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"I wanted to be somebody of importance," she said. This explains everything: her ambition, her prudence, her moderation and her scruples. She cares little for the advantages which her high position could give her; she seeks neither titles, nor honors, nor donations. She wishes for the approbation of honest men; she desires "good glory, bonne gloire," as Fénelon has expressed it. We find in her, mingled in proportions which it is impossible to measure, a passion for honor quite in the manner of Corneille, and a much less noble apprehension of what people will say about her. But if this is truly her character—and, when we have read her letters, it is impossible to retain a doubt on this point—she is incapable of the weaknesses of which she has been accused. "I have a desire to please and to be well thought of, which puts me on my guard against all my passions." That is truth itself, and good psychology. But even more fine and more penetrating appears to me the remark once made about Madame de Maintenon by a woman of intellect: "This is what has passed through my mind... and has made me believe that all the evil they have said about her is quite false: it is that if she had had something to reproach herself about in regard to her morals, if she had had weaknesses of a certain kind, she would have had to fight less against vainglory. Humility would have been as natural to her as it was-; foreign to her, I mean in the bottom of her heart; for externally every appearance denied that secret pride of which she complains to her spiritual director. It was therefore necessary that this should have been a secret esteem for herself. Now how could she esteem herself, with the uprightness which was part of her, if she had not known herself to be estimable, she who in her conversations paints so well those whose reputation has been tarnished by evil conduct.... I do not know if my thought is good; but it has pleased me." Thus in the eighteenth century, Madame de Louvigny wrote to La Beaumelle, the first historian of Madame de Maintenon. The analysis is just and delicate.
One of the grievances of Saint-Simon against Madame de Maintenon is the manner in which she used her credit to displace certain prelates of noble birth, preferring to them "the crass ignorance of the Sulpicians, their supreme platitude... the filthy beards of Saint-Sulpice." Chance has brought to my notice a copy of the letters of Madame de Maintenon which belonged to Scherer and which he annotated when reading it. I find there this remark penciled upon a page: "Neither Jesuit, nor Jansenist, but Sulpician." It is impossible to give a better definition of the devotion of Madame de Maintenon. She had the reasonable piety which is the mark of Saint Sulpice. From her family and from her infancy she had preserved a sort of remnant of Calvinism: she did not like the mass and was pleased with psalm singing. This was to estrange her from the Jesuits. On the other hand, Jansenism had an air of independence, almost of revolt, which must have displeased her intelligence, with its love of order. She was wisely and irreproachably orthodox. Her grave, tranquil, active piety reveals a conscience without storms and an imagination without fever.
Thus she had great pride and little vanity, great devotion and little fervor. She had much common sense in everything. She loved her glory passionately and her God seriously. She was charitable, as was enjoined by the religion which she practiced with a submissive heart. But we know neither a movement of sensitiveness nor an outburst of tenderness in her life. She had a very lofty soul, a very clear intelligence, a very rigid will. She was desperately dry.
Did this Sulpician, spiritual, cold and ambitious, ever feel the charm of the great trees of her park? I doubt it.