The Catholic World Volume I Part 118

Bareges 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 f.a.gon 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 friends.h.i.+p; 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 ill.u.s.trious grandfather, Agrippa d'Aubigne, 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 circ.u.mstances should permit. She corresponded regularly with the Abbe 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 Sevigne 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 G.o.d 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 d.u.c.h.ess, 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 pa.s.sed 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 Valliere, 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 pa.s.sionately 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]

[Footnote 172: _Gabourd, "Histoire de France," tome_ xiv., p. 453, note. ]

[Footnote 173: _"Duc de Noailles," tome_ ii., p. 28.]

After the peace of Nimeguen, Louis XIV., having seen his enterprises everywhere crowned with victory, became intoxicated with his own greatness, and arrogant toward foreign powers. But the counsels of Madame de Maintenon tended to restrain his ambition and modify the defiant tone of his government. She well knew that such an att.i.tude, beside being wrong in itself, was the certain forerunner of formidable coalitions. However lightly she might have thought of the Prince of Orange, if singly matched with the greatest potentate of Europe, she wisely judged his talents and prowess capable of inflicting great injury on France if he were in union with exasperated allies. While her hand thus nearly touched the helm of state, it was busy as ever in dispensing private charities; and it was about this time also that she founded an establishment at Rueil which was the origin of "Saint-Cyr."

"For the first time," she said, in a letter to her brother, [Footnote 174] "I am happy."

[Footnote 174: 20th February, 1682.]

In 1683 the queen died, and Louis, who had become convinced of her merits too late, wept over her when expiring and said, "It is the first trouble she has ever caused me." Madame de Maintenon, who had staid with her to the last, was about to retire, when the Duc de la Rochefoucauld, taking her by the arm, drew her toward the king, saying, "It is no time, madame, to leave him: he needs you in his present condition." Her position at court was now very embarra.s.sing.

She was aware of the king's predilections, and he was no less persuaded that she could be attached to him by none but virtuous ties.

The dauphiness requested her to accept the place of lady of honor, but she steadily refused. Was it indeed that she aspired higher? Could she fancy for one moment that Louis would exalt her to the rank of his wife? An anecdote related by Madame de Caylus would lead us to suppose that the thought had crossed her mind, and that the king himself had perhaps given her some pledge of his intentions. Madame de Caylus was astonished at her declining a post of such high dignity. "Would you,"

asked her aunt, "rather be the niece of a lady of honor, or the niece of one who refused to be such?" Madame de Caylus replied that she should look upon her who refused as immeasurably higher than her who accepted: on which Madame de Maintenon kissed her. She had given the right answer. Madame de Montespan was still at court with her children, but her day was gone by; and she whose silent influence had wrought her overthrow never triumphed over her, and even deemed it prudent to abstain from any overt attempt to prevent the king's seeing her.

The decorations at Versailles were at this time conducted on such a scale as to make that spot one of the wonders of the world. All Europe was curious to see its gardens or read of their matchless splendor.

Its fountains and cascades were never to be silent, night or day, and the waters of the Eure were to supply them by means of a ca.n.a.l and aqueduct more than fourteen leagues in length. {809} Twenty-two thousand men worked on the line, which traversed the estate and valley of Maintenon. The aqueduct was there supported by magnificent arcades, and its entire cost, without counting purchase of land, was about nine millions of francs. To the town of Maintenon the "very powerful and pious" lady who bore its name was a great benefactress. She obtained for it fairs and markets, and founded in it a hospital and schools.

She rebuilt, entirely at her own cost, the church and presbytery, as well as those of two adjoining parishes. She brought thither Normans and Flemings to teach the villagers how to weave, and distributed abundant alms to the poor and infirm. The king staid at her chateau repeatedly, and inspected the works that were rapidly advancing among the hills. Racine also was her guest about this period, and was charmed with his visit. Here, too, in the very house where Charles X., and with him the direct Bourbon line, afterward ceased to reign, was probably fixed that remarkable marriage of which we shall have much to record.

Madame de Maintenon was still beautiful, though in her fiftieth year.

She was three years older than the king, and the influence she exerted over him was no matter of surprise to those who were used to watch her radiant eyes and face beaming with animation and intelligence. Severe virtue gave additional dignity to her distinguished and graceful manners, and, while she yielded to none in conversational powers, she was also a good listener. The proud king found in her one to whom he could bow without humiliation, and her conquest of his heart was a signal triumph of moral worth. The marriage was private, and the secrecy so well preserved that its date cannot be ascertained. It is supposed to have taken place in 1685, and was celebrated by the Archbishop of Paris, in the presence of Pere la Chaise; Bontemps, a valet-de-chambre, who served the ma.s.s; and M. de Montchevreuil, Madame de Maintenon's intimate friend. A union satisfactory to her conscience was all she required, and this being obtained, she took the utmost pains to prevent the matter becoming public. The court remained for some time in ignorance of the marriage; but the fact is beyond all doubt, and is dwelt on with little disguise by the Bishop of Chartres, in letters to the king and his wife, and by Bourdaloue in his private instructions to the latter. While Saint-Simon denounces it as "so profound a humiliation for the proudest of kings that posterity will never credit it," Voltaire, with more good sense, maintains that Louis in this marriage in no degree compromised his dignity, and that the court, never having any certainty on the subject, respected the king's choice without treating Madame de Maintenon as queen. [Footnote 175]

There is not the slightest proof that Louis ever contemplated sharing his throne with her openly, and still less that her ambition extended so far. In the pa.s.sage we quoted from Macaulay the reader will have observed that he introduces the fable with "It was said." He is, in fact, there following Saint-Simon and the Abbe de Choisy, [Footnote 176] whose "Memoirs" are, in this particular, altogether at variance with Madame de Maintenon's character as revealed in her letters, with the modesty and reserve which distinguished her in so high a station, and with the impenetrable silence she always observed with regard to the fact of the king being her husband. [Footnote 177]

[Footnote 175: _"Siecle de Louis XIV.," tome_ ii.]

[Footnote 176: _Livre_ vii.]

[Footnote 177: _"Duc de Noailles," tome_ ii., pp. 131-2.]

Though living in the midst of the court, her elevation was, as Voltaire says, nothing but a retreat. She restricted her society to a small number of female friends, and devoted herself almost exclusively to the king. No distinction marked her in public, except that she occupied in chapel a gilded tribune made for the queen. {810} Louis spoke of her as _Madame_, and if the Abbe de Choisy may be trusted, Bontemps, the valet, addressed her in private as "your majesty." She was seldom seen in the reception-halls, but the king pa.s.sed all the time that was not occupied with public affairs in her apartment. He rose at eight, surrounded by his officers; as soon as dressed, he was closeted with his ministers, with whom he remained till midday; at half-past twelve he heard ma.s.s, and in pa.s.sing and repa.s.sing through the grand gallery, to which the public was admitted, might be addressed by any one who asked permission of the captain of his guards. After ma.s.s, he visited Madame de Montespan daily till the year 1691, [Footnote 178] and staid with her till dinner was announced.

This was ordinarily about half-past one. Madame de Maintenon, though she supped in her own room, dined always at the king's table, sitting opposite him. Then followed shooting in the park, which was his favorite amus.e.m.e.nt. Sometimes he hunted the stag, the wolf, or the wild boar; but from the time he dislocated his arm in 1683, through his horse's stumbling over a rabbit-burrow, he seldom went to the chase mounted, but in a calash, which he drove himself, with some ladies, and very often Madame de Maintenon. Banquets were spread in the woods, and in the summer evenings gondolas with music plied on the ca.n.a.l, and Madame de Maintenon's place was always in that of the king.

At six or seven he returned home, and worked or amused himself till ten, the hour for supper; after which he pa.s.sed an hour with his children, lawful and legitimized, his brother sitting in an arm-chair like himself, the dauphin and the other princes standing, and the princesses on tabourets. During winter at Versailles, a ball, a comedy, or an _appartement_ followed every evening in regular succession. The _appartement_ was an a.s.sembly of the entire court, and sometimes ended with dancing, after music, chess, billiards, and all sorts of games.

[Footnote 178: _"Duc de Noailles" tome_ ii., p. 147, note. ]

There was nothing in Madame de Maintenon's temper opposed to the ceaseless festivities of Versailles, Marly, and Fontainebleau. She heightened them, indeed, by the n.o.ble pleasures of the mind, which her influence could not fail to introduce. Her style of dress was exquisite, and elderly beyond what her age required; and while she treated all around her with the utmost attention, she was altogether free from airs of importance. She rose between six and seven, went straight to ma.s.s, and communicated three or four times a week. While she was dressing, one of her attendants read the New Testament or the "Imitation of Jesus Christ;" and during the rest of the day her movements were regulated by those of the king. Whenever she was at liberty, she pa.s.sed her mornings at Saint-Cyr, and Louis came to her regularly several hours before supper. She never went to him except when he was ill. Her income amounted to nearly four thousand pounds a year of our money; and of this the larger part was given to the poor.

In vain the members of her family looked to her for promotion, in vain they reproached her with forgetting the claims of kindred: "I refer you, madam," she wrote to the Princesse des Ursins, "to the valley of Josaphat to see whether I have been a bad kinswoman. I may be deceived, but I believe I have done as I ought, and that G.o.d has not placed me where I am to persecute him continually for whom I wish to procure that repose which he does not enjoy. No, madam, it is only in the vale of Josaphat that the reasons for my conduct toward my relatives will be apparent. Meanwhile, I conjure you not to condemn me." [Footnote 179]

[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. Circ.u.mstances 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 friends.h.i.+ps, 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, pet.i.tions, 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'Aubigne; "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 wors.h.i.+p 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 antic.i.p.ations; 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 a M. d' Aubigne_, 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 a.s.semblies 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 Fenelon 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 tiree 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 n.o.ble inst.i.tution, 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 n.o.ble 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 inst.i.tution. 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 n.o.bility 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 amus.e.m.e.nts 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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.suerus transported the audience.

Madame de Sevigne 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 cla.s.s,"

without stage or costume, in presence only of the king, Madame de Maintenon, James II., and six or seven other persons, among whom was Fenelon.

In the midst of such amus.e.m.e.nts, 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 Fenelon were frequently invited to address the young people. One of the sermons thus delivered is found in the works of Bossuet, but the original ma.n.u.script 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 Fenelon. [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 pa.s.sion 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, inst.i.tutions 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 amus.e.m.e.nt.

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 Fenelon, 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 inst.i.tution.

Her ma.n.u.scripts 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, pa.s.sive prayer, and that entire abandonment of one's self to G.o.d which exempts us from caring about anything, and even from being anxious about our own salvation. [Footnote 187] Fenelon, 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 Fenelon.]

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 a.s.sist in extinguis.h.i.+ng the nascent error, while Fenelon, 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. Fenelon, 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 Fenelon 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 Fenelon's errors. The temper and ability with which Fenelon pleaded his cause began to enlist public opinion in his favor. He utterly disclaimed all partic.i.p.ation 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 Fenelon 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 princ.i.p.ally 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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, n.o.body knew why, the architect Mansart; she, with Pere {817} la Chaise, had instigated the persecution of the Protestants; she had set fire to the chateau of Luneville; 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. G.o.d 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 Conde 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 n.o.blest 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 Flechier and Fleury; there La Fontaine, Boileau, and Moliere; there Rapin and Huet, La Bruyere 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 Conde. There, too, after the general's death, she saw her former pupil, the king's daughter, Mademoiselle de Nantes, espoused to Conde's grandson; and thus, as time went on, she watched the career of those whom she had educated, and who formed the more n.o.ble alliances because the king had raised them to the rank of royal princesses.