"In whatever way matters turn, I conjure you, madame, to regard me as a person incapable of directing affairs, who heard them talked too late to be skilful in them, and who hates them more than she ignores them.... My interference in them is not desired and I do not desire to interfere. They are not concealed from me, but I know nothing consecutively and am often badly informed."
The opinions of her contemporaries are not always flattering, but such are possibly due to envy and jealousy or to some purely personal prejudice. Thus, when the Duchess of Orléans, the Princesse Palatine, calls her "that nasty old thing, that wicked devil, that shrivelled-up, filthy old Maintenon, that concubine of the king," and casts upon her other gross aspersions that are unfit to be repeated, one must remember that the calumniator was a German, the daughter of the Elector Palatine Charles-Louis, a woman honest in her morals, but shameless in her speech, who loved the beauties of nature more than those of the palaces; more shocked at hypocrites than at religion or irreligion, she took Mme. de Maintenon to be a type of the impostors whom she detested. It was her son who became regent, and it was her son who married one of the illegitimate daughters of Louis XIV.--an alliance of which his mother had a horror.
The memoirs of Saint-Simon are interesting, but the odious picture he has drawn of Mme. de Maintenon is hardly in accord with later appreciations. M. Saint-Amand sums up the two classes of critics thus:
"The revolutionary school which likes to drag the memory of the great king through the mire, naturally detests the eminent woman who was that king's companion, his friend and consoler. Writers of this school would like to make of her a type not only odious and fatal, but ungraceful and unsympathetic, without radiance, charm or any sort of fascination. She is too frequently called to mind under the aspect of a worn old woman, stiff and severe, with tearless eyes and a face without a smile. We forget that in her youth she was one of the prettiest women of her time, that her beauty was wonderfully preserved, and that in her old age she retained that superiority of style and language, that distinction of manner and exquisite tact, that gentle firmness of character, that charm and elevation of mind, which, at every period of her life, gained her so much praise and so many friends."
Mme. de Maintenon was born in prison. Her maiden name was Françoise d'Aubigné. She was the granddaughter of Agrippa d'Aubigné, the historian. Her father had planned to settle in the Carolinas, and his correspondence with the English government, to that effect, was treated as treason; he was thrown into prison, where his wife voluntarily shared his fate and where the future Mme. de Maintenon was born. After the death of her father, she was confided to her aunt, Mme. de Villette, a Calvinist, who trained her in the principles of Protestantism. Because of the refusal of her daughter to attend mass, her mother put her in charge of the Countess of Neuillant who, with great difficulty, converted Françoise back to Catholicism.
At the home of the Countess of Neuillant, she often met Scarron, the comic poet--a paralytic and cripple--who offered her money with which to pay for admission to a convent, a proposition which she refused; subsequently, however, the countess sent her to the Ursulines to be educated. When, after two years, she lost her mother and was thus left without home, fortune, or future prospects, she consented, at the age of seventeen, to marry the poet. Thus, born in a prison, without even a dowry, harshly reared by a mother who was under few obligations to life, more harshly treated in the convent, introduced as a poor relation into the society of her aunt and to the friends of her godmother, the Countess of Neuillant, she early learned to distrust life and suspect man, and to restrain her ambitions.
Exceedingly beautiful, graceful, and witty, she soon won her way to the brilliant and fashionable society of the crippled wit, buffoon, and poet, who was coarse, profane, ungodly, and physically an unsightly wreck. In this society, which the burlesque poet amused by his inexhaustible wit and fancy, and his frank, Gallic gayety, she showed an infinite amount of tact and soon made his salon the most prominent social centre of Paris. There, Scarron, never tolerated a stupid person, no matter of what blood or rank.
When asked what settlement he proposed to make upon his wife, he replied: "Immortality." At another time, he remarked: "I shall not make her commit any follies, but I shall teach her a great many." On his deathbed he said: "My only regret is that I cannot leave anything to my wife with whom I have every imaginable reason to be content." In this free-and-easy salon, a young noble said, soon after the marriage of Scarron: "If it were a question of taking liberties with the queen or Mme. Scarron, I would not deliberate; I would sooner take them with the queen."
The reputation made by the young Mme. Scarron gained her many influential friends, especially among court people. At the death of her husband, in 1660, to avoid trouble with his family, she renounced the marriage dowry of twenty-four thousand livres. Her friends procured her a pension of two thousand livres from the queen. Thus freed from care, she lived according to her inclination, which tended toward pleasing and doing good; taking good cheer and her services voluntarily and unaffectedly to all families, she gradually made herself a necessity among them--thus she laid the foundation of her future greatness. She was received by the best families, grew in favor everywhere, and even won over all her enemies. Modest, complaisant, promptly and readily rendering a favor, prudent, practical and virtuous, her one desire was to make friends, not so much for the purpose of using them, but because she realized that a person in humble circumstances cannot have too many friends.
Her portrait as a widow is admirably drawn by M. Saint-Amand: "Mme. Scarron seeks esteem, not love. To please while remaining virtuous, to endure, if need be, privations and even poverty, but to win the reputation of a strong character, to deserve the sympathy and approbation of honest persons--such is the direction of all her efforts. Well dressed, though very simply; discreet and modest, intelligent and distingué, with that patrician elegance which luxury cannot create, but which is inborn and comes by nature only; pious, with a sincere and gentle piety; less occupied with herself than with others; talking well and--what is much rarer--knowing how to listen; taking an interest in the joys and sorrows of her friends, and skilful in amusing and consoling them--she is justly regarded as one of the most amiable as well as one of the superior women in Paris. Economical and simple in her tastes, she makes her accounts balance perfectly, thanks to an annual pension of two thousand livres granted her by Queen Anne of Austria."