Madame de Maintenon's campaigning life was not altogether free from disagreeables. On one occasion, writing from Dinant, [Footnote 201] she relates how they encountered more difficulty in retiring from Namur than in approaching it. They were eleven hours and a half on the road, and wholly unprovided with food. She arrived at her journey's end exhausted with hunger and suffering also from rheumatism and headache; but, it being an abstinence day, the only repast that awaited her was oil-soup. The king likewise, though throughout the campaign he dined ordinarily with all the sumptuousness of Versailles, found himself obliged sometimes to partake of a cold collation under a hedge, without quitting his travelling carriage. Warfare would be an easy calling if such were its worst hardships.
[Footnote 201: 12th June, 1693.]
In Flanders, as in France, Madame de Maintenon continued to take the most lively interest in the course of events, martial, political, and social. Proximity to the scene of action did not induce her to exceed those limits of reserve which she had long since marked out for herself. Though informed of all that happened, and forming a sound judgment on almost every occurrence, though earnestly desiring peace rather than aggrandizement, and justice rather than glory, she obtruded no views of her own in the cabinet of the king, nor even influenced the choice of generals. It was her habit of close observation, and her exact description [{823}] of all that passed, which made Napoleon Bonaparte delight in reading her correspondence, and pronounce it superior to that of Madame de Sévigné, because it had more in it. Madame de Maintenon speaks in one place of her own style as "dry and succinct;" and, indeed, were it not for the piety which constantly breathes through them, her letters would often read like the despatches of a general. She is brief, terse, sententious; her mind being evidently bent on things rather than on words. As a letter-writer, she resembles Napoleon himself more than any other French authoress. Her style is free from that vacillation, that timid adoption of a definite line, which always indicates a weak thinker and a total absence of system in the mind. Had it been otherwise, she would never have stood so high in the esteem of foreign courts, nor would princes and sovereigns, such as the Elector of Cologne, the Duc de Lorraine, and his mother, Queen Eleanor, have written to ask favors at her hands.
The reign of Louis XIV. lasted so long, that neither his son nor grandson ever sat on the throne. If the latter, the Duc de Bourgogne, had not died in his thirtieth year, he might, as the once docile pupil of Fénelon and Madame de Maintenon, have fulfilled his promises of excellence, and have left to his successors a rich inheritance of wisdom. "Telemachus" was not composed expressly for him in vain. He was born in 1682, and at an early age was affianced to Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy. The princess was at that time only eleven years old, and was, by the marriage contract, to remove to France, and be wedded in the ensuing year. The union of the young couple was celebrated in 1697, but on account of their extreme youth they continued to live apart two years longer. During this time, Madame de Maintenon undertook to complete Marie-Adélaïde's education. The instructress was worthy of a princess destined, as it was believed, to govern France. All day she sat by her when sick, and Racine read Plutarch's "Lives" to her during the pauses of the night; Bossuet was her chaplain, and Dangeau, whose manuscript memoirs of Louis' court have proved so useful to historians, [Footnote 202] was her knight of honor. She was the delight of all around, and so charmed the king, that he was never willing to part with her. But there were no apartments Marie-Adélaïde so much loved to frequent as those of Madame de Maintenon. Severe as her admonitions often were, she possessed in the highest degree the art of attaching young persons to her, and inspired them insensibly with taste, wisdom, and nobility of mind. She had long been convinced that the education of princes was conducted, generally, in such a way as to prepare them for habitual ennui. They learned and saw everything in childhood, and, when grown up, had nothing fresh to see or learn. She withdrew her, therefore, as far as possible from the court, and submitted her to the simple and wholesome routine of Saint-Cyr. The princess proved extremely docile, and her amiability was as striking as her diligence. The society of the religious in Saint-Cyr, so far from putting a constraint on her lively and winning ways, seemed only to fit her more completely to be the pet companion of Louis XIV. Her sprightly talk, her opening mind, her elegant simplicity, amused him in his walks and drives, in the gardens, the galleries, and the chase; and while he contrived daily some new diversion for the fascinating child, he could not but trace in her the happy results of Madame de Maintenon's unwearied attention. She entered into all her childish pleasures, and even played hide-and-seek with her, that she might, as she said afterward, gain her ear for serious truths, and by yielding all she could, have the better reason for withholding what would have been hurtful. At last—nor was the time long—Marie-Adélaïde quitted Madame de Maintenon's embrace, and with her heavenly counsels [{824}] graven on her memory, and given in writing into her hands, bidding farewell to the hallowed cloisters of Saint-Cyr, and to her daily gambols and prattle with the loving and indulgent king, she took her place beside her destined bridegroom, and "entered other realms of love."
[Footnote 202: They were first published entire in 1856.]
Such was the woman of whom the worldly and sceptical speak jeeringly as the proud widow of Scarron; the intriguing, austere, ambitious Marquise de Maintenon; the persecutrix of Huguenots, and the despot of her royal spouse. They know not what they speak, nor whereof they affirm; for they are incapable of estimating the character of the righteous. Outward acts are to them an enigma and a stumbling-block, because the soul and its guiding principles cannot be seen. A true Christian, such as Madame de Maintenon, is an object of faith, as is the Church, and as was the Church's Lord in the days of his humiliation. Seated, to say the least, on the footstool of the throne, and surrounded by all the pomp and circumstance of royal life, she was to jaundiced eyes but one in a crowd of princes and courtiers, and differing from them only in that she was more astute; but, seen as the prelates of Cambray and Meaux saw her—seen as her letters and conversations with the nuns of Saint-Cyr exhibit her—seen as the Duc de Noailles describes her, and "time, the beautifier of the dead," has rendered her—she was using this world and not abusing it; seeking society only to improve it, and solitude only to pray; holding all she possessed in fealty to her unseen King, and making every occupation subordinate to that of loosening her affections from earthly vanities, and fastening them wholly upon God. The Duc de Noailles' history does not end with the fourth volume. It leaves Madame de Maintenon in her sixty-second year—two-and-twenty years before her death. To trace her intercourse with Louis during the long and disastrous war with Spain, called the War of the Succession—her counsels and influence during the defeats by Marlborough and Prince Eugene, and the triumphant reprisals of Vendôme and Villars—her grief at the king's death in 1715, when she had reached her eightieth year—her retirement to the long-loved shades of Saint-Cyr—her devotion and zeal heightening as age advanced, and the celestial goal was neared—her conversations with the sisters, and her letters to the Princesse des Ursins—to analyze her correspondence, and her vade-mecum as published by M. Bonhomme—to record the pillage of Saint-Cyr, and the outrage done to her venerable remains, as to those of the royal dead in St. Denis, by the frantic revolutionists of 1792—would supply ample materials for another article, but would only confirm the views already formed of her prevailing character and principles. Enough, perhaps, has been said to place our readers on their guard against the malice and fictions of the Duc de Saint-Simon and a host of detractors who rely too readily on his word, and to dispose them favorably toward a most judicious and remarkable history, which does honor to the French Academy and the illustrious house of de Noailles.
From All The Year Round.
A DUBLIN MAY MORNING.
When I look down on this gay May morning from a window into Great Sackville street, where there is a huge column to Admiral Nelson, and a golden shop-front board dedicated to O'Connell, on the site for his statue, and which is by-and-by to be made into a French boulevard and planted with trees—I say, on this May morning it is easy to see that one of the many great days for Ireland has come round once more. For the crowds in the great thoroughfares, and the "boys" sitting on the bridges, and the flags and streamers, and the rolling carriages, and the general air of busy idleness, tell me that a great festival is toward; and placards in fiercely carbuncled letters proclaim in an angry fit of St. Anthony's fire that the Prince of Wales is to "OPEN" something: which something a still greater scorbutic operation of type tells us is THE DUBLIN EXHIBITION OF 1865.