After washing himself at the pump in the courtyard, he shaved, combed his hair and changed his clothes. He was just finishing when Catherine knocked at the door and told him that Monsieur de Noblecourt, having woken and learnt of his return, wanted to see
him as soon as possible. He followed the cook, accompanied by the yapping of Cyrus. The former procurator sat enthroned in bed in a blue-green dressing gown, his head hidden by a knotted madras. He smiled when he saw Nicolas.

  ‘Back at last! The house has been quite sad without you. Any news?’

  ‘Alas,’ said Nicolas, ‘the King is quite ill, and I have to return to Versailles immediately.’

  ‘Well, we all knew that! But what are the doctors saying?’

  Nicolas, feeling the burden of the secret he was carrying, did not like to deceive Monsieur de Noblecourt. ‘They’re not very sure.’

  ‘What do you mean, not very sure? There’s nothing unsure about smallpox, especially in a man of that age. It needs to be treated vigorously.’

  Nicolas was astonished to realise that the whole country knew about the King’s condition. In the seraglio-like confinement of the palace, he had assumed that only those closest to the King, including his family, were aware of the truth. The health bulletins that had been issued had never mentioned the fatal illness, although the symptoms had been described clearly enough.

  ‘Cheer up,’ said Noblecourt. ‘Don’t tell me you didn’t know the nature of the King’s illness?’

  ‘Of course not, but I am surprised by how public it is.’

  ‘That’s the only thing people in the street are talking about. It’s a great scandal. The archbishop has ordered every diocese to hold forty days of prayer, to display the Holy Sacrament and to recite the pro infirmo. And yet …’

  ‘And yet?’

  ‘The public who are being commanded to pray don’t really understand why there is such equivocation concerning the King’s confession. No one knows what’s going on. People no longer believe the doctors’ reassuring bulletins. Yesterday, a woman who took it into her head to criticise the contents of these was immediately arrested and imprisoned. Paris is filled with your police and their spies, who are eavesdropping on what people are saying and forcing even the most charitable to be more circumspect.’

  ‘They’re only doing their job, Monsieur,’ replied Nicolas, with a weak smile.

  ‘I’m not saying they aren’t, but it only adds to the unease in the minds of the public. Not to mention what people are saying about the origins of this disease. It’s so horrible, I can’t bring myself to repeat it.4 But people believe it, oh yes, they believe it as if it’s the gospel truth … In any case, I thank heaven for having placed Guillaume Semacgus on our path. I’m sure it’s his foresight that has saved you. The vaccine is protecting all of us, but you above all, being young. Run to do your duty and come back to us soon!’

  Nicolas took his leave of Monsieur de Noblecourt, promising to keep him informed, and, after filching some brioches from the servants’ pantry, went to retrieve his mare, which Poitevin had been spoiling by mixing a little old wine with her oats. He left at a jog trot, not wishing to exhaust his mount. This slow ride gave him time to think, something which the gravity of the past few days had prevented him from doing. The endless wait had been like a nightmare, in which nothing was certain any more, and the most stable foundations of his existence were being shaken. He felt genuine grief at the thought of the King’s imminent demise: even though, as a mere subject, he was a long way from the majesty of the throne, the ties he had forged with the King over so many years could not be broken without breaking something in his own life. A new world was already emerging, in which everything would have to be rebuilt before the calm and tranquillity of everyday life could be restored.

  There was an unusual amount of traffic on the road to Versailles. The Pont de Sèvres was cluttered with all kinds of carriages, and there was a long line of them as far as the entrance to the royal town. It was just after three by the time he reached the palace. He left the mare in the care of a groom. As he went in under the arches, a two-horse coach driven by a grey-clad lackey passed close by him. Inside it, he recognised a sad-faced Comtesse du Barry, accompanied by her two sisters-in-law and the Duchesse d’Aiguillon. The threat of contagion had emptied the apartments, and the odours of infection could be smelt as far as the bull’s-eye drawing room. La Borde hugged him in his arms.

  ‘The comtesse has just left for the Duc d’Aiguillon’s house at Reuil.’

  ‘I passed her coach under the arches. How is the King?’

  ‘Silent most of the time, only opening his mouth to ask for what he needs. He’s worried about whether the lady has left. I told him she left this morning, in order not to trouble him. “What, already?” he replied. Tears appeared in his eyes, and he turned away from me. He’s received the archbishop.’

  The long wait resumed. In the evening, the King, feeling better, decided he wanted to get up. The doctors consented, and his trousers were put on. But when he tried to walk as far as his armchair, the pain of the spots on the soles of his feet and the vesicatories hurt him so much that he felt faint and had to be carried back to his bed.

  Friday 6 May to Tuesday 10 May 1774

  The King had a restless night, and was somewhat delirious. Madame Adélaïde sat on an armchair by the bedside, having taken over the nursing duties previously carried out by the Comtesse du Barry. La Borde and Nicolas took it in turns to stay with her and hand her damp cloths. The next day, the King again saw Cardinal de La Roche-Aymon and the Archbishop of Paris. He refused to speak to them, on the pretext that he could not string two sentences together. In the evening, his face appeared darker, and his voice showed the effects of the pustules in his nose and throat. Every time the word ‘confession’ was mentioned, he would say he was afraid the pus from his spots would get on to the host: it was a kind of obsession with him, which made his daughters despair. The day passed without any notable developments.

  Early on the morning of the seventh, the King asked the Duc de Duras to send for Abbé Maudoux, his father confessor, who was waiting in the chapel, overcome with emotion. He received him for more than a quarter of an hour. As if he had calculated everything in advance, he regained a presence of mind which astonished those around him. He talked to Monsieur d’Aiguillon, then had his daughters brought in and asked them to wake his grandchildren, prescribing exactly how close to him they should advance. In fact, he gave all the necessary orders before again speaking to his confessor. At seven, the Dauphine and the Comtesse d’Artois were in the council chamber, the King’s daughters at the door of the bedchamber, and the Dauphin downstairs. Only the servants, as well as La Borde and Nicolas, remained with the clergymen, who stood in a circle around the bed while the King received the holy viaticum.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said the First Chaplain, the Bishop of Senlis, ‘the King has asked me to tell you that he begs forgiveness of God for offending him and for the scandal he has caused his people, and that if God restores his health, he will make penitence, support religion and relieve the suffering of his subjects.’

  From the bed came a rasping voice. ‘I wish I’d had the strength to say it myself.’

  On Sunday the eighth, the King’s fever increased, his pulse quickened, and his face was an alarming sight. Nicolas realised that the end was near. At eleven, the Suttons, famous English inoculators, were admitted. They had a miraculous powder, an effective specific against smallpox. Refusing to divulge its composition, they were rejected by the doctors, who preferred not to trust the unknown, and dismissed as charlatans.

  By Monday 9 May, the King was giving few signs of life. La Borde, although exhausted, refused to leave his side, and Nicolas made sure he brought him enough food to stop him fainting with hunger. The King was given an especially strong potion, but it had no effect whatsoever. At about ten, it was decided to give him the last rites. Visitors could now be admitted, and the doors were opened. A crowd, which Nicolas noted indignantly was dominated by mere onlookers and by those whose presence was justified more by etiquette than by sentiment, came running in. The King’s body was disintegrating, and a repugnant odour came from the room, even though the windows were constantly open. He was surrounded
by candles that lit up his bronze, mask-like face, like a huge Moor’s head, the features not distorted but enlarged, the eyes covered in scabs, the mouth open. All night, the First Chaplain and the confessor recited the prayers for the dying. From time to time, the King would answer the prayers and utter a few incoherent words. The fever remained very strong until early on the morning of the tenth. The King would sometimes suffer such violent convulsions that his body would be flung into different positions on the bed, which had now been moved towards the windows. The doctors had not given up, and they constantly made him take one remedy after another. At about midday, his death agony began. A little after three in the afternoon, just as Cardinal de La Roche-Aymon had uttered the words Profiscere anima christiana, Louis XV expired in the arms of Monsieur de La Borde. The candle in the window overlooking the marble courtyard was extinguished. The Duc de Bouillon came to the door of the bull’s-eye antechamber and solemnly announced the King’s death. A great noise was heard in the distance, like a regiment charging, or a roll of thunder: it was the crowd of courtiers deserting the apartments and running to greet the new monarch.