A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times | Page 8

goal, she was close upon it, she moved towards
it with an even step. The king still looked in upon Madame de
Montespan of an evening on his way to the gaming-table; he only staid
an instant, to pass on to Madame de Maintenon's; the latter had
modestly refused to become lady in attendance upon the dauphiness.
She, however, accompanied the king on all his expeditions, "sending
him away always afflicted, but, never disheartened." Madame de
Montespan, piqued to see that the king no longer thought of anybody
but Madame de Maintenon, "said to him one day at Marly," writes
Dangeau, "that she has a favor to ask of him, which was to let her have
the duty of entertaining the second-carriage people and of amusing the

antechamber." It required more than seven years of wrath and
humiliation to make her resolve upon quitting the court, in 1691.
The date has never been ascertained exactly of the king's private
marriage with Madame de Maintenon. It took place, probably, eighteen
months or two years after the queen's death; the king was forty-seven,
Madame de Maintenon fifty.
"She had great remains of beauty, bright and sprightly eyes, an
imcomparable grace," says St. Simon, who detested her; "an air of ease,
and yet of restraint and respect; a great deal of cleverness, with a
speech that was sweet, correct, in good terms, and naturally eloquent
and brief."
Madame do La Valliere had held sway over the young and passionate
heart of the prince, Madame de Montespan over the court, Madame de
Maintenon alone established her empire over the man and the king.
"Whilst giving up our heart, we must remain absolute master of our
mind," Louis XIV. had written, "separate our affections from our
resolves as a sovereign, that she who enchants us may never have
liberty to speak to us of our business or of the people who serve us, and
that they be two things absolutely distinct." The king had scrupulously
applied this maxim; Mdlle. de La Valliere had never given a thought to
business; Madame de Montespan had sought only to shine, disputing
the influence of Colbert when he would have put a limit upon her
ruinous fancies, leaning for support at the last upon Louvois, in order to
counterbalance the growing power of Madame de Maintenon; the latter
alone had any part in affairs, a smaller part than has frequently been
made out, but important, nevertheless, and sometimes decisive.
Ministers went occasionally to do their work in her presence with the
king, who would turn to her when the questions were embarassing, and
ask, "What does your Solidity think?" The opinions she gave were
generally moderate and discreet. "I did not manage to please in my
conversation about the buildings," she wrote to Cardinal Noailles, "and
what grieves me is to have caused vexation to no purpose. Another
block of chambers is being built here at a cost of a hundred thousand
francs; Marly will soon be a second Versailles. The people, what will

become of them?" And later on: "Would you think proper, monsignor,
to make out a list of good bishops? You could send it me, so that, on
the occasions which are constantly occurring, I might support their
interests, and they might have the business referred to them in which
they ought to have a hand, and for which they are the proper persons. I
am always spoken to when the question is of them; and if I were better
informed, I should be bolder." "It is said that you meddle too little with
business," Fenelon wrote to her in 1694; "your mind is better calculated
for it than you suppose. You ought to direct your whole endeavors to
giving the king views tending to peace, and especially to the relief of
the people, to moderation, to equity, to mistrust of harsh and violent
measures, to horror for acts of arbitrary authority, and finally to love of
the Church, and to assiduity in seeking good pastors for it." Neither
Fenelon nor Madame de Maintenon had seen in the revocation of the
edict of Nantes "an act of arbitrary authority, or a harsh and violent
measure." She was not inclined towards persecution, but she feared lest
her moderation should be imputed to a remnant of prejudice in favor of
her former religion, "and this it is," she would say, "which makes me
approve of things quite opposed to my sentiments." An egotistical and
cowardly prudence, which caused people to attribute to Madame de
Maintenon, in the severities against the Huguenots, a share which she
had not voluntarily or entirely assumed.
Whatever the apparent reserve and modesty with which it was cloaked,
the real power of Madame de Maintenon over the king's mind peeped
out more and more into broad