In the midst of such amusements, pride and frivolity crept into Saint-Cyr, and Madame de Maintenon became convinced that she had allowed its pupils more freedom than they could enjoy without abuse. Reform was indispensable. The Dames de Saint Louis took monastic vows under the rule of St. Augustin. No effort was spared to inculcate piety and make religion loved. Bossuet and Fénelon were frequently invited to address the young people. One of the sermons thus delivered is found in the works of Bossuet, but the original manuscript is said to be in the handwriting of the Archbishop of Cambray. It bears, in fact, the impress of their twofold genius, but the pathos of its style stamps it as more peculiarly the production of Fénelon. [Footnote 86]
[Footnote 186: "Duc de Noailles," tome iii., p. 140.]
The Duc de Saint-Simon, incapable of mastering ideas of a religious order, carps and jeers at Madame de Maintenon as one who thought herself an "universal abbess." Those who carefully examine the annals of Saint-Cyr, and weigh the difficulties that arose from the various characters of the superiors chosen, the tendency at one time to relax and at another to overstrain the religious education of the pupils, will arrive at the conclusion that few ladies in an exalted position, and in the midst of all that is most worldly, ever possessed so much of that wise and loving spirit of government which should distinguish an abbess, as the wife, friend, companion, and counsellor of Louis XIV. One might almost say that Saint-Cyr was the passion of her life. When at Versailles she went there daily, and often arrived at six in the morning. The young ladies, scarcely yet awake, had the joy of seeing her beloved and [{815}] revered figure among them in the sleeping apartments; and she frequently helped to dress the little ones and comb their hair, with unaffected and maternal kindness. The unremitting attention she gave to the establishment was soon rewarded, and its beneficial effects on society were placed beyond all doubt. The pupils and mistresses alike of Saint-Cyr were held in great esteem, and many of them, scattered through the kingdom, filled important educational and conventual posts; while in Hungary, Austria, Russia, and the Milanese, institutions were formed on its model. By interesting the king in its details, and inducing him to visit it very often, Madame de Maintenon partly secured the other great aim of her existence, namely, his amusement.
Of all the errors that have, from time to time, insinuated themselves into the minds of Catholics, none has worn a more plausible and poetic aspect than Quietism. It crept into Saint-Cyr under the auspices of Madame de la Maisonfort, a person of a peculiarly imaginative and mystic temperament. She discoursed with like fluency with Racine and Fénelon, and always appeared brimful of intelligence and devotional feelings. Madame de Maintenon had received her as a friend, and hailed with delight her resolution to adopt a religious habit and become one of the Dames de Saint Louis. She made her profession in 1692, and by moderating her vivacity for a time deceived others, and perhaps herself also. Errors akin to those of Molinos were then spreading fast, and Madame Guyon, their chief propagandist, happened to be a relation of Madame de la Maisonfort. When the former lady was arrested for the first time in 1688, her kinswoman and Madame de Maintenon interceded for her. After this she often visited Saint-Cyr, and gradually became intimate with the ladies engaged in the institution. Her manuscripts were eagerly read, and a chosen few who were first initiated in their mysteries inoculated others with the subtle poison, until all the novices, one confessor, the lay-sisters, and many under instruction, abandoning themselves, as they believed, to the sole guidance of the Holy Spirit, practiced all kinds of mystic devotion, talked incessantly the pious jargon of Quietism, looked down upon those who could not embrace the new tenets, and strangely forgot their vows of obedience to superiors. Nothing was heard but the praises of pure love, holy indifference, inactive contemplation, passive prayer, and that entire abandonment of one's self to God which exempts us from caring about anything, and even from being anxious about our own salvation. [Footnote 187] Fénelon, by his intimacy with Madame Guyon, whose director he was, lent life and vigor to these extravagant ideas.
[Footnote 187: Madame Guyon herself disowned many of the monstrous conclusions of the Quietists, while her own opinions were in excess of those of Fénelon.]
His elevation to the see of Cambray, in 1695, was regarded by them as the triumph of their cause, and Saint-Cyr bade fair to rival Port Royal as a stronghold of suspected tenets. But episcopal authority interfered at last, and through the remonstrances of the Bishop of Chartres, Madame Guyon was dismissed, and her books were forbidden. She continued, however, to correspond with the inmates of Saint-Cyr; and when, in December, 1695, she was imprisoned anew, they exhorted each other to remain firm and endure the coming persecution. Bossuet himself, at the request of Madame de Maintenon, now fully alive to the danger, came to assist in extinguishing the nascent error, while Fénelon, on the contrary, defended his own and Madame Guyon's opinions from what he considered to be exaggerated charges, and wrote his famous "Maximes des Saints" in opposition to Bossuet's "Etats d' Oraison." It is a question whether Bossuet was not led, in the zeal of his antagonism, to make indefensible statements of a different tendency. Fénelon, in fact, charged him with so doing, and the spirit [{816}] displayed by the Bishop of Meaux in defending himself and prosecuting the condemnation of his former friend, does not present the most pleasing incident in the great Bossuet's career. Perhaps Fénelon has won more glory by his ready and humble submission to the ultimate decision of the Holy See than has Bossuet by his zeal in procuring a just censure on Fénelon's errors. The temper and ability with which Fénelon pleaded his cause began to enlist public opinion in his favor. He utterly disclaimed all participation in the errors of Quietism, and said he could easily have calmed the heated minds of the sisters of Saint-Cyr, and have brought them in all docility under their bishop's yoke. [Footnote 188] But Bossuet invoked the authority of the king, the decision of his brother prelates, and the judgment of the Holy See. The Bishop of Chartres, on making a personal inquiry into the state of things, required that not only Madame Guyon's writings, but those of Fénelon himself, should be delivered into his hands. Whatever the merits of the question in other respects, and whatever opinion may be formed of the respective teaching of these two great men, there can be no doubt that the "Maximes des Saints" had fostered prevailing errors. The king expressed great displeasure at the course events had taken, and by a lettre de cachet in 1698 ordered Madame de la Maisonfort and another lady to quit the establishment, and all other infected persons to be removed. They passed the night in tears in the superior's apartment; and the next day Madame de Maintenon come to console the community for their loss. If she erred at all throughout this perplexing affair, it was by over-indulgence and by forbearing too long. When her duty became clear and imperative, she was never undecided, nor showed any inclination to encourage novelties in religion.
[Footnote 188: "Duc de Noailles," tome iii., p. 241.]
A history of Madame de Maintenon, however detailed, must always be wanting in those personal traits which distinguish most striking biographies, and this for the simple reason that her habits and disposition were retiring, and her daily effort was to throw a veil over herself. That her influence in the long run was enhanced by this modesty, no one can doubt; yet it is not on that account the less true, that in the scenes through which she passed it is difficult to seize and depict her individually. We must, nevertheless, endeavor to give some idea of her relations with the royal family, by some of whom she was beloved, by others hated, and by all held in high consideration. Monsieur, the king's brother, liked and respected her for Louis' sake, to whom he was sincerely attached; but it was far otherwise with Madame. A Bavarian by birth, she was completely German in her tastes, and in the midst of Parisian splendor sighed for her home beyond the Rhine. She was, she said, a hermit in a crowd, and passed her days in utter loneliness. She was a Protestant at heart, intensely masculine, and had little sympathy with Madame de Maintenon's quiet mode of life. So fond was she of the chase, that she continued to follow it, though she had been thrown from her horse six-and-twenty times. Madame de Maintenon was her special aversion, and this antipathy arose principally from her national prejudices against unequal marriages. The king's wife was, in her view, an upstart, and the credit she had obtained at court did not diminish this impression. She spoke with contempt of her piety as mere hypocrisy, and laid to her charge every species of enormity. She had pandered to the dauphin's profligacy; killed the dauphiness by means of her accoucheur; led the young Duchess of Bourgogne into sin; monopolized corn during a famine to enrich herself; and never dreamed of anything but her own pleasures and ambition; she had poisoned Louvois and, nobody knew why, the architect Mansart; she, with Père [{817}] la Chaise, had instigated the persecution of the Protestants; she had set fire to the chateau of Lunéville; and, from her retreat at Saint-Cyr, fomented conspiracies against the regent! Truly the poison of asps was under the lips of Madame Elizabeth of Bavaria. The dauphiness, on the other hand, neglected by her dissolute husband, made Madame de Maintenon her friend, and found consolation in pouring her troubles into her ear, and listening in return to her sage and tender counsels. After ten years of sickness and sorrow in her married life, she died of consumption in 1690. "See," said the king to her unworthy partner, "what the grandeur of this world comes to! This is what awaits you and me. God grant us the grace to die as holily as she has done!"
The pages of French history present few pictures more replete with grandeur and interest than the retreat of the great Condé at Chantilly. Crowned with the laurels of a hundred victories, the princely veteran there gathered around him a more distinguished staff than had ever sat in his councils of war—men who, endued with intellectual might and moral greatness, were to achieve lasting conquests in the realm of mind. Profoundly skilled himself in history, philosophy, art, science, and even theology, he loved to entertain those who, in various ways, had devoted their lives to the triumph of knowledge and reflection over ignorance and sensuality. All that was noblest in birth and cultivated in mind met together in his orangeries, and sauntered among his gardens and fountains. There the most eminent prelates of their time were seen side by side with the greatest dramatists, historians, and poets. There was Fléchier and Fleury; there La Fontaine, Boileau, and Molière; there Rapin and Huet, La Bruyère and Bossuet. There wit sparkled and wisdom shone as incessantly as the jets and cascades that rose and fell in light and music by night and day. Thither came often the entire court, and with it Madame de Maintenon, a star among stars, brilliant but retiring, to enhance the glory of the illustrious and aged chief. There, honored by the king and closeted with him daily, as at Versailles and elsewhere, she could not fail to receive the willing homage of every member of the house of Condé. There, too, after the general's death, she saw her former pupil, the king's daughter, Mademoiselle de Nantes, espoused to Condé's grandson; and thus, as time went on, she watched the career of those whom she had educated, and who formed the more noble alliances because the king had raised them to the rank of royal princesses. Never did any lady occupy a more remarkable and in some respects a more enviable position than herself. "There never was a case like it," says Madame de Sévigné, "and there never will be such a one again." She united the most opposite conditions. By her union with Louis she was all but queen, and by her admirable tact exerted over state affairs a far greater influence than belongs in general to a sovereign's consort. She had been the servant of that very king of whom she was now the helpmate; a wise instructress to his children, and a mother in her affection and care. At one moment she was acting abbess, controlling the complicated irregularities which had crept into the religious and secular economy of Saint-Cyr, and at another she was mediating as peace-maker in the family quarrels and petty jealousies of pampered courtiers, or by her sage counsels arresting the ravages of war, and rescuing harmless populations from the scourge of fire and sword. Children loved to hear her voice, and hung upon her smiles; the poor and afflicted were fain to touch the hem of her garment, for they felt that virtue went forth from her; none were so great as to look down upon her; none so lowly as to think that she despised them. Her sovereignty over others was that to which men render the most willing obedience—the sovereignty, not merely of station or [{818}] intellect, but of character of sterling worth, of wisdom learned in the school of suffering, of virtue tried like gold in the fire.
As Madame de Maintenon's talents and merits prevented her being lost in a crowd of courtiers, or in any way identified with them, so, on the other hand, her affectionate disposition kept her from being isolated and closing herself round against any intrusion of private friendship. So far from it, she had with her a select group of ladies who were called her familiars, who shared with her, in a measure, the king's intimacy, accompanied her in her walks and drives at Marly, and were her guests at the dinners and suppers she gave at Versailles and Trianon. They were in some sort her ladies of honor, though, like herself, without any visible distinction. Of these the principal were Madame de Montchevreuil and Madame d'Heudicourt, both old friends, and with them nine others, among whom were her two nieces, Mesdames de Mailly and de Caylus. To each of these a history attaches; for the constant companions of so extraordinary a woman could not but have special attractions and remarkable qualities. There were in this number those who had drunk deeply of the intoxicating cup of worldly pleasure, and having drained its poisonous dregs, thirsted for the fountain of living waters. It was Madame de Maintenon's especial care to encourage such friends in their heavenly aspirations, and lead them, in the midst of the court, to enter the devotional life. Often she called the fervent Fénelon to her assistance, and his letters addressed to Madame de Grammont are a lasting proof of the readiness with which he answered to the call. If, as all her contemporaries assure us, it was impossible to combine more that was pleasing and solid in conversation than did Madame de Maintenon—if, in her case, reason, as Fénelon expressed it, spoke by the lips of the Graces—how admirable must she have appeared when she directed her powers of persuasion to the highest and most blessed of all ends! Neither pen nor pencil can adequately recall the charms which surrounded her; but the captive heart of Louis and the unanimous voice of the richest and most lettered court in Europe attest their reality and power. In her ceaseless efforts to amuse the king, his immortal interests were never lost sight of; and if she spoke to him comparatively seldom on the subject, it was because it occupied all her thoughts. Out of the abundance of the heart the lips are often mute.