Female characters have, for good or ill, played a larger part on the stage of French history than of English. We have no names which correspond in extensive influence to those of Mesdames de Sévigné, de Maintenon, de Genlis, and Récamier; while the extraordinary power, both political and social, exercised by royal mistresses in France, finds no parallel in England, even in the worst days of courtly profligacy. Nor is it easy to say to what cause this difference between the two countries is to be ascribed. It may be that public opinion has been brought to bear more fully on individual action here than in France, and acts as a more powerful restraint; and it may be also that extreme prominence in society is repugnant to the more modest and retiring habits of Englishwomen. There is no lady in our annals who has occupied a position similar to that of Madame de Maintenon in relation to royalty except Mrs. Fitzherbert; but she, though highly distinguished for her virtues, was altogether wanting in those intellectual endowments which adorned that gifted woman who won the esteem and fixed the affections of Louis XIV. Many circumstances combined to make her the most striking example of female ascendency in France; and the object of this paper will be to trace the causes which led to it, as well as to her being, to this day, an object of never-failing interest to the French people. Like all great women, she has had many virulent detractors and many ardent eulogists; but we shall endeavor to avoid the [{800}] extremes of both, more especially as M. Bonhomme is of opinion that her biography has still to be written. If there were no higher consideration, self-respect alone would demand scrupulous impartiality in a historical inquiry; and we are the less tempted to depart from this rule in the present instance because we are convinced that in Madame de Maintenon's history there is ample scope for the most chivalrous vindication of her fame, and that, as time goes on, and the materials relative to her contemporaries are collated, her apparent defects will lessen in importance, and her character stand out in fairer proportions and clearer light. It needs only to compare recent memoirs of her with the jejune attempts of the last century, to perceive how much her cause gains from fuller and closer investigation. The Due de Noailles has rendered good service to the literature of his country by his voluminous history of this lady, conducted as it is on the sound and admirable principle of making the subject of the biography speak for herself. There is no historical personage about whom more untruths have been circulated; and, after all that has been said and written, the only way to know her is to read her correspondence.
Lord Macaulay speaks of Franchise de Maintenon in terms so pointed, that they well deserve to be quoted at the outset:
"It would be hard to name any woman who, with so little romance in her temper, has had so much in her life. Her early years had been passed in poverty and obscurity. Her first husband had supported himself by writing burlesques, farces, and poems. When she attracted the notice of her sovereign, she could no longer boast of youth or beauty; but she possessed in an extraordinary degree those more lasting charms, which men of sense, whose passions age has tamed, and whose life is a life of business and care, prize most highly in a female companion. Her character was such as has well been compared to that soft green on which the eye, wearied by warm tints and glaring lights, reposes with pleasure. A just understanding; an inexhaustible yet never redundant flow of rational, gentle, and sprightly conversation; a temper of which the serenity was never for a moment ruffled; a tact which surpassed the tact of her sex as much as the tact of her sex surpasses the tact of ours; such were the qualities which made the widow of a buffoon first the confidential friend, and then the spouse, of the proudest and most powerful of European kings. It was said that Louis had been with difficulty prevented by the arguments and vehement entreaties of Louvois from declaring her Queen of France." [Footnote 159]
[Footnote 159: "History of England," chap, xi., 1689.]
The romance of her life began with her birth, which took place on the 27th of November, 1635, [Footnote 160] in the prison of Niort, where her father was confined. His life had been full of adventure and crime, and he was unworthy of the faithful and affectionate wife who shared his imprisonment. He changed his religious profession several times, but at the moment of Frances' birth he called himself Protestant. The child accordingly was baptized in the Calvinist church of Niort, though her mother was a Catholic, and was placed under the charge of her aunt, Madame de Vilette, at Murçay, about a league from the prison. The prisoner, Constant d'Aubigné, was at length released, and being disinherited by his father for his ill conduct, embarked a second time for America about the year 1643, [Footnote 161] taking with him his wife and children. Little Frances suffered so much from the voyage that at one time she was thought to be dead, and a sailor held her in his arms, ready to sink her in a watery grave. "On ne revient pas" as the Bishop of Metz said long after [{801}] to Madame de Maintenon, "de si loin pour pen de chose." [Footnote 162]
[Footnote 160: "Bonhomme," p. 235.]
[Footnote 161: Ibid., p. 230. ]
[Footnote 162: "One does not return from so far but for a great object.">[
Notwithstanding her father's evil example, there was enough in Frances d'Aubigné's ancestral remembrances to have dazzled her imagination in after life. Her aunt, who had been her earliest instructress, was a zealous Protestant; and her grandfather, Agrippa d'Aubigné, as a soldier, a historian, and a satirical poet, was one of the first men of his day. He had served Henry IV. in various capacities, and was used to address his royal master so freely as to reproach him for his change of religion. One day, when the king was showing a courtier his lip pierced by an assassin's knife, d'Aubigné said, "Sire, you have as yet renounced God only with your lips, and he has pierced them; if you renounce him in heart, he will pierce your heart also."
Frances' father died in Martinique, having lost all he had gained by gambling. Madame d'Aubigné therefore returned to France, and devoted herself to the education of her child. She made her familiar with "Plutarch's Lives," and exercised her in composition. She would gladly have kept the task of instruction to herself, but poverty constrained her at last to resign Frances with many fears into the hands of her aunt, Madame de Vilette. The effect of this transfer was her becoming imbued with Calvinist tenets; and when, through the interference of the government, [Footnote 163] she was removed from Madame de Vilette's care, and made over to a Catholic relative, she proved very refractory, and persisted in turning her back to the altar during mass. Various means of persuasion were tried in vain; and it was not till the Ursuline sisters in Paris took her in hand that her scruples vanished, and she consented to abjure her errors and to believe anything except that her aunt Vilette would be damned. In after-life she used often to say that her mother and several of the nuns had been very injudicious and severe with her, and that, but for the kindness and good sense of one lady in the convent, she should probably never have embraced the Catholic faith.
[Footnote 163: "Duc de Noailles," tome I., p. 77.]
Only a few years passed before she had to choose between a conventual life and a distasteful marriage. Her mother was dead, and "the beautiful Indian," as she was called, was left almost without resources. She had become acquainted with the comic poet Scarron, and often visited him. He was five-and-twenty years older than herself, and hideously deformed. A singular paralysis, caused by quack medicines, had deprived him of the use of his limbs, his hands and mouth only being left free. His satirical pieces had been very popular, and, though fixed to his chair, he received a great deal of company, and joked incessantly. He was much struck by Frances d'Aubigné, and appreciated her talents the more highly because mental culture was rapidly advancing, and the conversation in drawing-rooms began to be rational. His offer of marriage was accepted by her, for "she preferred," as she said, "marrying him to marrying a convent." In the summer of 1652 she became his bride. Such a union deserved a place in one of his own farces, and gave little promise of happiness or virtue. But the consequences were far different from what might have been expected. A change for the better had taken place in public morals, and Madame Scarron had no sooner a house of her own than she took a prominent part in the movement. She carefully tended her helpless spouse; brushed the flies from his nose when he could not use his fingers, and administered to him the opiate draught without which he could not sleep. She received his guests with a dignity beyond her years, and her conduct was regulated on a plan of general reserve. No one dared address her in words of double signification; and one of the young men of fashion who frequented the house declared that he [{802}] would sooner think of venturing on any familiarity with the queen than with Madame Scarron. People saw that she was in earnest. During Lent, she would eat a herring at the lower end of the table, and retire before the rest. So young and attractive, in a capital of brilliant dissipation, and with such a husband as Scarron, her example could not but have an effect. Meanwhile she cultivated her mind, and learned Italian, Spanish, and Latin. She knew not what might be required of her, for Scarron's fortune was dwindling away, and he had been compelled to resign the prebend of Mans. He was a lay-ecclesiastic, and, like many literary men of that day, bore the title of abbé. Poverty again stared her in the face, and the servant who waited at table had often to whisper, "Madame, no roast again to-day!" Devoted to her husband's sick chamber, she avoided society abroad, and wrote, only two years after her marriage, letters which might have come from an aged saint on the brink of eternity. "All below is vanity," she said, "and vexation of spirit. Throw yourself into the arms of God; one wearies of all but him, who never wearies of those who love him."