Love affairs of the Courts of Europe

by Thornton Hall

When the father ended his mis-spent days in the West Indian island, the widow took her poverty and her fledgelings back to France, where Françoise was placed under the charge of a Madame de Villette, to pick up such education as she could in exchange for such menial work as looking after Madame's poultry and scrubbing her floors. When her mother in turn died, the child (she was only fifteen at the time) was taken to Paris by an aunt, whose miserliness or poverty often sent her hungry to bed.

Such was Françoise's condition when she was taken one day to the house of Paul Scarron, the crippled poet, whose satires and burlesques kept Paris in a ripple of merriment, and to whom the child's poverty and friendless position made as powerful an appeal as her budding beauty and her modesty. It was a very tender heart that beat in the pain-racked, paralysed body of the "father of French burlesque"; and within a few days of first setting eyes on his "little Indian girl," as he called her, he asked her to marry him. "It is a sorry offer to make you, my dear child," he said, "but it is either this or a convent." And, to escape the convent, Françoise consented to become the wife of the "bundle of pains and deformities" old enough to be her father.

In the marriage-contract Scarron, with characteristic buffoonery, recognises her as bringing a dower of "four louis, two large and very expressive eyes, a fine bosom, a pair of lovely hands, and a good intellect"; while to the attorney, when asked what his contribution was, he answered, "I give her my name, and that means immortality." For eight years Françoise was the dutiful wife of her crippled husband, nursing him tenderly, managing his home and his purse, redeeming his writing from its coarseness, and generally proving her gratitude by a ceaseless devotion. Then came the day when Scarron bade her farewell on his death-bed, begging her with his last breath to remember him sometimes, and bidding her to be "always virtuous."

Thus Françoise d'Aubigné was thrown once more on a cold world, with nothing between her and starvation but Scarron's small pension, which the Queen-mother continued to his widow, and compelled to seek a cheap refuge within convent walls. She had however good-looks which might stand her in good stead. She was tall, with an imposing figure and a natural dignity of carriage. She had a wealth of light-brown hair, eyes dark and brilliant, full of fire and intelligence, a well-shaped nose, and an exquisitely modelled mouth.

Beautiful she was beyond doubt, in these days of her prime; but there were thousands of more beautiful women in France. And for ten years Madame Scarron was left to languish within the convent walls with never a lover to offer her release. When the Queen-mother died, and with her the pitiful pension, her plight was indeed pitiful. Her petitions to the King fell on deaf ears, until Montespan, moved by her tears and entreaties, pleaded for her; and Louis at last gave a reluctant consent to continue the allowance.

It was a happy inspiration that led Scarron's widow to the King's favourite, for Madame de Montespan's heart, ever better than her life, went out to the gentle woman whom fate was treating so scurvily. Not content with procuring the pension, she placed her in charge of her nursery, an office of great trust and delicacy; and thus Madame Scarron found herself comfortably installed in the King's palace with a salary of two thousand crowns a year. Her day of poverty and independence was at last ended. She had, in fact, though she little knew it, placed her foot on the ladder, at the summit of which was the dazzling prize of the King's hand.

Those were happy years which followed. High in the favour of the King's mistress, loving the little ones given into her charge as if they were her own children, especially the eldest born, the delicate and warm-hearted Duc de Maine, who was also his father's darling, Madame had nothing left to wish for in life. Her days were full of duty, of peace, and contentment. Even Louis, as he watched the loving care she lavished on his children, began to thaw and to smile on her, and to find pleasure in his visits to the nursery, which grew more and more frequent. There was a charm in this sweet-eyed, gentle-voiced widow, whose tongue was so skilful in wise and pleasant words. Her patient devotion deserved recognition. He gave orders that more fitting apartments should be assigned to Madame—a suite little less sumptuous than that of Montespan herself; and that money should not be lacking, he made her a gift of two hundred thousand francs, which the provident widow promptly invested in the purchase of the castle and estate of Maintenon.

Such marked favours as these not unnaturally set jealous tongues wagging. Even Montespan began to grow uneasy, and to wonder what was coming next. When she ventured to refer sarcastically to the use "Scarron's widow" had made of his present, Louis silenced her by answering, "In my opinion, Madame de Maintenon has acted very wisely"; thus by a word conferring noble rank on the woman his favourite was already beginning to fear as a rival.

And indeed there were soon to be sufficient grounds for Montespan's jealously and alarm. Every day saw Louis more and more under the spell of his children's governess—the middle-aged woman whose musical voice, gentle eyes, and wise words of counsel were opening a new and better world to him. She knew, as well as himself, how sated and weary he was of the cup of pleasure he had now drained to its last dregs of disillusionment; and he listened with eager ears to the words which pointed to him a surer path of happiness. Even reproof from her lips became more grateful to him than the sweetest flatteries from those of the most beautiful woman who counted but half of her years.

The growing influence of the widow Scarron over the "Sun-King" had already become the chief gossip of the Court. From the allurements of Montespan, of Mademoiselle de Fontanges, and of de Ludre he loved to escape to the apartments of the soft-voiced woman who cared so much more for his soul than for his smiles. "His Majesty's interviews with Madame de Maintenon," Madame de Sevigné writes, "become more and more frequent, and they last from six in the morning to ten at night, she sitting in one arm-chair, he in another."