“It is true,” replied Madame, “that I did have energy in my youth.”
“That is just what is wanting to our young ladies,” said the mistress; “they are so tired with the least exertion that they can hardly walk round the garden without fatigue.”
“They ought not to sit still a moment,” said Madame; “it is good to run, jump, dance, and play at base, skittles, and other games; it makes them grow. Perhaps that is the reason they are so short. It is amazing that at their age they do not like to be active, and that they want to be always sitting down or leaning upon something. Mme. de Richelieu at seventy years of age had never leaned back in her coach, and I myself, old and ill as I am, I am always as erect as you see me. I am glad when I see you sweeping and rubbing the floors of the church, because it is good for your health; if I could, I would make you run about all the time; but you cannot be educated while running. I do not understand why you should object to sweeping; it makes you strong. You ought not to object to help a servant; I have never seen pride on that point among the nobility, except at Saint-Cyr. I can understand perfectly well that beggars reclothed [gueux revêtus, the term in those days for parvenus] should not venture to touch the ground with the tips of their fingers; but nobles do not think such things beneath them.”
“I think,” said a mistress, “that you had the goodness to tell us once that you taught your nurse to read.”
“Yes,” replied Madame, “and sometimes she said she would not learn. I used to follow that woman about, and often I spent whole days sifting flour through a hopper; she would set me up upon a chair to do it more conveniently. It is very fatiguing work; I only did it to oblige my nurse. Since then God has raised me to great fortune and given me great wealth; but I have never loved money except to share it. I do not put my happiness into having fine petticoats, as you may see by the gowns I wear, but I put it into giving pleasure to others. You know that one of the maxims I have taught you is: The greatest of all pleasures is to be able to give pleasure.”
Then she asked Mlle. de Brunet which was easier, to exact things from one’s self, or from others. Mlle. de Brunet answered, “From ourselves.” Several other young ladies were questioned and thought the same. “You are right,” said Mme. de Maintenon. “I cannot understand how any one can think otherwise, because it seems to me more just and appropriate that we should inconvenience ourselves rather than inconvenience others; we ought always to be occupied in avoiding whatever may give pain to other people. Mme. la Duchesse de Bourgogne undertook a piece of work, to execute which she sent for a woman who embroiders, and this woman spent the whole of yesterday with her without her ever thinking of giving her anything to eat. I asked the woman in the evening if she had eaten; she said no, and I made her dine and sup both. The king, who is wonderfully attentive, reproved Mme. la Duchesse de Bourgogne severely; she tried to laugh it off, but he told her that he could not laugh at such a matter. I am convinced that that poor woman was not much pleased to find that while she worked hard, those she worked for let her go hungry. If such a mark of inattention, which might be very pardonable in a young princess of sixteen, was rebuked by the king with such seriousness, how much more should girls like you who will have to spend all your lives in attentions to others need reproof if you neglect them.
“The king always astonishes me when he speaks of his own education. His governesses amused themselves, he says, all day, and left him in the hands of the maids without taking any care of him—you know that he began to reign when he was three and a half years old. He ate whatever he could lay hands on, without any attention being paid to the injury this was to his health; it was this that accustomed him to so much carelessness about himself. If they fricasseed an omelet he snatched bits of it, which Monsieur and he went off into a corner to eat. He relates sometimes that he spent his time mostly with a peasant girl, the child of a waiting-maid of the queen’s waiting-maid. He called her Queen Marie, because they played at the game, ‘à la madame,’ she taking the part of queen, and he serving her as page or footman, carrying her train, wheeling her in a chair, or marching with a torch in front of her. You can imagine whether little Queen Marie gave him good advice, and whether she was useful to him in any way.”
On never omitting either labour or pains.
July, 1703.
I am very much pleased, my dear children [of class Yellow], to find in you as much docility and the same simplicity that there is in the younger classes; and for this I give you great praise. I wish to talk with you now on the precautions which you take to avoid too much labour and trouble. It seems that some of you think you can exempt yourselves from the common lot and avoid suffering the slightest discomfort; but you will find that what you have to suffer now is nothing at all in comparison with what you will meet with in the world. There is no one who does not suffer. I have long had the honour of seeing the king very closely; if any one could shake off the yoke and have no cares or troubles it would surely be he; and yet he has them continually. Sometimes he spends the whole day in his cabinet going over his accounts; I often see him cracking his brains over them, beginning them over and over again, and not leaving them till he has finished them all; and this duty he never devolves upon a minister. He relies on no one but himself for the regulation of his armies; he possesses a knowledge of the number of his troops and regiments in detail, like that which I possess of the divisions in your classes. He holds several councils a day, where business that is often vexatious and always wearisome is transacted; such as that of war, pestilence, famine, and other afflictions. He has now the government of two great kingdoms; for nothing is done in Spain except by his order. The King of Spain has no money, because of the laziness of his subjects; their land is much more extensive than that of France, but it brings in nothing because it is not cultivated. All this is an additional care to our king; he can scarcely take any pleasure; business absorbs all his time. And yet if there is a condition which might be supposed exempt from toil and fatigue, it is that of royalty. The ministers, whose places are so coveted and envied (though without reason), well deserve the profits of their offices from the pains and fatigues they have to endure in them. M. de Chamillart is working perpetually; there is no longer even a question of relaxation for him, still less of pleasure; he cannot see his family, whom he loves passionately, because he has not a moment to give it, being from morning till night engaged in disagreeable affairs and trying, for example, to make out whether Peter or John is in the right. People fear he will fall ill, and he is very much changed; he sent for his daughter, to marry her, but he cannot even see her. Yet that is a man whom everybody thinks fortunate.