Read Online Louis the Well-Beloved by Jean Plaidy - Free Book Online Page B

the old King, which he never forgot nor allowed anyone else to forget. He was possessed of great wealth and Chantilly was one of the most luxurious houses in France. He devoted much of his time to eating and making love; the rest he spent in asking himself why he should not one day oust Orléans from the post he held and occupy it himself.
    He was in continual fear that the King would die and Orléans take the throne, thus frustrating his own ambitions.
    Extremely ugly, he had little to attract women but wealth and his titles; and it was largely due to his mistress, Madame de Prie, that ambition had been born in him. Tall and gaunt, his legs were so long and fleshless that he looked as though he were walking on stilts. Being so tall he had formed a habit of stooping, which had made him round-shouldered and, as though he were not unprepossessing enough, when he was young he had had an accident while riding, and this had resulted in his losing an eye.
    Yet Madame de Prie, one of the loveliest women at Court, had become his mistress, and it was Madame de Prie’s ambition to be the power behind the throne.
    Louis she did not consider – he was but a child. She determined that her lover should take the place of Orléans as first minister of France; and as the King was not yet fourteen that would mean that the Duc de Bourbon would be, in all that mattered, ruler of the country.
    Bourbon, recently widowed, allowed Madame de Prie to dominate him. This woman, wife of the Marquis de Prie and daughter of a very rich financier, was a born schemer; and although Bourbon would have preferred to feast with her and to make love, he allowed himself to listen to her schemes and to agree with them.
    Orléans knew what they planned. He was as determined to foil the schemes of Madame de Prie as she was to carry them out. The possible death of the King held no such qualms for him; for if Louis died, he would take the throne, and when he himself died there was his son, the present Duc de Chartres, to succeed him.
    It was true that the Duc de Chartres was more interested in religion than in politics. What did that matter? The Duc d’Orléans did not see how his family could fail to remain in power to the detriment of the Bourbons.
    One evening, reviewing this situation and enjoying a great deal of satisfaction from it, he sat in his room in the lower part of the château – for he occupied those apartments which had been used by the Dauphins. Very soon he would go to the King’s apartments and present him with certain papers to sign, but it was not yet time to do so and he grew drowsy.
    He was vaguely depressed. It was so quiet in his quarters that he seemed to slip into a dream of the past. He was thinking of his daughter, the Duchesse de Berry, who had recently died – he had loved her passionately and her death had overwhelmed him with grief – when a page came to tell him that the Duchesse de Falari had called to see him.
    The Duchesse was one of his mistresses, who had lodging in the Palace. He had kept but a few at Versailles since the orgy in the park, after which life at the château had been so staid.
    He had asked that she be brought to him, for it seemed that, in his present mood, she, who was noted for her vivacity, was the sort of companion he needed.
    ‘Come, my dear,’ he said. ‘Sit down awhile with me. I was feeling a little depressed. I am sure you will cheer me.’
    ‘Depressed!’ cried the Duchesse. ‘But why so? What is there to depress you, Monsieur le Duc . . . you, who are said to be next to the King in all but name?’
    ‘Ah,’ replied Orléans, ‘such a remark would at one time have pleased me greatly. Alas, I must be growing old, for my thoughts tonight have strayed beyond affairs on Earth.’
    The Duchesse looked at him in alarm and he went on: ‘Do you believe that there is a life after death?’
    The Duchesse was now quite startled. This was the man who had taken Rabelais to church that he might amuse