When Mazarin died in 1661, the young king summoned his council and said, "Gentlemen, I have hitherto allowed the affairs of state to be conducted by the late cardinal; henceforward I intend to govern myself, and you will aid me with your advice when I ask it." From that day, the face of society in France rapidly changed. Then, as Voltaire says, the revolution in arts, intellect, and morals which had been preparing for half a century took effect, and at the court of Louis XIV. were formed that refinement of manners and those social principles which have since extended through Europe. The example long set by the Hôtel de Rambouillet in Paris was followed by many others, and numerous salons which have since become matter of history united all that was most brilliant in genius and talent with much that was estimable for worth and even piety.
The first ten years of Madame Scarron's widowhood were passed in the midst of these elegant and intellectual circles. The assemblies of Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Coulanges, Louvois' cousin, and Madame de Lafayette, the novelist, were, with the hôtels of Albret and Richelieu, those which she principally frequented. She was in great distress, and her friends tried to obtain for her the pension her husband had once enjoyed. But Cardinal Mazarin was inflexible. He remembered the "Mazarinade," in which Scarron had satirized him, and refused to grant any relief to his charming widow. But she would be beholden to none for a subsistence. She retired into the [{804}] convent of the Hospitalers, where a relation lent her an apartment, and lived for some time on a pittance she had hoarded. The queen-mother then became interested in her behalf, and a pension of £50 a year was assigned her. "Henceforward," she said in a letter to Madame d'Albret, "I shall be able to labor for my salvation in peace. I have made a promise to God that I will give one fourth of my pension to the poor." She now removed to the Ursuline convent, where she lived simply and modestly, but visited constantly, and received, as the sisters complained, "a furious deal of company." Her dress was elegant, but of cheap materials, and she managed by rare economy to keep a maid, pay her wages, and have a little over at the end of the year. She might have accepted the Maréchal d'Albret's offer of a home in her hôtel, but she preferred entire independence in her own humble asylum. Many a page could we fill with accounts of the friendships she formed at this period. To epitomize her life is in one respect a painful task, for the records we possess respecting her are equally interesting and copious. She has found at last a biographer worthy of her, and it is to the Due de Noailles' volumes we must refer those who long for further details than our space allows us to give. He is the ablest champion of her honor that has yet appeared, and refutes triumphantly the calumnies of the Duc de Saint Simon by which so many have been deceived.
At the Hôtel d'Albret Madame Scarron often met Madame de Montespan, who soon after became the mistress of Louis. The two ladies had many tastes in common, and an intimacy sprang up between them. How strangely they became related to each other afterward we shall presently see. Meanwhile Madame Scarron was overtaken by another reverse. The queen-mother died in 1666, and with her the pension ceased. Many splendid mansions were eager to receive and entertain her, but she declined them all as permanent abodes. A rich and dissolute old man proposed to marry her, and her friends unwisely seconded his overtures; but she was proof against them, and wrote to Ninon to express her gratitude, because the voice of that licentious woman alone was raised in approval of her conduct. She was indignant at the comparison her friends made between the unworthy aspirant and her late husband, and avowed her readiness to endure any hardships rather than sacrifice her liberty, and entangle herself in an engagement which conscience could not approve. Constrained, therefore, by want, she was about to expatriate herself, and follow in the train of the Duchesse de Nemours, who was affianced to the King of Portugal. It was a sore trial, for none are more attached to their country, none endure exile with less fortitude, than the French. She saw Madame de Montespan once more; it was in the royal palace, and that incident changed her destiny. The future rivals met under conditions how different from those which were one day to exist! Madame de Montespan, though not yet the king's mistress, was already in high favor, and the patroness of that poor widow who was afterward, by winning Louis' esteem, to supplant her in his affections, and become, all but in name, Queen of France. Through her mediation the forfeited pension was restored, and we find her name in the list of ladies invited to a court fête in 1688. Nevertheless, her troubles withdrew her very much from the world, and she thought for a time of adopting a religious habit. Indeed, it is not impossible that she might actually have done so, had she not been made averse to the step by the severity of her confessor, the Abbé Gobelin. With a view of mortifying her ambition to please and be admired, he recommended her to dress still more plainly, and be silent in company. She obeyed, and became so disagreeable to herself and others that she sometimes felt inclined to [{805}] renounce her habits of devotion. [Footnote 168] She retired, however, to a small lodging in the Rue des Tournelles, lived more alone, and, as she wrote to Ninon, "read nothing but the Book of Job and the Maxims."
[Footnote 168: "Duc de Noailles," tome i., pp. 310-12.]
Here fortune came to her relief. The infidelities of Louis XIV. are unhappily too well known. Suffice it in this place to say that Madame de Montespan bore him a daughter in 1669, and a son, afterward the Duc du Maine, in 1670. Circumstances required that the existence of these children should be concealed, and their mother, in whose heart the voice of conscience was never stifled, bethought her of the good Madame Scarron as one who was well fitted to take charge of their education. Accordingly, she was sounded on the subject. The king's name was not mentioned, but she was informed that the secret regarding the children was to be kept inviolate. She hesitated, refused, reconsidered the matter, and at last consented on condition that the king himself should command her services. The office was far from dishonorable in the eyes of the world. Madame Colbert, the minister's wife, had been intrusted with two of his majesty's children by Madame de la Vallière. It was not on this point that Madame Scarron was anxious, but she feared lest she should give scandal and entangle her conscience by a seeming indulgence to such immorality. Louis at last requested that she would be as a mother to his babes. They were placed with a nurse in an obscure little house outside the walls of Paris. Madame Scarron was to live as before in her own lodgings, but without losing sight of the infants. It was a point of honor with her to observe the utmost secrecy. She visited each of them separately, for they were kept apart, and passed in and out disguised as a poor woman, and carrying linen or meat in a basket. Returning home on foot, she entered by a private door, dressed, and drove to the Hôtel d'Albret or Richelieu to lull suspicion asleep. When the secret was at length known, she caused herself to be bled lest she should blush. [Footnote 169] In two years' time the number of children had increased, and a different arrangement was adopted. A large house was purchased in the country, not far from Vaugirard, and Madame Scarron, now enjoying a certain degree of opulence, established herself there, and gave all her time to the task of education. She was lost to the world, and her friends deeply lamented her disappearance. But she was sowing the seed of her future greatness. The king, who had a great love for his children, often saw her when he visited them; the aversion he had felt for her at first gradually melted away; he admired her tender and maternal care of his offspring, contrasted it with the comparative indifference of their own mother, greatly increased her pension, and, having legitimized the Duc du Maine, the Count de Vexin, and Mademoiselle de Nantes in 1673, soon after appointed them with their gouvernante a place at court. Thus, step by step, without her own seeking, she was led on to exercise a higher and most salutary influence on the king's moral character, till, in reward of her long-tried virtue, she was ultimately to fix his wandering affections and effect his conversion; an object which for so many years she had regarded as the end of her being. She was nearly forty years of age when she entered on her duties in the palace; and, in that difficult and trying position, she set the glorious example of one who was guided in all things by principle, and who thought that the highest talents were best devoted to leading an irreproachable life. She had a work before her, and it was great. She contributed to withdraw the king from his disorderly habits, to restore him to the queen, and to bring about a reformation of morals in a quarter where it [{806}] had been most wantonly retarded by the royal example. The king, in that day, was all in all. The ideal of the government was royalty. The Fronde had died away, and with it the power of the nobles. That of the people, in the sense in which it is now generally understood, was unknown; even infidels and scoffers scarcely dreamed of it. The monarch, like Cyrus [Footnote 170] and the Caesars, believed himself something more than man. Diseases fled at his touch, and he virtually set himself above all laws, human and divine. It needed the eloquence of a Bossuet to convince Louis that a priest had done his duty in refusing absolution to the mother of his illegitimate children, [Footnote 171] The success of his arms enhanced his self-esteem, and the atmosphere of his court was so tainted with corruption that Madame Scarron often sighed for retirement, and resolved to flee from so perilous and painful a promotion. Her intercourse with Madame de Montespan was chequered with stormy dissensions, and the jealousy of the latter became almost insupportable. The education of the children was a constant subject of contention, and Madame Scarron, who knew that they would be ruined if left to their mother, was not disposed to yield any of her rights. But the Duc du Maine was the idol of his father and mother, and this served to attach them both to the incomparable gouvernante, who loved the boy with an affection truly maternal.
[Footnote 169: "Deuxième Entretien à Saint-Cyr.">[
[Footnote 170: "Herodotus, Clio," cciv.]
[Footnote 171: "Duc de Noailles," tome i., p. 316.]
Being disgusted with the court, and having received from the king a present of 200,000 francs, she bought in 1674 the estate of Maintenon, about thirty miles from Versailles, with the intention of retiring thither. But a rupture between the king and his favorite mistress was at hand, and on this circumstance hinged Madame Scarron's future career.
In spite of his profligacy, Louis XIV. was at bottom religiously disposed. His serious attention to business proved him to be a man of thought and reflection, and, when the great festivals came round, it grieved him not to be in a condition to fulfil his religious duties. The sermons of Bourdaloue during the Lent of 1675 touched him, and the expostulations of Bossuet in private deepened their effect. He resolved to dismiss Madame de Montespan, and departed to join the army without seeing her. "I have satisfied you, father," he said to Bourdaloue: "Madame de Montespan is at Clagny." "Yes, sire," replied the preacher; "but God would be better satisfied if Clagny were seventy leagues from Versailles." Meanwhile Madame Scarron, with the Duc du Maine, went to Barèges, and, as the king had, before creating her a marchioness, graciously called her, in presence of his nobles, Madame de Maintenon, we shall henceforward speak of her by the name which she bears in history. The three most important personages in our drama were now separated. The king, at the head of his army, received the letters of Bossuet, conjuring him to persevere in his promises of amendment, while Madame de Montespan, in her retreat, was pressed by the same fervid eloquence to return to the path of virtue. But the Duc du Maine was everywhere entertained as the king's son, and fetes that vied with each other in splendor awaited him and his gouvernante everywhere. So popular was the king, so loyal his people, that his vice passed for virtue or innocent gallantry.
Barèges was not then what it has now become. A few thatched cottages and one house with a slated roof were all it could boast. Madame de Maintenon and her sick charge, the little duke, had but one room, meanly furnished, where he slept by her side. The place was then scarcely known; but the physician Fagon had discovered it during his excursions among the Pyrenees, and, by making Madame de Maintenon acquainted with the [{807}] efficacy of its baths, he raised it to importance and secured for himself fortune and renown. Here she received many letters from the king in attestation of his friendship; and returning hence, she visited Niort and the prison where she was born, the aunt she had so tenderly loved, and the Ursuline convent where she had first been schooled and supported by charity. Attentions were lavished on her in every quarter, and many valuable records of her family fell into her hands. Among these was the life of her illustrious grandfather, Agrippa d'Aubigné, written by himself.
Her reception by the king was more cordial than ever; but the high favor in which she stood did not break her resolution to renounce a court life as soon as circumstances should permit. She corresponded regularly with the Abbé Gobelin, and often expressed her willingness to follow implicitly his advice. Madame de Montespan regained her ascendancy, at least in appearance; but many thought that the king was fast becoming weaned from her, through the new influence. Madame de Maintenon exerted daily a more manifest empire. Everything, as Madame de Sévigné wrote in 1676, yielded to her. One attendant held the pommade before her on bended knee, another brought her gloves, and a third lulled her to sleep. She saluted no one; but those who knew her believed that she laughed in her heart at these formalities. "I desire more than ever," she said to M. Gobelin, "to be away from this place; and I am more and more confirmed in my opinion that I cannot serve God here." Madame de Montespan, during some years, continued to be the recognized favorite; but the beautiful Fontanges divided with her the unenviable distinction till, having just been made a duchess, she died in the flower of her youth. But amidst all this levity, Louis paid the severe Madame de Maintenon the most delicate attentions, which failed not to excite the utmost indignation in the breast of the royal mistress. At length, in 1680, the dauphin espoused the daughter of the Elector of Bavaria, and Louis, anxious to retain Madame de Maintenon in the service of the court, made her lady of the bed-chamber to the dauphiness. In this honorable office she was set free from the bondage she had endured. She had now nothing in common with Madame de Montespan; and she exchanged the apartments she had occupied for others immediately over those of the king, where he could visit her at will, and, by her lively and flowing conversation, refresh his mind when weary with business, or jaded with pleasures that had long since begun to pall. Surrounded by minions of every sort, it was something new to him to be addressed freely and without any selfish view. This was the secret of Madame de Maintenon's power over his heart, and he confessed the potency of the spell. Madame de Montespan was visited less and less, and Louis passed hours every day in the apartments of the dauphiness, where he found also her lady of the bed-chamber. A cabal was formed by the deserted mistresses and some profligate ministers against the new and truly estimable object of Louis' favor; but their machinations failed. The sovereign at last broke his chains, and Madame de Montespan, like Ninon and La Vallière, made profit of the time which was allowed to her for repentance, but which had been denied to Fontanges. The miserable death-bed of that young creature, distracted by remorse, but still clinging passionately to her unlawful love, deeply affected the king, [Footnote 172] and is said to have powerfully contributed to reclaim him from his evil habits. The benign influence of Madame de Maintenon reunited him to the long abandoned queen, who, with all her exalted piety and Christian virtue, was deficient, it must be confessed, in tact and discernment, as well as in those intellectual [{808}] gifts which would have made her an acceptable companion to Louis; while her strict devotional practices and retiring habits—habits which her native modesty and timidity of character, combined with her husband's neglect, tended to confirm—may have had no small share in increasing his estrangement. His evenings were now frequently spent with her; and every member of the royal family was delighted with the happy change, and grateful to her by whom it had been brought about. The king himself found the paths of virtue to be those of peace, and the finer parts of his character were displayed to advantage. He had naturally a kind and feeling heart, and was by no means that monster of selfishness and formality which historians so often make him. [Footnote 173]