The next morning's meeting of the Council of Ministers was a study in profound, unnerving absence. Louis sat at the head of the long table in the Tuileries, a ghost in his own throne. The men who now ran the machinery of his new France—Necker, his cautious financial rock; Vergennes, the old survivor of the Ancien Régime now a grudgingly loyal foreign minister; and the newly appointed, competent Ministers of War and the Interior—all felt it. The King was physically present, but his mind, the intense, analytical engine that had powered the entire revolution, was miles away, locked in the hushed, feverish atmosphere of the royal nursery.
The Minister of the Interior, a moderate Feuillant Antoine de Lessart, a man who had been selected for his administrator's skill, cleared his throat nervously. The silence had gone on too long. "Your Majesty," he started, hesitantly, "a... a disturbing report has come from the region of Vendée."
Louis's gaze was fixed on the intricate patterns of the wood grain on the table before him. He waved a hand dismissively, a gesture of profound weariness. "Summarize it."
Lessart swallowed, ruffling his papers. "A constitutional priest, who took the Civic Oath to the nation, was... found murdered, Your Majesty. Torn from his own church by a mob. The local magistrate says the parishioners aren't cooperating in their investigation by the National Guard. They call the murdered man a heretic, a Parisian agent. They say the 'true' priests, the refractory ones who didn't take the oath, hide in secret, say masses and teach resistance."
It was the initial tremor of a political earthquake. A month earlier, Louis would have pounced on this report like a hawk. He would have asked for statistics: the number of refractory priests in the area, local Guard unit loyalty levels, bread prices in the nearby towns. He would have recognized the larger picture right away—that his logical, necessary policy of appropriating Church property to support the Assignat had a dark, bloody, and completely irrational byproduct. It was producing martyrs and undermining the very pillars of his monetary system.
The news barely mattered now. It was a distant matter, an irritation of logistics in a world shrunk to the size of his ill son's bedside. "A local police matter," he stated, voice devoid of life and strength. "Strengthen the Guard detail. Bring a major Parisian magistrate to oversee an investigation. Next."
Jacques Necker's face set in a frown of fiscal worry, he glared at Louis with an air of grave worry. He foresaw the crucial factor being overlooked. Religious rebellion, no matter how modest, might scare off the market. Should purchasers start to worry that the rights to properties of the Church land on which they were buying were not solid, Assignat's value might crash, all their years of toil going down the drain. But he noticed the open misery in the eyes of the King, the dark-circled weariness, and he kept quiet. Now was most assuredly not the moment.
Then entered the Minister of War, the Comte de Narbonne-Lara, an agreeable nobleman who had embraced the new regime fully, carrying a bundle of files. "Your Majesty, officer reorganization proceeds rapidly. We're identifying bright young men to be promoted and trained in our new artillery schools. We have some very talented prospects, though some... some have fiery temperaments."
He gestured to a specific file, thicker than the others, filled with glowing commendations and equally stark disciplinary reports. "There is a Captain of artillery, for example. A Corsican by birth. His name is Buonaparte. His superiors describe his genius with cannon as almost supernatural, but they complain endlessly of his sullen, withdrawn attitude and an ambition so naked it borders on treasonous. He is a political risk, perhaps, but his talent is undeniable."
The name, Napoleon Bonaparte, wended its way across Louis's consciousness. Last month, he would have highlighted it, his mind weaving a dozen parallels to his own historical experience. The most dangerous man of the coming generation.One to watch. One to handle gingerly, or to crush. Now, it was merely another name on a list of lengthy administrative matters. He experienced a surge of annoyance at the council's preoccupation with such matters when his world was falling to pieces.
"Promote him if he is competent," said Louis, curtly. "Competence, nothing more, nothing less. Pack the army with men who can win wars, not men who can win admirers at court. That's all that's needed."
The Comte de Narbonne-Lara looked surprised by the swift, incurious decision. He had expected a lengthy discussion about the political ramifications of promoting such a volatile officer. He bowed and made a note in the file. The seed of Napoleon's rise, a moment that would one day reshape the map of Europe, had just been planted, not with a grand strategic vision, but with the distracted, impatient wave of a grieving father's hand.
Much later in the afternoon, when the meeting of the council fortunately concluded, Louis managed to get away from all the reports and concerned glances. He found Marie Antoinette not in her apartments, but inside the tiny, icy chapel of the Tuileries. She was kneeling, by herself, before the grand altar, her form dwarfed by the grand vaulted hall. The air was thick with ancient incense smoke and cold stone, and it was a place of prayer no less remote from him.
She gazed up as he entered, her eyes red from tears but bright and rebellious. "They are coming," she stated, her voice gentle but strong. She spoke of the doctors he had sent for. "I am praying for a miracle."
"Antoinette," he started, voice strained, the words stuck in his throat. "Miracles aren't going to save him. We require... something more."
She rose, her imperial composure regained, but now it was leavened by steel. "And what's that, Louis?" she asked, her voice cutting. "Your statistics? Your precious rationality? Do you number death away? I shall fight on our son's behalf by faith and by prayer, and you shall fight by... whatever it be you fight by. But you shall not enter into this holy place and tell me my fight's nothing."
It was the very first genuine split in their fragile alliance. He looked at her clinging to what his 21st-century mind identified as a comforting delusion. She saw him as unfeeling and godless amidst a parent's worst nightmare. He could not answer her. The rationalism by which he'd won a kingdom proved utterly useless here. He turned and left her to her prayers, the gulf between them appearing as deep and icy as the stone nave of the chapel.
The grand consultation was nightmarish. Dozens of Paris's leading physicians, all dressed in their funereal black robes and powdered wigs, surrounded the tiny Dauphin's bedside. They ranted and raved in grand, pompous combinations of Latin and French, prodded and poked him with chilly fingers, and quarreled vehemently concerning just what balance of phlegm to black bile existed in his body. Louis paced back and forth, arms crossed stiffly around his torso, a silent, simmering statue of rage. He was witnessing the high priests of some ancient religion making a sacrifice, and it was to be his son.
After an hour of this agonizing theater, they reached a consensus. The lead physician, a man named Dr. Portal, whose self-importance seemed to fill the room, turned to the King and Queen with a solemn pronouncement.
"It is a clear case of morbid humors settling in the joints, exacerbated by a melancholic temperament inherent in the royal bloodline," he declared, with an air of absolute certainty. "The affliction is serious, but not, we believe, beyond our art. We must act decisively."
He explained their intended program of treatment. "A strong phlebotomy—a bleeding from the arm—to reduce the excess humors and to temper the fire in the blood. Then we will give a strong purgative to rid the bowels of the noxious matter. Lastly," he indicated an assistant who carried a tray of nasty-looking glass cups, "we will use hot cups to the hip and to the knee. This will bring to a head the deep-seated inflammation, whereby it may be expelled."
Louis felt a white-hot, wordless rage accumulate within him. They were describing, in learned objectivity, a session of torture from medieval times. They would drain him of blood, prepare him by making him sick and giving him diarrhea, and burn his skin, all in aid of a hypothesis as flawed as alchemy. They were going to kill him sooner.
Not knowing the condition of the King's internal state, Dr. Portal picked up a glittering silver lancet from a case covered in velvet. The pointed tip glimmered in the light. "If Your Majesty permits it," he said, bowing slightly, "we shall begin immediately."
Louis gazed from the shining steel blade to the thin, delicate figure of his son, lost in the huge royal bed. He saw the anxious, despairing glance upon Marie Antoinette's face, her trust in these men, in their rank and their name, complete. He was caught. Caught between deadly ignorance of his epoch and his own, lonely, incredible knowledge. To assent was to kill his child. To decline, to be declared mad.