baptized in her religion, her sponsors being the duc de la Rochefoucauld,
father of the author of the Maxims, and the comtesse de
Neuillant. In 1639 Constant d’Aubigné was released from
prison and took all his family with him to Martinique, where he
died in 1645, after having lost what fortune remained to him at
cards. Mme d’Aubigné returned to France, and from sheer
poverty unwillingly yielded her daughter to her sister-in-law,
Mme de Villette, who made the child very happy, but converted
or pretended to convert her to Protestantism. When this was
known an order of state was issued that she should be entrusted
to Mme de Neuillant, her godmother. Every means was now
used to convert her back to Catholicism, but at the last she only
yielded on the condition that she need not believe that the soul
of Mme de Villette was lost. Once reconverted, she was neglected
and sent home to live with her mother, who had only a small
pension of 200 livres a year, which ceased on her death in 1650.
The chevalier de Meré, a man of some literary distinction, who
had made her acquaintance at Mme de Neuillant’s, discovered
her penniless condition, and introduced his “young Indian,” as
he called her, to Scarron, the famous wit and comic writer, at
whose house all the literary society of the day assembled. Scarron
took a fancy to the friendless girl, and offered either to pay for
her admission to a convent, or, though he was deformed and an
invalid, to marry her himself. She accepted his offer of marriage,
and became Mme Scarron in 1651. For nine years she was not
only his most faithful nurse, but an attraction to his house,
where she tried to bridle the licence of the conversation of the
time. On the death of Scarron, in 1660, Anne of Austria continued
his pension to his widow, and even increased it to 2000
livres a year, which enabled her to entertain and frequent the
literary society her husband had made her acquainted with; but
on the queen-mother’s death in 1666 the king refused to continue
her pension, and she prepared to leave Paris for Lisbon as lady
attendant to the queen of Portugal. But before she started
she met Mme de Montespan, who was already, though not
avowedly, the king’s mistress, and who took such a fancy to her
that she obtained the continuance of her pension, which put off
for ever the question of going to Portugal. Mme de Montespan
did yet more for her, for when, in 1669, her first child by the king
was born, Mme Scarron was established with a large income and
a large staff of servants at Vaugirard to bring up the king’s
children in secrecy as they were born. In 1674 the king determined
to have his children at court, and their governess, who had
now made sufficient fortune to buy the estate of Maintenon,
accompanied them. The king had now many opportunities of
seeing Mme Scarron, and, though at first he was prejudiced
against her, her even temper contrasted so advantageously with
the storms of passion and jealousy exhibited by Mme de Montespan,
that she grew steadily in his favour, and had in 1678 the
gratification of having her estate at Maintenon raised to a marquisate
and herself entitled Mme de Maintenon by the king. Such
favours brought down the fury of Mme de Montespan’s jealousy,
and Mme de Maintenon’s position was almost unendurable, until,
in 1680, the king severed their connexion by making the latter
second lady in waiting to the dauphiness, and soon after Mme de
Montespan left the court. The new amie used her influence on
the side of decency, and the queen openly declared she had never
been so well treated as at this time, and eventually died in Mme
de Maintenon’s arms in 1683. The queen’s death opened the
way to yet greater advancement; in 1684 Mme de Maintenon was
made first lady in waiting to the dauphiness, and in the winter of
1685–1686 she was privately married to the king by Harlay,
archbishop of Paris, in the presence, it is believed, of Père la
Chaise, the king’s confessor, the marquis de Montchevreuil, the
chevalier de Forbin, and Bontemps. No written proof of the
marriage is extant, but that it took place is nevertheless certain.
Her life during the next thirty years can be fully studied in her
letters, of which many authentic examples are extant. As a wife
she was wholly admirable; she had to entertain a man who would
not be amused, and had to submit to that terribly strict court
etiquette of absolute obedience to the king’s inclination, which
Saint-Simon so vividly describes, and yet be always cheerful
and never complain of weariness or ill-health. Her political
influence has probably been exaggerated, but it was supreme in
matters of detail. The ministers of the day used to discuss and
arrange all the business to be done with the king beforehand with
her, and it was all done in her cabinet and in her presence, but
the king in more important matters often chose not to consult
her. Such mistakes as, for instance, the replacing of Catinat by
Villeroi may be attributed to her, but not whole policies—notably,
according to Saint-Simon, not the policy with regard to
the Spanish succession. Even the revocation of the edict of Nantes
and the dragonnades have been laid to her charge, but recent
investigations have tended to show that in spite of ardent
Catholicism, she at least opposed, if not very vigorously, the
cruelties of the dragonnades, although she was pleased with the
conversions they procured. She was apparently afraid to imperil
her great reputation for devotion, which had in 1692 obtained for
her from Innocent XII. the right of visitation over all the convents
in France. Where she deserves blame is in her use of her
power for personal patronage, as in compassing the promotions
of Chamillart and Villeroi, and the frequent assistance given to
her brother Comte Charles d’Aubigné. Her influence was on
the whole a moderating and prudent force. Her social influence
was not as great as it might have been, owing to her holding no
recognized position at court, but it was always exercised on the
side of decency and morality, and it must not be forgotten that
from her former life she was intimate with the literary people
of the day. Side by side with this public life, which wearied her
with its shadowy power, occasionally crossed by a desire to be
recognised as queen, she passed a nobler and sweeter private
existence as the foundress of St Cyr. Mme de Maintenon was
a born teacher; she had so won the hearts of her first pupils that
they preferred her to their own mother, and was similarly
successful later with the young and impetuous duchess of Burgundy,
and she had always wished to establish a home for poor
girls of good family placed in such straits as she herself had experienced.
As soon as her fortunes began to mend she started a
small home for poor girls at Ruel, which she afterwards moved to
Noisy, and which was the nucleus of the splendid institution of
St Cyr, which the king endowed in 1686, at her request, out of
the funds of the Abbey of St Denis. She was in her element
there. She herself drew up the rules of the institution; she
examined every minute detail; she befriended her pupils in
every way; and her heart often turned from the weariness of
Versailles or of Marly to her “little girls” at St Cyr. It was for
them that Racine wrote his Esther and his Athalie, and it was
because he managed the affairs of St Cyr well that Michel
Chamillart became controller-general of the finances. The later
years of her power were marked by the promotion of her old
pupils, the children of the king and Mme de Montespan, to high
dignity between the blood royal and the peers of the realm, and
it was doubtless under the influence of her dislike for the duke of
Orleans that the king drew up his will, leaving the personal care
of his successor to the duke of Maine, and hampering the duke of
Orleans by a council of regency. On or even before her husband’s
death she retired to St Cyr, and had the chagrin of seeing all her
plans for the advancement of the duke of Maine overthrown by
means of the parliament of Paris. However, the regent Orleans
in no way molested her, but, on the contrary, visited her at St Cyr
and continued her pension of 48,000 livres. She spent her last
years at St Cyr in perfect seclusion, but an object of great interest
to all visitors to France, who, however, with the exception of
Peter the Great, found it impossible to get an audience with her.
On the 15th of April 1719 she died, and was buried in the choir at
St Cyr, bequeathing her estate at Maintenon to her niece, the
only daughter of her brother Charles and wife of the maréchal de
Noailles, to whose family it still belongs.
L. A. la Beaumelle published the Lettres de Madame de Maintenon, but much garbled, in 2 vols. in 1752, and on a larger scale in 9 vols. in 1756. He also, in 1755, published Mémoires de Madame de Maintenon, in 6 vols., which caused him to be imprisoned in the Bastille. All earlier biographies were superseded by Théophile Lavallée’s Histoire de St Cyr, reviewed in Causeries du lundi, vol. viii., and by his edition of her Lettres historiques et édifiantes, &c., in 7 vols.
