BOOKS.
MADAME DE MAINTENON.* [FIRST NOTICE.]
"DE L'IGNORANCE, de la faiblesse, de la fausset4, de l'ambition, du in an6ge, des messes, des sermons, dos galanteries, des cabales, voilh cc qui compose tine Esther; rnais l'Esther-Maintenon 6crit Wen, et j'aime O. la voir e'ennuyer d'Ure reine. Jo lui piaffere Ninon, sans doute, mais Madame de Maintenon 'rant son piix." "We have just read Madame de Maintenon's letters," writes chatty Mary Granville from Ireland, in February, 1763, "and though in English, which must be a disadvantage, I think them charming. Such a strain of piety, good-sense, and fine sentiments I No boasting of favour, no pride, no pre- suming." Such are the judgments which the first edition of those famous letters provoked a hundred and thirty years ago ; nor will those who read them to-day be a whit less divided in their estimate of the author. It is, after all, but an ingenious pastime, this attempt to comprehend the thoughts and motives of the dead from the words they have spoken, and the deeds they have done. "What character of what great man is known to you ?" bursts out the subtlest and most skilful of analysts in this kind, before one of his own most successful efforts ; "you can but make guesses as to character, more or less happy."t Any thoughtful man who is given to studies of the kind (un- profitable, mostly) must confess that he is often at a loss to interpret his own acts. There is no truer page in fiction than
* CUP/TS de Madame do Maineenon. Ayes un Commeotalre St doe Notee. Per Theoplille Lieallde. Parte Charpootter. (In progreu.) t Tbeelcersy'e " Lecture on Steele."
that in which the great French writer, who prides himself so on his "realism," tells with a splendid poetry the story of Helene looking back on her own dead passion. Her memory tells her that she was the woman whose history she thinks on with such contempt and wonder. Her soul knows neither anger nor remorse, only astonishment. It was not she who did these things, it was some strange power that moved her. And this is surely the real reason why remorse is so rarely experienced, The man who has committed a secret crime, and then returned to his ordinary way of life, soon forgets his evil deed. His work, his friends, his daily employments are all as they used to be ; they move in him the same sensations, the same thoughts,—he feels the same. His memory tells him of his guilt; he acknow- ledges it intellectually, but it is as foreign to him and his daily thoughts as the murder of Julius Ouse; or any other fact which he possesses only in intellect. It takes a distinct effort of will to bring an ordinary mind to remorse ; only strong imaginations feel it naturally. And if we can so far forget and cease to realise our own motives, how can we ever hope to get at those of others P But with Madame de Maintenon there are special difficulties to be overcome. From her position and her supposed political action, she was in her lifetime the:object of the wildest, the most malignant abuse. The seventeenth century abounds in strong characters strongly developed. Corneille and Moliere, Louvois and Colbert, Bossuet and Arnauld, the King himself and his great enemy, all have about them a masculine simplicity of nature which is the distinctive mark of their age. And as this age (at least as it has come down to us) appears to have been specially favourable to the production of typical characters, as it has given us the typical king and the typical bishop, the typical ministers and dramatists, monks and courtiers, so in St. Simon and the Princess Palatine it brought forth the most perfect specimens we have yet seen of that class dear to Dr. Johnson, the "good haters." And unhappily for her, both of them agreed in cordially detesting Madame de Maintenon. They were both clever, they were both honest, they were both blind with prejudice and pride, and they had the amplest opportunities of hearing plausible scandal which have ever been offered to man, or even to woman. Neither would have know- ingly chronicled a lie, but they had both credulity enough to believe in any number of those "worst of lies" which are half- truths, and which flourished with a rare luxuriance amongst the idle wits of Manly and Versailles. There is a fine dramatic vengeance in the fact that those very men, whom Louis kept about his Court that he might watch and control them, should have been indefatigable and unrelenting spies on his own words and actions, and those of his wife.
But if Madame de Maintenon suffered cruelly at the hands of her enemies, yet worse have been the wrongs she has met with from those who professed themselves her friends. There is no more audacious forgery in all literary history than the edition of her letters which Voltaire and Mrs. Delany had before them, when they wrote the passages we have quoted. La Beaumelle, who brought them out, was one of the most unmitigated scamps developed by the curious literary world of the eighteenth cen- tury. We have not space to tell the story of this Barry Lyndon of the pen, and of his works. M. Lavallee's study of his deal- ings with these letters is amusing, and to our minds conclusive. His ability is shown by the fact that Voltaire was mortally afraid of him,—so afraid, that that apostle of liberty had his opponent twice shut up in the Bastille. The shrieks of the great " philosophe " against the impudent impostor (whose book seems actually to have interfered with the sale of the &Me do Louis XIV.), are refreshing in their intensity and their virulence. But even here our difficulties are not over. Madame de Maintenon herself,"voulant etre line enigme pourlaposterite," took very effectual means to secure her end, by leaving about four- teen volumes of letters behind her, and burning all those which could tend to throw any lighten the important epochs of her life. We have letters to and from confessors, and bishops, and. nuns, ,-,--papal briefs even ; all with that rare conciseness and felicity of language which spiritual people would seem to affect. We have little notes from the King, and bigger ones from Mon- seigneur and the Duo du Maine. This is in fact "a complete edition," and yet in spite of all, when we finish it we throw it down with a feeling of weariness, and a consciousness that we are very little wiser than we were when we began. We could, wish the edition were less complete, and though the editor acknowledges here and there that he has spared us, we regret that he did not set to work with greater boldness, and give us two volumes, instead of these eight. We hope he will take the hint for those which are yet to come. He has already confessed that the correspondence is " un peu monotone." Francoise d'Aubigne knew misery from her birth. It was in the town prison of Niort that she first saw the light. There, on November 27th, 1635, was born the future consort of Louis XIV. Her mother was a Catholic, her father the only son of the Protestant hero, Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne, one of the ablest leaders in the civil wars. Constant d'Aubigne was a ruined spendthrift, broken in mind. and body. He had ceased to- struggle, and now lay hopelessly in gaol, content to live on such- pittance as his young wife could wring from her husband'sl family. Jeanne de Cardilhac was not, perhaps, bad-hearted by nature, but her youth was spent and her temper soured in law- suits long protracted, and hopes of the kind that make the heart sick. Francoise never had a home, nor knew a mother's love.
She was bred up by her aunt, de Villete, an excellent Protestant. lady, loved and honoured by her niece to the last hour of her life. This woman, who has been painted as the fiercest bigot of a bigoted Court, as the prime instigator of the Protestant. persecution and the worthy ally of Pere Tellier, passed every year the anniversary of her aunt's death in prayer- for her soul. She used to tell the nuns of the great house she founded, how, already convinced of the leading dogmas of the Catholic Church, she had refused to abjure the creed of her family till satisfied that her new religion did not force her to despair of the dear relative who continued faithful to the old. Francois° was herself no easy convert. She was firm against ill-usage, "so sentant giorieuse de souffrir pour la religion," and. only yielded after a controversy in form between doctors of the rival professions, " convaiucne par des preuves solides." And here, at the very outset, we have two of the- most prominent features in Madame de Maintenotee character brought forcibly home to us,—her good and honest ambition to be well thought of by her acquaintance, and her calm reason- ableness. Let us hear her arch-enemy :— "See divers Rats l'avoient rendue fiatteuse, insinnante, complais-
ante, oberohant tonjours plaire Une grioe incomparable- h. tout, an air d'aisanoe, et toutofois de retenue et do respect an 'engage dour, juste, on bons tormes, et naturelletnent eloquent et court Toujours tres-bien mise, noblement, proprement, de bon Out, male tres.roodestement, et plus vieillement alone qne son &go."
Is it not all characteristic of the little girl who was proud to be punished for her opinions, and refused to abandon them until convinced "par des preuves solides ?" "Jo voulois de l'honneur,'1” she said herself, talking of her youth to the favoured. Dames de, St. Louis, " n'est cc pas le *he de Lucifer ? " She told the young ladies of the school whom she loved to gather round her how, at eighteen, she had spent months in nursing a sick friend, "par l'envie de faire dire du bien de moi, par le desir de l'honneur et de la reputation," and she impresses on them that this love of reputation, though alloyed with pride, " est cependant d'une grande utilite aux jeunes personnes ; c'est le supplement de la pit:Ste, pour lee preserver des plus grands desordree." "II n'en est , point de plus grand. [plaisir]," she says, "quo celui d'obliger." To the last, she loved strong characters. "Me me parlez de gene incapables &emulation," she cries in one of the "Conversations.. de St. Cyr," " il n'y a rien de bon en esperer." "Naturam expellas fume, ;" we cannot help thinking that this lady was no exception to the general rule, and that the " Oche de. Lucifer" was her ruling passion to the end. M. Cheruel, in his useful book on St. Simon, quotes a well known conversation of Madame de Maintenon's to show how the great historian has wronged her. It is that in which she describes to her friend Madame de Glapion the harassing cares of her daily life. She• represents herself as a woman utterly broken by fatigue, and yet incessantly forced to exert herself. We do not for a moment ques- tion the reality of her sufferings, but we think of the line from Waller Mrs. Croaker quotes in the "Good-natured Man," and fancy that Madame de Maintenon was not so inconsolable as she would wish to appear. She, the daughter of the ruined spendthrift,. the widow of the crippled playwright, is bored, but bored by Princes of the Blood ! " L'Esther-Maintenon s'ennuie," but then " elle s'ennuie d'etre reine ! " And charming Mary Granville can see "no pride" in these letters ! There is a pride which is. above boasting, dear Mrs. Delany.
The next great event in the life of Francoise was her marriage with Scarron. Poor, out of favour, in constant pain, and hope- lessly crippled by disease, the brave little abbe had. a cheerful,.
kindly spirit, to support him under his misfortunes. He saw and pitied this pretty child, and as she was too proud to take presents, he could think of only one way of befriending her, and at sixteen Francois° became his wife. It was no safe refuge for a young and beautiful girl, the home of this witty man of letters. Scarron was courted and admired by young men of fashion and pleasure. Ninon herself was his intimate friend, and she and the brilliant gentlemen of her train where nowhere more at home than at the house in the Marais, where Scarron jested and rhymed. Francoise, with the same exquisite tact which in after-years enabled her to steer unerringly amid the troubled waters of Versailles, at once understood the dangers of her position, and determined to avoid them. When the company at home was too gay, and the master of the house designed to .drink the Duo d'Elbeuf's health," avec emportement," in grate- ful acknowledgment of a present of patiSs, his wife found it convenient to visit some respectable old lady of her acquaint- ance, believing, as her niece tells us, " qu'il valoit mieux s'ennuyer avec do telles femmes, que de se divortir avec d'autres." .Scarrou died in 1660, and Francois° once more found herself alone and poor. That she remained so, is the best answer to the slanderous stories collected by St. Simon and the Princess Palatine. The time was one of great licence, and ladies of unblemished reputation permitted a freedom of manner in their admirers which, to the memoir-writers of a younger generation, became the basis of innumerable scandals. M. Walckenaer tells stories about Madame de S 15vigm5 which would have ruined the best established character when the reign of the devols hadbegun. And so there were stories about Madame de Maintenon, all of which, save one, we may, with very little hesitation, set aside as altogether false and unfounded. But we cannot completely ignore the legend which tells that Francois° was not insensible to the attentions of Ninon's favoured lover, Villarceaux. M. Levan% pleads valiantly against very strong evidence, but we think he only weakens his case by trying to discredit the testi- mony of Ninon, whose honesty and straightforwardness are matter of history.
On the whole, we should say that he is probably right, and that things did not go very far; but if ever this cold-blooded creature had a temptation it certainly was from Villareeaux. -" Madame de Maintenon," said Nixon, " 6toit vertueuse par foiblesse d'esprit ; j'aurois voulu l'en gudrir, mais elle eraignoit -trop Dieu." Ninon found her "trop gauche pour l'amour." Religion, temperament, love of reputation, and a firm belief that " honesty was the best policy," all. kept Francois° out of harm's way. "Jo remercie Dieu," she writes in her old age, " de m'avoir sally& par des moyens humains des occaeions oi je me suis trouvee." A better and more lovable woman might have fallen, but the "Oche de Lucifer" here, as often, proved virtue's best ally. These early years of widowhood were the happiest in Madame de Maintenon's life. She had, the best society in Paris, and that friendship, marked by esteem rather than love, which gratified her pride without disturbing her peace. Madame de Caylus tells us, in her pleasant Souvenirs, of the jealousy felt by the Princesse des Ursine on finding herself left with the young people, when Francoise was called away to hear the gentlemen of the party discuss questions of state, an honour she would have gladly declined, to amuse herself with her friends. That Madame des Ursine was jealous, and that Madame de Maintenon was " bored " (" s'ennuyoit") at the con- fidences reposed in her, we can readily imagine ; but that gratified pride did not, at all times in this nature, more than compen- sate for every annoyance, we are unable for a moment to believe. She complains of the Mardchal d'Albret's confidence in her at five-and-twenty, as she complains of that of the King at seventy ; complains, pities herself, and craves for the pity of others, but still accepts, and does everything in her power to invite fresh disclosures.
With the year 1669 came a turning-point in her for- tunes. In that year was born the first child of Louis and Madame de Montespan. The mother was a constant visitor at the Hotel d'Albret, and had there formed the acquaint- ance of Madame de Maintenon. She begged her to take charge of the child. Two motives determined her to accept, —her poverty, and her love of power. She had at last an im- portant secret in her keeping, for she steadfastly refused to accept the post offered her until the King acknowledged the child. She reared five, in all, of the royal bastards, with a care and devotion which it would show but slight knowledge of the human heart to set down to any selfish calculations of her own interest. All through her life, Francoise feels that to do her duty not only honestly, but with a generous self-sacrifice, which is at timee truly heroic, is due to herself. There is a chivalrous strain in this nature, for all her coldness. And cold. though she was, she had a real, womanly love of children. Both of these redeeming features come out in strong relief in her relation to the King's bastards, and partially diminish the dis- gust which her conduct in the next few years must always in- spire. To have accepted such a trust shows little of that delicacy of sentiment, that "chastity of honour," which is tho highest charm in the mind of apure and well-bred woman; but poverty can- not afford to be delicate, and Francoise was poor, and by life-long experience knew the bitterness of poverty. As her favour grow, she strove more and more to put by money. " Je devious," she writes in 1674, "la plus interessoe cr6ature du monde." She is perpetually urging her brother to make the most of the various concessions she procures him, and to remember "quo tout ceci eat sujet n de grands changements." When we come to treat of her charities, we shall see the same rigid parsimony displayed. Like Swift, like Voltaire, like all really well- balanced intellects, Madame do Maintenon has a sensible ap- preciation of the real power of wealth. For the first few years, Louis had a strong dislike to the woman who had charge of his children. With what patience and dexterity she laboured to remove his prejudices, how stealthily she won his notice ; with what cold and heartless skill she availed herself of the extravagances of the splendid Rochechouart to wean the King's affection from her, by making him sensible of the slavery he endured ; with what perfect art she taught him to find in her society a charm he had never felt before, that charm which belongs to an affection where the intellect can approve the judgment of sense,—all the details of this wonderful intrigue, where Francois° displayed a consum- mate knowledge of the human heart, the exquisite tact of a courtier, and an indomitable perseverance and power of self- control, are too well known for us to repeat. Throughout this long woman's war, we cannot but admire the intellect and. contemn the heartlessness of the victor. In one point only did. that keen vision err, one heart alone did, she misread. She would have us believe that she was actuated throughout by motives purely religious, that she was all through the faithful friend of the King, and of Madame de Montespan. She is always talking to her confessor of her eager longing for peace, and her weariness of Court life. But she must have chosen days when the mistress was out of favour to write to her brother, for to him she speaks in a very different strain. Her policy was clearly to drive Madame de Montespan from Court, and to rule the King, as his oontant companion and friend.
Such, too, had once been the design of Francois° de Roche- chouart. Whether Madame de Maintenon's colder nature and undoubted sense of religion would have saved her from a similar fall, we cannot toll. The Queen died on July 30th, 1683, and in the early months of the following year the widow of Scarron the buffoon became the wife of Louis XIV. The story of that marriage forms one of the most graphic and dramatic episodes in the pages of St. Simon, and to him we refer all who would learn to what eloquence, genius kindled by hatred, can attain. The fact of the marriage is amply confirmed, if there are still any who doubt it, by the letters before us.
We have now seen the last great change in the strange, event- ful history of the child born in the debtors' prison of Niort. We shall, in another paper, endeavour to show what was. the real nature of her influence on the principal events of her time, and to trace out her character, as reflected in the mass of cor- respondence relating to the darling work of her life, the founda- tion of St. Cyr.
Previous page
