The New Student's Reference Work/Maintenon, Française D'Aubigne, Marquise de

Maintenon (măn-t’-nôn′), Française D'Aubigne, Marquise de, was born in prison at Niort, France, Nov. 27, 1635. She was brought up in the West Indies, but returned to France in 1645. When she found herself at 15 reduced to poverty by the death of her parents, Scarron the poet offered to marry her or to pay her entrance fee to a convent. He was lame and deformed, but she chose to marry him, and for nine years was the center of the intellectual society of his house. At his death his pension was continued to her, and in 1669 she was appointed governess of two of the sons of Louis XIV. At the death of the queen she privately married Louis XIV. Her influence over him was very great, and on the side of morality, and she was a liberal patroness of literature and art. She founded at St. Cyr, near Versailles, a home for poor girls of good family, in memory of her own youth, and retired to it on the death of the king in 1715. She died on April 15, 1719. See Life by Bowles.