We were not impressed with the town of Chartres and so after a good dinner and much whiskey for the frozen youth of the orchids, we bid it farewell. While there we met some friends who had come from Naples in their own car, a new one, and had spent a thousand dollars for it in tires alone. It was now on the way to the shops in Paris, to be "thoroughly overhauled" and it is not two months old. My red car is not so gorgeous, but I enter it with every satisfaction, and my enjoyment of my tour is not rendered any the less by the knowledge that though I keep it a year or for ever, I shall have no such items to pay when it leaves me, nor shall I have an old car on my hands, and that means much, for the fashions of these machines change so from year to year that a "last year's car" is worth little when you try to sell it. However, as I have stated before, Jean says that this car is of such sturdy make that it should last for years with small additional expense.
THE VIADUCT OF MAINTENON, NEAR CHARTRES
By permission of Messrs. Neurdein
As we near again the aqueduct of Louis XIV. its arches frame most picturesquely the Château de Maintenon, which stands some distance beyond it, on the river's bank. Built by Cocquereau, the treasurer of Louis XI., the castle was given by Louis XIV. to de Maintenon, and here in 1685 in its little chapel, he is supposed to have married her, though it is generally conceded that that ceremony occurred at Versailles but that they came here immediately afterwards. The King was but forty-seven and she fifty years of age, so that he lived with her thirty years. She certainly possessed charms past understanding to have enchained such a man at that comparatively youthful age, to have enchained and held him as she did for thirty years. We picture the widow Scarron as a pinched-nose, pale-faced woman of sour expression. She must have been far different and far more to have held this Louis, who probably was as nearly natural as it was possible for him to be, here in these rooms which to-day are, so they tell us, as she left them. If so, how did the Terrorists overlook them? Here is the sitting-room with its frayed green satin furniture, and yonder the bedroom and several other apartments. There was no great state maintained in Maintenon and I doubt not that the worthy couple often strolled down the banks of this placid river to look at the work on yonder aqueduct outlined against the sky.
The King is described as always majestic, yet sometimes with gaiety, leaving nothing out of place or to hazard before the world. Down to the least gesture, his walk, his bearing, his countenance, all were measured, decorous, grand and noble, and always natural, which the unique, incomparable advantages of his whole appearance greatly facilitated. In serious affairs, no man ever was more imposing, and it was necessary to be accustomed to see him, if, in addressing him one did not wish to break down. The respect, which his presence at any place inspired, imposed silence and even a sort of dread. When the mob tore him from the tomb at St. Denis they found a "black mass of spices,"—the man was lost after death in perfumes, as during life in pride, and his body was flung, together with all the other royalties of France, into the great ditch at St. Denis, and, if the story be true, his heart swallowed by a canon of Westminster was interred with the very reverend gentleman in that sacred place. It probably killed him. Another tale is to the effect that one Philip Henri Schunck, a royalist did, in the year 1819 in Paris, make the acquaintance of an artist named St. Martin, a friend of one of the officials who superintended the opening of the royal monuments in the Jesuits' churches. St. Martin states that he was present on the opening of several monuments in order to secure the royal dust to be utilized as "Momie" a valuable dark brown pigment which was often obtained from mummy cases and ancient tombs. St. Martin converted part of the heart of Louis XIV. to this use but returned the rest together with the heart of Louis XII., intact to Schunck through whom they reached St. Denis where they now are. St. Martin made this surrender during his last illness—a time when he would scarcely have perpetrated a practical joke on posterity. At the opening of the monuments two painters were present; the other was Droling, and between them they bought eleven hearts including those of Anne of Austria, Maria Theresa, Gaston of Orleans, the regent, and Madame Henrietta and all were made into "Momie." There is a picture in the Louvre by Droling—"Intérieur de Cuisine"—whose rich colours may owe their brilliancy to these hearts of dead royalties. The heart of Louis le Grand mashed up by a painter's knife and spread on canvas—where now is your greatness, O King? But of all this these murmuring waters at Maintenon told the anointed of God nothing, but reflected his image as placidly as they do ours to-day.
Madame is described as a woman of very stately elegant figure and bearing. Possessed of infinite tact she never lost her temper even before de Montespan had been banished from Court. Nothing appeared to vex her, and she would smile past and through all obstacles until she obtained what she desired. With all, she would appear to have been an austere woman, caring little for dress or the pageants of the Court and much for power. In that, she bore a certain resemblance to Catherine de Medici. As time wore on, she so influenced the King that we find the red heels, diamond buckles, laces and plumes almost all gone. That she ever loved the man is doubtful, and she certainly did not forgive his dying reference to her age, which exceeded his by two years. Her last words as she deserted him, which he probably heard—and which she intended he should hear—were as heartless as only a woman of that stamp could make them,—"There lies a man who never loved any one but himself."
