Chapter 8: fevrier 1689, Versaille

“J’ai faim!” Aurora exclaimed to me, as if this should be some sort of surprise.

“My love — you are always hungry anymore,” I laughed. “That is the way of women in your current condition! You’re eating for two.”

As she entered into the ninth month of her pregnancy, even my loving, patient and sweet Aurora was often, shall we say, a little short tempered. And always peckish.

“If I remain like this for much longer I will die from eating too much and being shut up in these apartments!” She turned her face to me and I could see the look of despair in her eyes.

“Can’t we at least go out into the gardens for a walk? Anything but sitting here in my misery. Christian, how can you possibly love a woman who has grown to twice her size? You are going to leave me and I’ll never have another man again!”

“Dearest — it is too cold outside for a walk and with the ice on the ground it is too slippery to be safe in your condition.

“It will only be a little while longer now before you will give birth and much of your suffering will be behind you.

“And for your information, I love you even more now that ever. You have grown, but it is because you are carrying a gift for us. And I will never willingly leave your side, so put that from your mind.”

That seemed to calm her, at least for the present, and she lay back and closed her eyes.

Aurora was awaiting the birth of her child sans her husband, the Comte, because Louis had taken his close male confidants to the Palace of Fontainebleau, in order that he could engage in a mid-Winter hunt for wild boar. Louis, although he lived mainly at Versailles, still spent a fair amount of time at Fontainebleau as well – regularly hunting there in both the Spring and the Fall. He had proclaimed his keen desire to take a wild boar to justify his visit, although some cynics felt that the fact that his long-time mistress was occupying her apartment there might have played a role, as well.

Nevertheless, it allowed me to spend precious hours with my pregnant lover in the days prior to her delivery. Each minute was a joy to my soul.

I knew that it was merely a question of days; indeed, Aurora’s time could come at any moment. As a court physician, I had arranged for an experienced midwife to perform the delivery.

I preferred the midwives to most of the physicians of the day, because the midwives were more fastidious. Clean sheets, hot water and soap, even the use of alcoholic spirits to clean their hands, and the inevitable rips and tears that came with the entry of a new babe into the world seemed to me to have a beneficial effect on the survival rate of their patients.

Most of the physicians of the time thought differently and found my own desire for cleanliness to be laughable. I would reply to their taunts that, “While butchers are also covered in blood as they work, they don’t expect their charges to survive!” In this area, history would prove me right.

Odd is it not? I, who drank blood for my sustenance, felt that it was unwise medical practice not to clean the blood of one’s patient off of my hands, face and wherever else it had splattered, before I moved on to the next.

Not to belabor the point, I, too, anxiously waited for Aurora’s waters to break and planned to assist (as I had done a number of times) the senior midwife, Madame d’Amboise, in the delivery.

This wise woman was the granddaughter of the famous physician and surgeon, Jacques d’Amboise, and was a source of much of my knowledge of the female anatomy and the birthing process. As a woman, she was not allowed to follow in her gran père’s footsteps as a physician, so a midwife was the next closest possibility.

Alas, as the saying goes, ‘Man plans and God laughs!’

As I walked back from the Comte d’F... ‘s apartments towards my own small room, I was intercepted by one of the Royal Guardsmen, who informed me that Louis required my presence at the first possible moment. In modern terms: ASAP!

The guard was not especially sympathetic to my pleas that I needed to at least let my patient know that I had been called away. Indeed, he wasn’t going to even allow me to go to my room. I finally convinced him that at a minimum I needed a warm cloak to make the journey to Fontainebleau — it was February, after all. Delivering me to Louis as a frozen corpse would not gain him favor, I argued. He reluctantly agreed.

“Mais vite!” he commanded. Yes, yes I’ll be quick about it!

Back in my room I was able to grab a warm fur-lined winter cloak and to hastily scribble out a note to Madame d’Amboise that the King had called me away and to let l’Comtessa d’F ... know that ‘her health remained my highest priority.’ That was a code phrase that Aurora and I had agreed upon for those times when we could not overtly declare our love for one another.

Walking towards the carriage awaiting at the side entrance to the palace, I luckily encountered a servant who I tasked with insuring that my note was delivered to l’Comtessa (as even I called Aurora when we were not together in private), who would, after reading it herself, give it to the midwife.

Immediately after that, I was hustled into a plain carriage and found myself on the road to the King’s presence — a distance that would take the rest of the day and into the evening to travel. Today it would be a trifle — 72 km or a bit less than 45 miles. Back then, it was a goodly distance.

It was early evening when I arrived at Fontainebleau, and again I was escorted by a Royal Guardsman up the semi-circular stairs at the front of the palace. As I had not been given any kind of information as to what kind of emergency necessitated my immediate presence, I was very concerned and somewhat frightened. If the King or one of his close circle of advisors (is that not a kinder word than ‘sycophants’?) was ill, then I needed to be about my business as quickly as possible.

But I was not taken into the presence of the King, or even into one of the outer chambers leading to his private quarters. I was taken to the office of an officious little bureaucrat who, after I had entered the room, left me standing there before his desk while he pretended to have more important business to complete.

Have I mentioned that I am not an especially patient man?

I stepped forward until my legs touched the front of his desk and put my hands to either side of the papers he had in front of him and leaned over him.

“Excuse me, Monsieur, but I was summoned here by the King of France. I was informed that it was an emergency that necessitated my immediate departure. And now I stand in front of a man at a desk — a very fine desk, I admit — waiting. There is perhaps someone dying who requires my secour?”

The bored bureaucrat looked up at me and shrugged.

“No one is dying. No one is even injured.”

I was somewhat dumbfounded at this information.

“Then, dite moi, tell me: why am I here?”

“Because Madame de Montespan’s astrologer died suddenly and she needs you to cast a new horoscope for her,” he informed me, seemingly amused by my shocked reaction.

He shrugged his shoulders in that classic Gallic movement that indicated his own lack of understanding.

“I have patients who truly require my assistance back at Versailles. Casting someone’s horoscope is hardly an emergency!” I said, becoming a bit hot under the collar.