return in the morning, entering by a back But although these mysterious doings had I have just had a regular scene with Madame de Montespan; I shed tears, and she told the whole affair to the King in her own fashion, denouncing me as "une bizarre qu'il faut ménager!" She can never be my friend, and without friendship I cannot live. In 1675 Madame Scarron again writes to the abbé: All these little storms were only forerunners of the great thunderclap that came in 1675 from the Bishop of Meaux, in the shape of an "order" to the king to leave the favorite behind him in his expedition to the Netherlands. But the defeat was only short-lived, being followed by a triumphant reconquest by the favorite, which Madame de Sévigné recounts to Madame de Grignan as follows: Ah, my daughter, what a triumph at Versailles! What redoubled importance! What a solid re-establishment! What a Duchesse de Valentinois! Did absence ever give such zest to a return? She absolutely dazzles the Ambassadors ! And now, at last, Madame Scarron, hitherto always on the defensive, can afford to throw off her armor. She is a woman of rank, with a definite court *For a long time Madame Scarron kept her charge unknown to the public. ↑ Madame Henriette, daughter of Charles I., died in 1669. She inspired the Berenice of Racine: "La Grande Mademoiselle" was Mademoiselle de Montpensier, whose bellicose temper had won her that sobriquet. She married M. de Lauzun. Diane de Poitiers, " queen over three kings." "status," a free being, with the right to It was after an expedition in 1679 to Barèges with the Duc du Maine that, under the pretext of giving reports of the duke's health, Madame de Maintenon commenced her direct correspondence with the king. Then between 1678 and 1679 occurred the definite rupture with Madame de Montespan, followed in 1680 by the death of the queen. "Duty and pleasure having simultaneously failed him," writes Madame de Maintenon, "the king finds himself in a situation as novel as it is distasteful." On the day of the queen's death the future wife was quietly stealing out of Versailles, when the Duc de la Rochefoucauld seized her arm, peremp torily drew her back, and ushered her into the royal apartments with these words: "This is no moment to desert his Maj. esty; he needs your help now more than ever." Letter to Madame d'Aubigné, Geffroy. †The great organizers of Versailles. 2 * From that day Madame de Maintenon | IV. in 1598. If St. Simon is right, and "passed every evening from eight Madame de Maintenon really instigated o'clock till ten, conversing quietly with this arbitrary act against her former cothe king; Monsieur de Chamaraude es- religionists (all the D'Aubignés had been corts her in, and escorts her out in the face Huguenots), she at least did something of the whole world!" In the summer towards atoning for it by the foundation following the queen's death the court went of St. Cyr in the following year (1686) "a to Fontainebleau; "but," writes Madame creation" (according to the Mercure Gade Caylus,t "the king will go nowhere lant of September, 1686) "only to be without Madame de Maintenon, and she equalled by that of the Hôtel des Inwill come here with Madame la Dauphine valides." as a matter of course." Recurring to that period she continues: "I remember I was then particularly struck by a good deal of unusual agitation in my aunt's manner, which I now conclude must have been occasioned by uncertainty as to what would be the result of the important event then on the 'tapis.' In fact, I now feel certain that her heart at that particular time was no longer free; to explain the tears she could not restrain, she told her servant and myself that she had des vapeurs, nevertheless, oddly enough, she was able to drive out at all sorts of unreasonable hours in the sole company of Madame de Montchevreuil." Why these tears, these night drives? why the overthrow of the moral equilibrium of such a woman, if it was not that the "one love of a lifetime," described by La Rochefoucauld, had become hers at last? Unless every feeling was numbed, unless her heart was dead, was it likely that this desolate woman could refuse her love to one whom Madame de Lavallière had never forgotten? Is it not probable, then, that Madame de Caylus was right, and that when Madame de Maintenon came down to Fontainebleau her heart was "no longer free "? A very short time after the return to Paris, according to St. Simon, the secret marriage took place in the king's private apartments at Versailles, before the Archbishop de Harlay, Louvois being the king's witness, while M. de Montchevreuil officiated in the same capacity for the marquise. Mass was performed by the Père la Chaise, confessor to the king, and served by Boutenot, his Majesty's valet. Perhaps Madame de Maintenon's most triumphant achievement lies in the fact that her secret marriage has never been doubted. St. Cyr ("the king's wedding gift," says Scherer) was the outcome of the lessons of Madame de Maintenon's life. Just as a great physician devotes himself to the cure of one particular disease, founds a hospital for this malady, and alleviates, if he cannot cure, its victims; so, with the same noble zeal, did Madame de Maintenon found St. Cyr, which may be called a hospital for the treatment of povertystricken gentility' a disease formidable enough to adults, but far more morally fatal to the child, inasmuch as from the day it first draws breath the poor little creature is the innocent victim of the folly or misfortune of its parents. They have either mismanaged or gambled, or been overtaken by disaster; but, whatever the causes, it has been necessary to invoke "charity." There is the crime, and one which the unfortunate child is doomed to expiate probably through the whole of its life. Nowhere welcome, everywhere friendless, such a child is either left to itself or driven to associate with low-born playfellows, who make "fallen gentility" the perpetual object of their sneers, while the hints and innuendoes of so-called friends soon teach it to renounce all respect for its parents. In the case of a girl, twelve years of her life will not have passed before she discovers that she is the victim of all this misery, all these humiliations, simply because she is poor. All the homilies of Holy Writ will not console her for the bitter tears she is daily made to shed, and it will not require much reflection to come to the conclusion that in real truth poverty is shame. From the day that a girl is driven to that conclusion she must either rise or sink-rise morally above the world, or sink into the depths of falsehood and dishonor. To be able to resolve on and maintain a middle course, like Françoise d'Aubigné, requires her moderate nature, a nature capable of resisting the human, without invoking the aid of the sublime. It was precisely this modThe precise but somewhat pompous biographer of eration of temperament that was the main Two years afterwards came the "Revocation of the Edict of Nantes," prohibiting all free religious practice allowed by Henri • Madame de Sévigné. Geffroy, vol. i. Madame de Maintenon. Maximes," Il n'y a qu'un amour," etc. spring of the system on which Madame de Maintenon modelled the conduct of her life. She dispassionately examined and analyzed her own case, as if it had been another woman's. Her " "solidity enabled her to stand, as it were, midway between godliness and pleasure, without clinging to the one or leaning on the other. This innate moderation endowed her in no common degree with diagnostic precision. She did not expect from others her own placid courage; she well knew that, having once discovered that poverty is shame, a girl would have recourse to deception in order to escape, if not the cause, at least the effect. Truth, then, was the only cure, for in truth alone lies the dignity of pov erty. It was accordingly by the agency of truth that a St. Cyr girl, having once appreciated her real position, was to be taught to accept it with patience and equanimity. Two hundred years later another great woman, Margaret Fuller,† when dealing with the subject of youthful deception, testified to the excellence of this system by adopting it herself. It was a cardinal principle at St. Cyr that a girl was never to lose sight of her poverty, lest she should be diverted from mental elevation, her sole future resource against the difficulties and hardships she was destined to contend with. I saw yesterday [writes Madame de Maintenon to Madame de Caylus, in 1707] that the bodices of the Mesdemoiselles de Conflans were much too low and their "modesties also not high enough. It ought to have been often enough impressed on my girls at St. Cyr that it is indelicate to wear such dresses, but the very remembrance of their humble condition should have made it incumbent on Mesdemoiselles de Conflans to rise superior to fashion. Nothing is so ridiculous as for young girls who are compelled to dress en grisette to exhibit their throats for the sake of La Mode! Speak to Mesdemoiselles de Conflans about this; it is insufferable. || St. Cyr had existed in an embryo state before Madame de Maintenon's time, first at Montmorency, then at Noisy-le-Sec. It was only after the king gave the property to Madame de Maintenon that Mansart converted it into the splendid structure that has since become a military college. According to the king, her leading characteristic. † See Memoirs of Margaret Fuller. "Modesty," lace tied round the body. "Grisette," a costume then worn by poor girls of good family. The "uniform" of the ladies is to be seen at the "estampes" of the Bibliothèque Nationale; it was of black "étamine," falling straight in long pleats; a white frill at the neck; under the veil a white twill cap. The gloves were black kid, lined with white kid to preserve the whiteness of the hand. The constitution of St. Cyr was laique, and though the lady teachers were "nuns," they were neither "cloistered" nor called "mother," but "madame." 66 My institute is for action, not prayer," the marquise used to say, the word "action,' as opposed to "prayer," being merely intended to denote the unconventuality that M. Gréart alludes to in bis remarkable work, "L'Education secon daire des filles," where he terms Madame de Maintenon the first of "laïque "teachers. We may observe, by the way, that Monsieur le Recteur of the Paris Academy calls Madame de Maintenon, "la première des institutrices laïques," whereas, as a matter of fact, she never was une institutrice," but "une éducatrice." Education was with her the foremost aim. not "instruction." "Education," as understood by Madame de Maintenon, was to be a moral capital, an assured" resource" to be taken away by the girl at her departure from the school; not a short-lived, scholarly success in examina tion, but, as it were, a permanent fund to which the girl might at all times have recourse. Education, like food, is only nutritive when assimilated; and as assimilation is essentially a natural and spontaneous process, it was one of Madame de Maintenon's chief studies to adapt education to the assimilative capacities of her girls, a task in which she was aided in no small degree by her knowledge of the strength and weakness of the sex under her care. Prepared to find in woman's imagination alike temptation and its antidote, it is to imagi nation above all things that she seeks to impart a healthy tone. She first calls forth her girls' admiration for le beau abstrait, she peoples their brains with Plutarch's great men, she fires them with enthusiasm of Roman and Greek grandeur; she then turns to Racine and Corneille, making the same girls live through the heroic deeds of Esther and Pauline!* Thus, to brace their imagination, but from another point of view, Madame de Maintenon has Madame Guyon down to St. Cyr, to instruct her children on metaphysical subjects. When once well imbued with the creations of great thinkers, she directs the children's minds to con This system of enthusiasm had, however, more than once somewhat unlooked-for results. Two of the St. Cyr girls became so much more "enthused" with the real than the ideal that they were impelled to run away with heroes of a less classic mould. Still, as there were two hundred girls at St. Cyr, and as the pair who did run away came to no eventual harm, the system cannot be blamed for these two backsliders. moral education is of by far the highest importance. Her end was only accomplished when the girl's mental resources were strongly enough established to enable her in after years to rise superior to such circumstances as childlessness or loneliness, when she had sufficiently mastered the mechanism of meditation to profit by the lessons of experience. centration; they are made to digest thor- | proposing the marriage. Then, too, the Madame de Maintenon's training system is that of cultivation, not reformation -cultivation being fertile, whereas reformation is necessarily effete; for whilst straining her brain to acquire the more evenly balanced capacities of man, woman inevitably loses her natural gift of spon taneous intuition. Intuition - the "poetic nature" - is, above all others, the true woman's gift; a gift as strongly manifested when breaking Mademoiselle Pascal's heart,* as in Imogen's poetic submission to her unjust husband's decree. Though this gift is inherent in woman's intellect, it does not follow that it should be always apparent. But whether visible or invisible, it lives; and par excellence in woman. Its first stage is attention; its second stage, meditation; its third stage, action. In its first stage it leads to observation, in its second stage it leads to study, in its third stage it may lead to creation. Possessed only of the first of these three stages, namely, observation, woman is already equipped with a formidable resource against ennui. Moreover, observation will lead to reading, and reading to expression, in other words, writing. Observation lends a halo to the most homely cares and finds beauty in the dullest landscape. Madame de Maintenon's self-made education had preserved her from pédanterie, and pédanterie would certainly have prevented her marriage with the king. Louis indeed afterwards avowed that his fear of finding her a "blue stocking made him hesitate a long while before tempt; she was never satisfied that she had done her duty towards a future woman until the intellect was not merely well cultivated, but had begun to show symptoms of growth. In her moral teaching, in order to stimulate her girls to the acquirement of personal dignity, she would not hesitate to instance herself, and, in so doing, to expose her own weakness. It was my wont in my early youth to appear in the highest society in a poor black "étamine," more conspicuous in that attire than a St. Cyr uniform would be at Court. All this was really nothing but ostentation, the wish to show by an opposite extreme that, having no means of competing with other ladies in dressing, I showed myself altogether superior to it. This drew towards me a world of admiration. Could it be conceived that so such simplicity? I appeared in this case in young a person could have the courage of a far better light than if I had worn a discolored silk dress such as poor "demoiselles " will do in their effort to follow fashion without the means. I kept steadfast to my resolution of receiving no presents. Almost my only possession of any value was a lovely amber fan. This was one day lying on a table, when a gentleman who was admiring it accidentally let it fall, and it was broken to pieces, which this same gentleman sent me a dozen fans of naturally I greatly regretted. The next day the same kind as the one he had broken. I sent them back and did without any fan at all! You will hardly believe what respect this won for me, and that very respect was so precious to me that I would not for the world have exchanged it for any gift, however priceless. Apart from the all-absorbing topic of St. Cyr, Madame de Maintenon's correspondence mostly mentions political anx. ieties. On the 10th April, 1707, she doubts Jacqueline Pascal, sister of Blaise, owed her death the capacity of the Maréchal de Tessé: to the signature which, against her will, she was forced to give to the formulaire. * Geffroy, p. 23, vol. i. "Italian affairs' trouble you, madame; | alone, I have to listen to all his vexations, for my part, the Maréchal de Tessé's own his cares, his griefs. Often he gives way to despondency makes me uneasy!" But in floods of tears! His power of conversation August, 1707, matters have mended: is nil. :t Our tête-à-tête is often interrupted by "So much for our prognostications, ma- then sets to his work. If it is desired that I some minister with bad news. The King dame! The maréchal has just rendered should be present, I am called for; if not, I France the greatest service; the siege of retire. Whilst the King is at work, I take Toulouse is at an end! Our navy is my supper, though it is not once in two months brilliant! The Duke of Savoy is out of that I am allowed any comfort during this Provence!" Still the marquise did not meal. So hurried am I through it all that I Occasionally disdain what Madame de order my dessert to be brought in with my Sévigné terms "le ragoût des petites his meat. I leave Mesdames d'Hendicourt and toires " the "relish of gossip" - and de Danjeau at table, as they cannot accom the Princesse des Ursins gratifies her by plish such a hasty meal as myself; for which, sending detailed descriptions of the queen indeed, I have often dearly paid by illness. of Spain's court. The Spanish ladies [writes Princesse des Ursins, 21 March, 1707] never appear before five o'clock. They rise between eleven and twelve, breakfast from two to three, then sleep. In the Queen's apartment, after kneeling for the baise-main, they have to squat on the floor, with the exception of the wives of the grandees, who are allowed stools. They have no accomplishments; they do not dance, or play, or sing. The only talent they seem to possess (it must be owned to perfection) is that of begging, for they are perpetually asking favors for their husbands, their friends, or their household. They wear small relics of saints, rosaries, crosses, etc. These manners and customs, Madame [ends the Princesse des Ursins] may have their merit, but it must be confessed that they certainly lack the merit of being entertaining. In her turn the marquise is on occasion a court chronicler. To console the king of Spain, Philippe V., for being separated from all his friends, the marquise writes to him a gossiping letter about home doings. In this letter, after a glimpse of the Duchesse de Bourgogne, Philippe's sister. in-law (née Carignan), we are told that, "La Duchesse de Bourgogne is becoming French (October, 1707); she is gay, though at need capable of great gravity.' But in spite of her great position, in spite of the interests of St. Cyr and politics, throughout the marquise's letters, from 1704 till the end of her life, there is one element that always predominates - satiété ! "When I think of the loathing I have always felt for the court, I see that God destined me to live in it in order to save me. In 1707 she tells us of her daily rou. tine in Versailles : On his return from the hounds, the King comes to my apartments; when once with me, no one else is admitted. Then, when we are Of the friends of her obscurer days, Mesdames d'Hendicourt, de Danjeau, de Montchevreuil, and even Mademoiselle de Lenclos* (though the latter not openly, yet always faithfully), are those to whom Madame de Maintenon has still remained true. If her friendship for Racine was not invariably constant, it is accounted for by his Jansenistic tendencies. "In the world" (writes the marquise to Madame de Gassion, a lady of St. Cyr)" you would Certainly have found more pleasure than at St. Cyr, but you would have lost your soul! Racine would have fascinated you, and drawn you into the Jansenist cabal. If Racine had been aware of this letter, it would scarcely have disconcerted him less than a certain other epistle from Madame de Sévigné to her cousin Bussy.t "Poor Racine," she writes, "who slumbers in the arms of Endymion's fair mistress, has a singular notion of playing courtier! Witness the following astounding remark to his Majesty: I no longer wonder at a soldier's bravery; his life is so detestable that it makes death quite welcome!' In 1715 Louis's reign was drawing to a close. "I wish your condi. tion were as peaceful as mine," writes Madame de Maintenon, ten days after the king's death, to the Princesse des Ursins. "The king died like a saint and like a hero. I have left the world which I always hated, and am living here at St. Cyr in the most lovable retreat conceivable." It is in this lovable retreat that, having passed through the successive stages of misery and opprobrium, doubtful appre 6 Mademoiselle de Lenclos was well-born and received from her father, a clever man of the world, a sound classical education. One of her most lasting fifteen she commenced a long life as a refined epicurean, associations was with St. Evremond the epicurean. At a rôle to which she consistently adhered till her death. She never lost a friend, and proved herself fully worthy of her reputation of très-honnête homme, a happy defi nition of her unimpeachable honor and deficient virtue. † Letter 685, p. 180, edition Hachette. vol. iv., re specting Racine and Boileau on the subject of the army. |