[Footnote 179: Letter of 16th February, 1710. ]
The poor and unfortunate had no cause for similar complaints. She gave away between two and three [{811}] thousand pounds a year. During the scarcity of 1694, having parted with all she had, she sold a beautiful ring and a pair of horses, to supply the wants of the sufferers. "Distribute my alms," she wrote to her steward, "as quickly as you can. Spare no pains, and repine at no difficulty. Circumstances require unusual charities. See if peas, beans, milk, and barley-meal, if anything, in short, will supply the place of the bread which is so dear. Do in my house as you would in your own family. I leave it in your charge. Incite the people to courage and to labor. If they do not sow, they will reap nothing next year."
She often visited the needy, and relieved their wants with her own hand. She would put off buying anything for herself to the last moment, and then say, "There, I have taken that from the poor." Her charity inspired others with the spirit of self-denial, and the king and his chief almoner often dispensed their bounty through her. But neither poor nor rich diverted her attention from Louis. To his ease, his tastes, his sentiments—even when they shocked her—his time, and his very friendships, she sacrificed everything. He was her vocation; and her own friends could not, as she said, but look upon her as dead to them. To her the king confided all; and thus the cares of state, the perils of war, the intrigues of the court, cabals, petitions, private interests, and even family disputes, were continually rolling their din at her feet. Princes, princesses, ministers, and a crowd of persons anxious to secure their own interests, forced themselves upon her, and broke up all the pleasures of solitude and society, of study, meditation, and correspondence, for which she pined. But she had counted the cost, and bore with equanimity the absence of that perfect happiness which she never expected to attain on earth. The honors which encircled her were brilliant fetters, and galled her no less because they glittered. "I can hold out no longer," she said one day to her brother, Count d'Aubigné; "I would that I were dead!" The sense of duty was her abiding strength, and she derived consolation from reflecting that her elevation was not of her own seeking. The path by which she had been led was strange—so strange that she could not but believe she had a divine mission to accomplish. It was easy to interpret her conduct in a worldly and ambitious sense; but when, since the Master of the house was called Beelzebub, have the children of his household been rightly understood? Whatever is in the heart comes out sooner or later in the writings, and those who read Madame de Maintenon in her letters, will be in no doubt as to what were her guiding principles. Always true to herself, she was an enigma to those only who had not the key to her true character. The year of her marriage was signalized by one of the most important legislative acts in the history of modern Europe. This was the revocation of the edict of Nantes, by which, eighty-seven years before, Henry IV. had, shortly after his abjuration of Protestantism, terminated a long civil war by granting to the Calvinists freedom of religious worship and admission to offices of state. The edict itself was as contrary to the spirit of that age as it would be consonant with the ideas of this. Those who regarded each other respectively as idolaters and heretics had not yet learned to live together in social and political brotherhood. The popes and saintly doctors of those times looked on such fraternity with horror, and foresaw that, if it became general, indifference and widespread infidelity would be its certain results. Events have justified their anticipations; and though it may be doubted whether this or that act of intolerance, such as the revocation of the edict in question by Louis XIV., were wise and expedient under the circumstances, it ought never to be forgotten that the establishment and maintenance of Catholic unity in a [{812}] kingdom redounds, abstractly considered, to the glory of a Christian prince. To this glory the government of Louis aspired; and while it is clear from Madame de Maintenon's correspondence that she took no active part in the matter, it is evident also that she approved it, as did the nation in general. Voltaire concurs with the Duc de Noailles in exonerating her from the charge of having instigated the revocation and applauded its results. No traces of a spirit of persecution can be discovered in her character. Nothing can exceed the sweetness of disposition with which she reproved her brother, when governor of Cognac, for having treated the Calvinists with needless severity. "Have pity," she wrote, "on persons more unfortunate than culpable. They hold the errors we once held ourselves, and from which violence never withdrew us. Do not disquiet them; such men must be allured by gentleness and love: Jesus Christ has set us the example." [Footnote 180] Ruvigny, a Protestant, afterward made Earl of Galway by William III., spoke of her to the king as one who had a leaning to the Reformed religion; and though nothing could be more untrue, it shows that her zeal as a Catholic could not have been intemperate. The king himself told her that her tenderness toward the Huguenots came, he thought, of her having formerly been one of them; and the historians of the French refugees in Brandeburg, Erman and Reclam, allow that she never advised the violent measures that were used, and declare that she abhorred the persecutions consequent on the revocation. The authors of them, they add, concealed them from her as far as possible, knowing that she desired the adoption of no other means but instruction and kindness. [Footnote 181] In her conversations with the sisters at Saint-Cyr, her language was always in conformity with these statements. The king, she told them, who had a wonderful zeal for religion, pressed her to dismiss some Huguenots from her service, or oblige them to enter the fold of the Church. "I pray you, sire," she replied, "to let me be mistress of my own domestics, and manage them in my own way." Accordingly, she never pressed them to renounce their errors. She showed them the more excellent way when ever she had an opportunity, and in good time had the satisfaction of seeing them all embrace the Catholic faith.
[Footnote 180: Lettre à M. d' Aubigné, 1682.]
[Footnote 181: Tome i., p. 77.]
If, then, Madame de Maintenon applauded the revocation of the edict of Nantes, she must not be held responsible for the forced conversions, the dragonades, imprisonments, and emigration in which it issued. Her approval must be interpreted in the same sense as the brief addressed to Louis by Innocent XI., [Footnote 182] in which the pontiff congratulated him on "revoking all the ordinances issued in favor of heretics throughout his kingdom, and providing, by very sage edicts, for the propagation of the orthodox faith." The immunities granted to the Calvinists by Henry IV. involved, according to Ranke, a Protestant historian, "a degree of independence which seems hardly compatible with the idea of a state." [Footnote 183] Religious dissent naturally engendered political disaffection. The Protestant assemblies in the time of Louis XIII. endeavored to establish a kind of federal republic. Six times during that king's reign the Calvinists took up arms. Richelieu maintained that nothing great could be undertaken so long as the Huguenots had a footing in the kingdom. They formed a treaty with Spain, with a view to their independence, and were regarded by the nation at large as a public enemy.
[Footnote 182: 13th November, 1685.]
[Footnote 183: "Lives of the Popes," vol. ii., p. 439.]
Zealously as Madame de Maintenon labored for the conversion of her own relatives—particularly M. de Vilette and his children—it is no wonder that she concurred with the king, the clergy, and the people in thinking that the [{813}] time was come to withdraw from the Protestants of France privileges dangerous to religion and to the state, and to concert more effective measures for their conversion. She held with Bossuet that a Christian prince "ought to use his authority for the destruction of false religions in his realm, and that he is at liberty to employ rigorous measures, but that gentleness is to be preferred." [Footnote 184] She believed with Fénelon that the religious toleration which is necessary in one country may be dangerous in another—for the mild and loving prelate of Cambray agreed at bottom with the sterner Bossuet on this subject. [Footnote 185] Whether subsequent events vindicated the political expediency of the revocation; whether the evils it produced were not greater than the good it proposed; whether those who recommended it would not, if furnished with our experience, have wished it had never been carried into effect—are questions of great importance and interest, but foreign to the purpose of this paper.
[Footnote 184: "Politique tirée de l'Ecriture Sainte," livre vii.]
[Footnote 185: "Essai sur le Gouvernement civil," tome xxii.]
We have more than once alluded to Saint-Cyr, and it is time now to give some account of the origin and nature of that noble institution, which perished with the monarchy and old aristocracy of France, on which it depended, and of which it was a support. Like most other great works, its beginnings were small. Before Madame de Maintenon was raised so near the throne, she used often to meet at the Chateau de Montchevreuil an Ursuline sister named Madame de Brinon, whose convent had been ruined. Devoted to the work of education, this lady spent her days in giving instruction to some children in the village. Her resources being very low, Madame de Maintenon intrusted her with the care of several children whom she charitably maintained, and often visited them and their mistress, first at Rueil, and afterward at Noisy, where the king placed a chateau at her disposal, and enabled her to enlarge the establishment. The daughters of poor gentlemen were then admitted to the school. The king, returning from the chase one day, paid them an unexpected visit, and was so pleased with all he saw that Madame de Maintenon had little difficulty in inducing him to extend his royal patronage much further, and provide means whereby two hundred and fifty young ladies, of noble birth and poor fortunes, might be instructed, clothed, and fed, from the age of seven or twelve years to twenty. The domain of Saint-Cyr was purchased; and twelve young persons belonging to the establishment, and destined for the most part to a religious life, were selected as mistresses to direct the larger institution. They entered on their duties after a noviciate of nine months, and were called Dames de Saint Louis. Their vows were simple, had reference to the purpose in hand, and were not binding for life. The young ladies were nominated by the king, and were required to prove their poverty and four degrees of nobility on the father's side. The final transfer of the revenues of the abbey of St. Denis to the establishment of Saint-Cyr was not approved by the Holy See till after some years, in consequence of the dispute existing between Louis and the court of Rome. In 1689, however, Alexander VIII. formally authorized the foundation, and in the February of the next year addressed a suitable brief to Madame de Maintenon, expressing the warm interest he felt in her undertaking. Madame de Brinon was elected superior for life, but, as she did not altogether second the designs of the foundress, relaxed the rules, and introduced amusements which were thought too worldly, a change became necessary. It was not without much patience on the part of Madame de Maintenon that the difficulties were at last overcome. Madame de Montchevreuil, their mutual friend, was charged with a lettre de cachet by which the king commanded Madame de Brinon to quit [{814}] Saint-Cyr. She retired to the abbey of Maubisson, of which the Princess Louisa of Hanover was abbess, and there passed the remainder of her days in honorable retirement, and in the enjoyment of a small pension. She was fond of great personages, and of playing an important part, and this feeling led to her becoming the intermediary between Leibnitz and Bossuet, in a correspondence which aimed at the reunion of Catholics and Protestants, and which, as might have been expected, produced no results.
After Madame de Brinon's departure, Madame de Maintenon devoted herself more and more to her important enterprise. As the young ladies were educated for home and the world, not the cloister, they were indulged occasionally with dramatic representations. This gave rise to two of Racine's finest pieces. Having been requested by Madame de Maintenon to invent some moral or historical poem in dialogue, from which love should be excluded, he produced "Esther," which was first acted at Saint-Cyr in 1689, in presence of the king. His majesty was charmed; the prince wept. Racine had never written anything finer, or more touching. Esther's prayer to Assuerus transported the audience. Madame de Sévigné only lamented that a little girl personated that great king. Numerous representations followed, and crowds of eager spectators, courtiers, ecclesiastics, literati, and religious sat beside the ex-king and queen of England, to hear the pure and harmonious verses of Racine recited by the young, the innocent, and the beautiful, to the richest and softest music Moreau could compose. This success was but the forerunner of a still greater. At the request of Louis, Racine wrote another tragedy the following year—viz., "Athalie;" in the opinion of French critics the most perfect of all tragedies. But the excitement attending the play of "Esther" had been too great to allow of a renewal of the experiment. The "comedy," as it was called, of "Athalie" was performed therefore by "the blue class," without stage or costume, in presence only of the king, Madame de Maintenon, James II., and six or seven other persons, among whom was Fénelon.