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On the other hand, there is one person whose opinion is indispensable: Louis XV. The fact that he’s only eleven in no way authorizes his subjects to disregard his views. It should be an easy matter to coerce acquiescence from a boy of his age, but the Regent’s not certain of success. And without Louis XV’s consent, the entire scheme will collapse. Broaching the subject of marriage to the young King, a nervous, melancholic, suspicious child, is not a prospect the Regent relishes. The King dreads surprises, from which he expects only catastrophes. When he was still very little, he fell ill and cried out to his Maman Ventadour, “I’m dead”; later, having experienced his first ejaculation, he will be convinced he’s unwell and consult his valet de chambre. Since he has spent by far the greater part of his young life in an orphan’s solitude, his early childhood darkened by the succession of deaths in his family and by the malevolent rumors they nourished, his first reaction is mistrust. This tendency is only enhanced by the fear he constantly reads in the eyes of his entourage, prominent among them his elderly tutor, Marshal de Villeroy: the fear that he too, the Boy-King, will perish.