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 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FROM 
 
 The Estate of L.L. Seaman 
 
THE COURT OF LOUIS X 
 
FAMOUS WOMEN OF THE FRENCH COURT. 
 
 From the French of Imbert de Saint-Amand. 
 
 Each wiik Foriraiit l2mo, $T.3S' 
 
 THREE VOLUMES ON MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE AND THE END OF THE OLD REGIME. 
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE AT THE TUILERIES. 
 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE AND THE DOWNFALL OF ROYALTY. 
 
 THREE VOLUMES ON THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE. 
 
 CITIZEN ESS BONAPARTE. 
 
 THE WIFE OF THE FIRST CONSUL. 
 
 THE COURT OF THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE. 
 
 FOUR VOLUMES ON THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE. 
 
 THE HAPPY DAYS OF MARIE LOUISE. 
 
 MARIE LOUISE AND THE DECADENCE OF THE EMPIRE. 
 
 MARIE LOUISE AND THE INVASION OF 1814. 
 
 MARIE LOUISE, THE RETURN FROM ELBA, AND THE HUNDRED DAYS. 
 
 7tf0 VOLUMES ON THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME. 
 
 THE YOUTH OF THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME. 
 
 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULLME AND THE TWO RESTORATIONS. 
 
 THREE VOLUMES ON THE DUCHESS OF BERRY. 
 
 THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE COURT OF LOUIS XVIII. 
 THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE COURT OF CHARLES X. 
 THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE REVOLUTION OF JULY, 1830. 
 
 Four New VoluJJies. 
 WOMEN OF THE VALOIS AND VERSAILLES COURTS. 
 WOMEN OF THE VALOIS COURT. 
 WOMEN OF THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 WOMEN OF THE COURT OF LOUIS XV. Vol. I. In press. 
 
 WOMEN OF THE COURT OF LOUIS XV. Vol. II. In press. 
 
QUEEN MARIE-THERESE. 
 
irOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 THE 
 
 COURT OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 BY 
 
 IMBERT DE SAINT-AMAND 
 
 TRANSLATED BY 
 
 ELIZABETH GILBERT MARTIN 
 
 WITH PORTRAITS 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1893 
 
A^ 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1893, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IXTKODUCTIOST 1 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. The CHATEAn or Versailles 29 
 
 II. Lonis XIV. AKD HIS CouKT IX 1682 41 
 
 III. Queen Marie THERisE 54 
 
 TV. JIadame de Montespan in 1682 67 
 
 V. Madame de Maixteson in 1682 80 
 
 VI. The Bavarian Daupuxness 103 
 
 VII. The Marriage of Madame de Maintenon 117 
 
 VIII. M.adame de Maintenon's Apartment 128 
 
 IX. The Marquise de Catlds 143 
 
 X. Madame de Maintenon and the Gentlewomen 
 
 of S.\.int-Cyk 157 
 
 XI. The Dlchess of Orleans 167 
 
 XII. Madame de Maintenon as a Political Woman .. 183 
 
 XIII. Madame de Maintenon's Letters 198 
 
 XIV. The Old Age of Madame de Montespan 207 
 
 V 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER IMGE 
 
 XV. The Daughters of Louis XIV 215 
 
 XVI. The Duchess of Burgundy 229 
 
 Conclusion. The Tombs 248 
 
 Index 259 
 
LIST OF PORTRAITS 
 
 Qdee>- Makie THERisE Frontispiece 
 
 Mademoiselle de La Valli^ee .... .64 
 
 Madame de Moxtespan 128 
 
 Madame de Maistenon . 192 
 
THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 I 
 
 RARELY has a city presented a spectacle so 
 striking as that afforded by Versailles during 
 the struggle of the army against the Commune. 
 Between the grand century and our epoch, between 
 the majesty of old France and the intestine broils of 
 new France, between tlie dismal horrors of which 
 Paris was the scene and the radiant souvenirs of 
 the city of the Sun-King, there was a contrast as 
 painful as it was startling. Those avenues where 
 one might see the head of the government and the 
 illustrious defeated man of Reichshoffen, that place 
 of arms encumbered with cannons, those red flags, 
 sad trophies of the civil war, which were taken to 
 the Assembly as tokens of mourning as well as 
 of victory, that magnificent palace whence seemed 
 to issue a suppliant voice adjuring our soldiers to 
 save so fair a heritage of historic splendors and 
 national grandeurs, all filled the soul with profound 
 
 emotion. 
 
 1 
 
THE COUET OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 At that hour of anguish when men experienced a 
 but too well-founded anxiety as to what was to be- 
 come of the hostages; when they knew that Paris 
 was the prey of flames, and wondered whether a heap 
 of cinders might not be all that would remain of the 
 modern Babylon, the capital of the world, — the Pan- 
 theon of all our glories seemed to reproach us and 
 excite us to remorse. The France of Charlemagne 
 and of Saint Louis, of Louis XIV. and of Napoleon, 
 protested against that odious France which the men 
 of the Commune had the pretention to call into ex- 
 istence on the ruins of our honor. We seemed then 
 the sport of an evil dream. There was something 
 strange and unwonted in the noise of arms which 
 disturbed the approaches of this chateau, the calm 
 and majestic necropolis of absolute monarchy, whose 
 chapel seemed, as one might say, to be its cata- 
 falque ! 
 
 Even in those cruel days whose souvenirs will 
 never be effaced from my memory, I was incessantly 
 haunted bj^ the shade of Louis XIV. I had at the 
 time a desire to revisit his apartments. Thej"- were 
 partially occupied by the personnel of the INIinistrj^ 
 of Justice and the Assembly Committees. But the 
 chamber of the great King had been respected, and 
 no functionary had ventured to transform the sanc- 
 tuary of royalty into an ofiice. In our democratic 
 century I did not contemplate without respect this 
 chamber where the sovereign par excellence died like 
 a king and a Christian. What reflections did not 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 the incomparable Gallery of Mirrors arouse in me! 
 At intervals of several days it had been a hall of 
 triumph, an ambulance, and a dormitory. There, 
 surrounded by all the German princes, our conqueror 
 had proclaimed the new German Empire. There the 
 wounded Prussians of Buzenval had been carried. 
 There the deputies of the National Assembly had 
 slept in the early daj's of their coming to Versailles. 
 Sad vicissitudes of destiny! This glittering gal- 
 lery, this asylum of monarchical splendors, this place 
 of ecstasy, of apotheosis, where the pencil of Lebrun 
 has revived the splendors of paganism and mythology, 
 this modern Olympus where the imagination evokes 
 so many brilliant phantoms, where French aristocracy 
 comes to life again with its elegance and pride, its 
 luxury and courage, this gallery of fetes which has 
 been crossed by so many great men, so many famous 
 beauties, in what painful circumstances, alas! was 
 it granted me to revisit it. From one of the win- 
 dows I saw that superb view in which Louis XIV. 
 perceived nothing which was not himself; for this 
 garden, created bj^ him, filled the entire horizon. 
 My ej-es rested on this vanquished nature; these 
 waters brought hither by dint of art, and gushing in 
 none but regular designs ; on this vegetable architec- 
 ture which prolongs and completes the architecture 
 of stone and marble; on these shrubs which grow 
 with docility under line and square. I compared 
 the harmonious regularity of the park to the inco- 
 herent art of revolutionary epochs, and at the mo- 
 
THE COVBT OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 ment when the star which Louis XIV. had taken 
 for his device was about to sink below the horizon, 
 like the symbol of departed royalty, I said to my- 
 self: This sun will reappear to-morrow as radiant as 
 superb. O France, will it be the same with thy 
 glory? 
 
 I was then preoccupied with him whom Pelisson 
 styled the visible miracle, the potentate in whose 
 honor the possibilities of marble, bronze, and incense 
 were exhausted, and who, to use one of Bossuet's 
 expressions, has not even had possession of his 
 sepulchre. Has God,~-I asked myself, pardoned him 
 that Asiatic pride which made him a sort of Belshaz- 
 zar or Christian Nebuchadnezzar? "What notion does 
 the sovereign who sang with tears of emotion the 
 hymns composed in his honor by Quinault, now 
 entertain of earthly grandeurs? Is his soul still 
 affected by our interests, our passions, or is this 
 world a grain of sand, an atom in the immense uni- 
 verse, too paltry to win attention from those who 
 have fathomed the mysteries of eternit}"^ ? What does 
 the great King think of his Versailles, the temple of 
 absolute royaltj', which was to be its tomb before 
 time should have darkened its gilded ceilings? 
 What is his opinion of our discords, our miseries, 
 and our humiliations ? He who retained so bitter a 
 memory of the troubles of the Fronde, what judg- 
 ment does he pass on the excesses of existing democ- 
 racy ? Did his French and royal soul shudder when, 
 in this hall decorated with pictures of his triumphs. 
 
inthoduction 
 
 the new master of Strasbourg and Metz restored that 
 empire of Germany which France had taken centuries 
 to destroy? What a contrast between our reverses 
 and the superb frescoes which adorn the ceiling! 
 Victory extends its rapid wings. Renown blows 
 its trumpet. Borne upon a cloud and followed by 
 Terror, Louis XIV. holds the thunderbolt in his 
 hands. The Rhine, which had been resting on its 
 urn, rises in amazement at the speed with which the 
 monarch traverses the waters, and drops its helm 
 through fright. Conquered cities are personified as 
 weeping captives. This wounded lion is Spain; 
 Germany is that eagle flung to earth. Even while 
 gazing mournfully at these dazzling and ostentatious 
 paintings, I recalled these words of Massillon: 
 " What remains to us of these great names which 
 formerly played so brilliant a part in the universe ? 
 We know what they were during the little interval 
 their splendor lasted, but who knows what they are 
 in the eternal region of the dead?" 
 
 With my mind full of these thoughts I descended 
 that marble staircase at the head of which Louis 
 XIV. had awaited the aged Conde, enfeebled by 
 years and wounds, and mounting it but slowly : " Do 
 not hurry yourself, cousin," said the monarch to him, 
 " one cannot go up very fast when, like you, he is 
 burdened by so many laurels." 
 
 In the evening I wished to see again the statue of 
 the great King whose memory had so keenly im- 
 pressed me throughout the day. The night was 
 
THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV 
 
 serene. Its sweet and meditative beauty inspired 
 regret for the furies and disturbances of men. Its 
 silence was interrupted by the noise of the fratrici- 
 dal artillery which thundered in the distance. It 
 seemed to be in honor of Louis XIV. that the senti- 
 nels mounted guard in this place where he had so 
 often reviewed his troops. By the light of the stars 
 I contemplated the majestic statue of him who was 
 more than a king. On his colossal horse he ap- 
 peared to me like the glorious personification of the 
 right which has been called divine. 
 
 Republican or monarchical, France should disown 
 no part of a past like this. The history of such a 
 sovereign can but inspire her with lofty ideas, with 
 sentiments worthy of her and of him as well. He 
 struggled to the last against the powers in coalition, 
 and when that unique word, the King, was pro- 
 nounced in Europe, every one knew what monarch 
 was intended. Ah ! that statue is truly the image of 
 the man accustomed to conquer, to dominate, and to 
 reign, of the potentate who overcame rebellion more 
 easily with a glance than Richelieu with the axe. 
 
 Let the leaders of the revolutionarj"- school try in 
 vain to scratch this imperishable bronze with their 
 puny nails. The mud they would like to fling at 
 the monument will not even reach its pedestal. 
 That night when the cannons of the Commune were 
 answering those of Mont-Valdrien, the statue seemed 
 to me more imposing than usual. One might have 
 thought it animated like that of the Commander. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The gesture was somehow haughtier and more im- 
 perious than in less troublous times. Staff in hand, 
 the great King, looking toward Paris, seemed to be 
 saying to the insurgent city, like the marble guest 
 to Don Juan: Repent. 
 
 II 
 
 The profound impression which was made on me 
 by Versailles during the days of the Commune is 
 far from having been weakened since that moment. 
 Very unlooked-for circumstances caused the Queen's 
 apartments to be occupied more than a year by the 
 political administration of the Ministry of Foreign 
 Affairs. My modest work-table was placed for a year 
 at the end of the hall of the Grand-Couvert, opposite 
 the picture which represents the Doge Imperiali 
 humbling himself before Louis XIV., and I had 
 time to reflect on the strange vicissitudes, the ca- 
 prices of destiny, in consequence of which the 
 emj)loyees of the Ministry, among whom I Avas, 
 had been camped, as it were, in the middle of these 
 legendary halls. 
 
 The five rooms which compose the Queen's apart- 
 ment all possess importance from the historic point 
 of view. The most curious souvenirs attach to each 
 of them. You have just ascended the marble stair- 
 case. There is a door at your right, which you 
 enter. It is the hall of the Queen's guards. It 
 was here, at six o'clock in the morning of October 
 
8 THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 6, 1789, that the body-guards, victims of popular 
 fury, defended so courageously the entry to Marie 
 Antoinette's apartment against a band of assassins. 
 The next hall is that of the Grand-Couvert, where 
 the queens dined ceremoniously in company with 
 the kings. These formal banquets took place, sev- 
 eral times a week, and the public were admitted to 
 be spectators of them. 
 
 Marie Antoinette had submitted to this barbarous 
 custom not merely when Queen, but also when 
 Dauphiness. "The Dauphin dined with her," says 
 Madame Campan in her Memoirs, " and each house- 
 hold of the royal family had its public dinner every 
 day. The ushers admitted everybody who was neatly 
 dressed; this spectacle delighted the provincials ; at 
 the dinner hours one met nobody on the staircases 
 but honest folks who, after having seen the Dauphi- 
 ness eat her soup, were going to see the princes eat 
 their boiled beef, and who would then run breath- 
 lessly to see Mesdames eat their dessert." 
 
 Next to the hall of the Grand-Couvert comes the 
 Salon of the Queen. The sovereign's drawing-room 
 was held here, and the presentations made. Her 
 seat was placed at the foot of the hall, on a platform 
 covered with a canopy, the screw-rings of which 
 may still be seen in the cornice opposite the win- 
 dows. Here shone the famous beauties of the court 
 of Louis XIV. before the King took to confining 
 himself to Madame de Maintenou's apartments. 
 Hither came incessantly President Renault and the 
 
INTliODUCTION 9 
 
 Duke de Luynes to chat with that amiable and good 
 Marie Leczinska in whom every one took pleasure 
 in recognizing the virtues of a woman of the middle 
 classes, the manners of a great lady, and the dignity 
 of a queen. Here Marie Antoinette, the sovereign 
 with the figure of a nymph, the gait of a goddess on 
 the clouds, the sweet yet imperious aspect befitting 
 the daughter of Caesars, received, with that royal air 
 of protection and benevolence, that enchanting pres- 
 tige the wondrous memory of which foreigners car- 
 ried throughout Europe. 
 
 The nexii room is that which evokes more mem- 
 ories than all the others. Perhaps there is in no 
 other palace a hall so adapted to impress the imagi- 
 nation. It is the Queen's bed-chamber, the cham- 
 ber where two queens have died, Marie Th^rdse 
 and Marie Leczinska, and two dauphinesses, the 
 Dauphiness of Bavaria and the Duchess of Bur- 
 gundy, — the chamber where nineteen princes and 
 princesses of the blood have been born, among them 
 two kings, Philip V., King of Spain, and Louis 
 XV., King of France, — the chamber which for more 
 than a century beheld the great joys and supreme 
 agonies of the ancient monarchy. 
 
 This chamber has been occupied by six women: 
 fii-st by the virtuous Marie Th^r^se, who was in- 
 stalled there May 6, 1682, and breathed her last sigh 
 there, July 30, of the following year; afterwards by 
 the wife of the Grand Dauphin, the Bavarian Dauphi- 
 ness, who died there April 20, 1690, at the age of 
 
10 THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 twenty-nine; then by the charming Duchess of Bur- 
 •gundy, who entering it on her arrival at Versailles, 
 brought into the world there three princes of whom 
 only the last one lived and reigned under the title 
 of Louis XV., and died there, February 12, 1712, at 
 the age of twenty-six; next by Marie Anne Victoire, 
 Infanta of Spain, who was affianced to the young 
 King of France, and who lived there from June, 
 1722, until April, 1725, when the projected marriage 
 was broken off; next by the pious Marie Leczinska, 
 who was installed in this chamber December 1, 1725, 
 gave birth there to her ten childx-en, lived there dur- 
 ing a reign of forty-three years, and died there June 
 24, 1768, surrounded by universal veneration; and 
 finally by the most poetic of all women, hy her who 
 resumes in herself all majesties and all sorrows, all 
 triumphs and all humiliations, all joys and all tears, 
 by her whose very name inspires emotion, tenderness, 
 and respect, — by Marie Antoinette. 
 
 During a period of nineteen years, from 1770 to 
 1789, she occupied this chamber. Here were born 
 her four children. Here she came near dying, De- 
 cember 20, 1778, when bringing her first daughter, 
 the future Duchess of Angoulgme, into the world. 
 Custom demanded numerous witnesses at a sover- 
 eign's lying-in. An ancient and barbarous etiquette 
 authorized the people to enter the King's palace 
 under such circumstances. From early morning the 
 approaches to the chateau, the gardens, the galleries 
 of the Mirrors and the (Eil-de-Bceuf, the Salons, and 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 the very chamber of the Queen, had been invaded by 
 an indiscreet and noisy crowd. Ragged chimney- 
 sweepers climbed upon the furniture and clung to 
 the draperies. This tumult increased Marie Antoi- 
 nette's sufferings. She lost consciousness and for 
 three-quarters of an hour could not be revived. The 
 stifling atmosphere of the room made the danger still 
 greater. The windows had been listed on account 
 of the season. Louis XVI., with a strength which 
 nothing but his affection for Marie Antoinette could 
 have given him, succeeded in opening them, al- 
 though they had been fastened together ^^y bands of 
 paper from top to bottom. The Queen came to her- 
 self, and her husband presented her the newly bom 
 Princess. "Poor little one," she said to her, "you 
 were not desired, but you shall not be less dear. A 
 son would have belonged more especially to the State ; 
 you will be mine, you shall have all my attention ; 
 you will share my happiness and lessen ray troubles." 
 
 It was here also that the two sons of the Martyr 
 King and Queen saw the light of day : the one, born 
 October 22, 1781, died June 4, 1789, at the begin- 
 ning of the Revolution ; the other, born March 27, 
 1785, under the title of Duke of Normandy, was 
 afterwards styled Louis XVII. 
 
 In this truly memoi-able chamber began the long 
 death agony of French royalty. Marie Antoinette 
 was sleeping here on the morning of October 6, 1789, 
 when she was awakened by the insurrection. At the 
 further end of the chamber, underneath the panel on 
 
12 THE COUBT OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 which now hangs Madame Lebrun's portrait of the 
 Queen, there is a little door which led, through an 
 anteroom, to the OEil-de-Boeuf, and thence to the 
 King's apartments. Through it the unhappy Queen, 
 menaced by the rioters who assassinated the body- 
 guards, escaped to seek refuge near Louis XVI. A 
 few minutes later, she left Versailles, never more to 
 see it. Since then, destiny has not permitted any 
 woman to occupy the apartments of the Queen. 
 
 The 3"ear I spent in these rooms, so full of souve- 
 nirs, has left a strong and serious impression on raj 
 mind. Many a time, in winter days, at the hour 
 when lights were brought, I seemed to see, like 
 graceful phantoms, the illustrious women who have 
 loved, wept, and suffered in this abode. Between 
 the dead and the living there is more intercourse 
 than people suppose; I have always believed that 
 celebrated personages do not lose sight, from the 
 height of the eternal spheres, of those who evoke 
 their memory while essaying, as it were, to resusci- 
 tate them. Then these verses of Lamartine seemed 
 to reach my ears like a faint, mysterious echo : — 
 
 " Ah ! si c'est vous, ombres cheries, 
 Loin de la f oule, et loiu du bruit, 
 Revenez ainsi, chaque nuit, 
 Vous melez k mes reveries." * 
 
 1 Ah ! if it be you, dear shades, 
 Far from the crowd, and far from noise, 
 Return thus every night, 
 And mingle with my reveries. 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 I recalled likewise the striking words of a priest, 
 P^re Gratry : " Does not tire human race permit itself 
 to say at present that the dead address detailed dis- 
 courses to us by a conventional cipher composed of 
 physical shocks on wood? Shall we not abandon 
 these puerile illusions in order to cling to the sacred 
 foundation of presentiment and faith which lends a 
 certain credit to such chimeras? The human race 
 feels and comprehends that all connection cannot be 
 broken off between us and those who preceded us." 
 
 The society of the dead consoles the griefs caused 
 by that of the living, and there are fewer deceptions 
 beyond the tomb than on this side of it. During my 
 stay at "Versailles, I became especially impassioned 
 for the two women who had enchanted two different 
 epochs, the Duchess of Burgundy and Marie Antoi- 
 nette. Both of them paid dear for the brief ^clat of 
 their triumph : one hj an untimely death which the 
 affrighted imaginations of her contempoi-aries were 
 inclined to attribute to the effects of poison; the 
 other bj' captivity and execution. It seems a law of 
 destiny that all which goes beyond a certain medium 
 in point of grandeur and prestige shall soon be 
 expiated b}' exceptional calamities. Suffering is the 
 inevitable chastisement of all who become conspicu- 
 ous, as if the human creature were as little made for 
 glory as for happiness. Ah! how many times I 
 have been charmed, moved, fascinated, by these two 
 dauphinesses who were the ravishing personification 
 of grace and youth and beauty! I seemed to see 
 
14 THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 their faces. I thought I heard their voices. It 
 seemed a salutary proximity. 
 
 This kind of dwelling with illustrious shades; 
 this sti-ange and uulooked-for dwelling in rooms 
 forever famous; this long contemplation of a past 
 full of instruction and of charm ; this constant and 
 involuntary evocation of figures poetic heyond all 
 others, — in a word, this whole assemblage of circum- 
 stances, both singular and striking, inspired me with 
 the fii'st idea of the work I begin to-day. The ad- 
 vice of vay dear master and friend, INI. Feuillet de 
 Conches ; my conversations with the eminent curator 
 of the Museum of Versailles, M. Eudore Soulii? ; the 
 assiduous reading of the learned work which this 
 indefatigable investigator has published under the 
 title of Notice., — all confirmed me in my resolve, and 
 I have attempted to sketch the heroines who may be 
 called the Women of Versailles. 
 
 Doubtless their history is known. I have no pre- 
 tension to write new biographies of Queen Marie 
 Th^rdse, the Marquise de Montespan, Madame de 
 Maintenon, the mother of the regent, the Duchess of 
 Burgundy, the Duchess of Berry, the sisters de Nesle, 
 the Marquise de Pompadour, Madame Dubarry, the 
 Princess de Lamballe, Madame Elisabeth. But I 
 desire, without describing their entire career, to 
 give an account of the part they plaj^ed at Ver- 
 sailles, to mention with exactness the apartments 
 they occupied there, to outline their daily existence 
 in detail, to restore patiently the minutiae of eti- 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 quette, to indicate what may be termed, to employ 
 one of Saint-Simon's expressions, the mechanism of 
 court life. 
 
 What I wish to attempt is the history of the cha- 
 teau of Versailles by means of the women who 
 dwelt there from 1682, the epoch when Louis XIV. 
 definitely fixed his residence there, until October 
 6, 1789, the fatal day when Louis XVI. and Marie 
 Antoinette left it to return no more. Few periods 
 are so curious to study as this one of a hundi-ed and 
 seven years. The sanctuaiy of absolute monarchy 
 was to be its tomb, and the theatre of apotheoses was 
 destined to be also that of humiliations and afflic- 
 tions. 
 
 It is not merely the ancient memoirs, those of 
 Dangeau, Saint-Simon, the Princess Palatine, and 
 Madame de Caykis, for the reign of Louis XIV. ; 
 those of the Duke de Luynes, the advocates Barbier 
 and Marais, of Duclos and Madame du Hausset, for 
 that of Louis XV. ; of Baron de Bezenval, Madame 
 Campan, Count de S%ur, and Baroness Oberkirch, 
 for that of Louis XVI., to which we shall recur in 
 this labor. We shall also make use of the patient 
 investigations of modern science, the researches of 
 Sainte-Beuve, De Noailles, Lavall^e, Walckenaer, 
 Feuillet de Conches, Le Roi, Souli^, Rousset, Pierre 
 Clement, Campardon, Goncourt, d'Arneth, Lescure, 
 and many historians, many distinguished critics. 
 Assuredly, there are many persons who are thoroughly 
 acquainted with all these historic treasures. I have 
 
16 THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 no thought of instructing such erudite persons, and 
 I know very well that I am but the obscure disciple 
 of these masters. 
 
 But perhaps there are some worldly people who 
 will not blame me for having studied so many works 
 on their behalf, seeking through the women of the 
 courts of three kings the resurrection of a past which 
 present struggles cannot banish from our minds. 
 My desire will be to repeople these deserted halls, to 
 make the procession of the dead file by, to sum up 
 briefly the lessons of morality, history, psychology, 
 and religion which issue from the most grandiose of 
 earthly palaces. May the women of Versailles be to 
 me so many Ariadnes in this marvellous labyrinth ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 Neither Mazarin's nieces nor la grande ]\Iade- 
 moiselle, neither Henrietta of England nor the 
 Duchesses of La Valli^re and Fontanges, should be 
 considered as women of Versailles. At the period 
 when these heroines were shining in all their splen- 
 dor, Versailles was not yet the official residence of 
 the court and the seat of government. We do not 
 begin this study until 1682, the year when Louis 
 XIV., quitting Saint-Germain, his habitual abode, 
 established himself definitively in the residence 
 which he prefeiTed. 
 
 During a century — from 16S2 to 1789— how 
 many curious womanly figures will appear upon this 
 
INTllODUCTION 17 
 
 radiant scene! What vicissitudes in their desti- 
 nies! What singularities and contrasts in their 
 characters! 'Tis the good Queen Marie Thlr^se, 
 gentle, virtuous, resigned, making herself loved 
 and respected hy all honest people. 'Tis the imperi- 
 ous mistress, the proud sultana, the woman of bril- 
 liant, mocking, cutting wit, whose court is "the 
 centre of pleasures, of fortune, of hope and of terror 
 to the ministers and generals of the army, and of 
 humiliation to all France," the haughty, the all- 
 powerful Marquise de Montespan. 
 
 'Tis the woman whose character is an enigma and 
 whose life a romance, who has known by turns all 
 the extremities of good and evil fortune, and who, 
 with more rectitude than openness of heart, more 
 justice than grandeur, has at least the merit of hav- 
 ing reformed the life of a man whose very passions 
 had been extolled as if divine: Madame de Main- 
 tenon. 'Tis the Princess Palatine, the wife of Mon- 
 sieur the King's brother, the mother of the future 
 regent, ugly, correct in morals, cynical in the ex- 
 pressions of her correspondence, a frantic German, 
 railing at her new country, impersonating Satire at 
 the side of Apotheosis, exaggerating in her letters the 
 race of an Alcestis in petticoats, rustic and almost 
 Biogenic, but witty, more pitiless, more caustic, more 
 vehement than Saint-Simon liimself, strange woman 
 of the brusque, impetuous style — the style which, 
 as Sainte-Beuve says, has a beard on its chin, and of 
 which one can hardly say, when it is translated from 
 
18 TBE COURT OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 German into French, whether it most resembles 
 Rabelais or Luther. 
 
 'Tis the Duchess of Burgundy, the sylph, the 
 siren, the enchantress of the old King, the Duchess 
 of Burgundy, whose premature death was the signal 
 for the last agony of a court once so dazzling. 
 
 Then, under Louis XV., 'tis the sisters De Nesle 
 who are infuriated for the heart of the young King, 
 and who sometimes w^rangle over their conquest, and 
 sometimes unite their forces to reign in common. 
 'Tis the virtuous, the sympathetic Marie Leczinska 
 who plays the same honorable but minor part with 
 Louis XV. that Marie Thdrdse had done with Louis 
 XIV. 'Tis the Marquise de Pompadour who, in 
 spite of the subtlety of her intelligence and the 
 power of her attractions, always remains a parvenue, 
 a magician accustomed to all the enchantments, all 
 the marvels, all the refinements of elegance, but who, 
 according to Voltaire, her apologist and courtier, is 
 after all nothing more than a sort of grisette made 
 for the opera and the seraglio. 
 
 'Tis Madame Dubarry, a low courtesan disguised 
 as a countess, and destined by the irony of fate to 
 shake the foundations of the throne of Saint Louis, 
 of Henry IV., and of Louis XIV. Then, under the 
 reign which is not the epoch of scandal and which 
 is j'et that of expiation, 'tis Madame Elisabeth, a 
 nature essentially French, displaying not merely 
 courage but gaiety in the most horrible catastrophes, 
 Madame Elisabeth, the angel that heaven caused to 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 appear in the revolutionary hell; 'tis the Princess 
 de Lamballe, the gracious and touching heroine of 
 friendship and duty; 'tis Marie Antoinette, whose 
 mere name is more pathetic, more eloquent, than 
 all words. 
 
 In the careers of these women what historical 
 instructions, and also what lessons in psychology 
 and morals there are! What could make us better 
 understand the court, "that region where joys are 
 visible but false, and vexations hidden but real," 
 flie court "which does not give contentment and 
 which does prevent its being found elsewhere"?^ 
 Do not all the women of Versailles say to us: 
 "The condition which is apparently the happiest 
 has secret bitternesses which corrupt all its felicity. 
 The throne is like the lowest place in being the 
 seat of torments ; superb palaces hide cruel anxieties 
 like the roofs of the . poor and the laborious, and, 
 lest our exile should become too pleasing to us, 
 we feel everywhere and always that something is 
 wanting to our happiness."^ 
 
 A portrait by Mignard, engraved by Nanteuil, 
 represents the Duchess de La Vallidre with her chil- 
 dren : Mademoiselle de Blois and the Count de Ver- 
 mandois. She looks pensive, and is holding in her 
 hand a reed pipe at the end of v/hich floats a soap- 
 bubble, with these words : Thus passes the glory of 
 
 1 La Bruyere, D& la cour. 
 
 2 MassiUon, Sermon sur Us afflictions. 
 
20 THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 the world. Sic transit, gloria mundi. Might not 
 this be the device of all the heroines of Versailles? 
 
 The general impression arising from history is 
 that of melancholy. The life of every celebrated 
 woman is a commentary on Fontaine's line: — 
 
 " Ni Tor ni la grandeur ne nous rendent heureux." ^ 
 
 All is brilliant on the surface, all gloomy in 
 the depths. The court beauties cannot dispel black 
 care by waving their fans. There are more lees 
 than nectar in their golden banqueting-cups. Their 
 j)aint does not hide their pallor, and tears often 
 flow in torrents under their masks. Just as splen- 
 did mausoleums hide the worms of the sepulchre 
 beneath their ornaments of bronze and marble, so 
 these sad hearts, garmented with brocade and gold, 
 are abodes of secret tortures and excruciating ago- 
 nies. They can all say with Madame de S^vignd, 
 who was nevertheless rich, honored, brilliant, and 
 seemingly happj-: "I find death so terrible that I 
 hate life more because it leads me thither than be- 
 cause of the thorns which bestrew it. Will you tell 
 me then that I must wish to live forever ? Not at 
 all ; but if my opinion had been asked, I Avould much 
 rather have died in my nurse's arms; that would 
 have rid me of many ennuis, and Avould have given 
 me heaven very surely and very easil}-."^ 
 
 1 Neither gold nor grandeur makes us happy. 
 
 2 Madame de Sfevignfi, Letter of March 16, 1672. 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 Apropos of the death of the Queen of Spain, the 
 Princess Palatine, wife of the brother of Louis XIV., 
 wrote : " I hear and see every day so many villanous 
 things that it disgusts me with life. You have good 
 reason to say that the good Queen ds now happier 
 than we are, and if any one would do me, as to her 
 and her mother, the service of sending me in twenty- 
 four hours from this world to the other, I would cer- 
 tainly bear them no. ill will."^ 
 
 Madame de Montespan was ill at ease even before 
 that hour of great expiations when she was obliged, 
 trembling with rage, to descend the marble staircase 
 of Versailles, never again to mount it. As in the 
 fairy tales, grand palaces, carriages with six horses, 
 diamonds, and splendid attire sprang up under the 
 feet of the resplendent favorite. And yet at the 
 same time, Madame de S^vign4, always a skilled 
 observer, wrote concerning the triumphant mistress 
 who was the object of all favors and idolatries : " The 
 attachment is still extreme, enough has been made 
 of it to annoy the cur^ and every one else, but per- 
 haps not enough for her, for there is something sad 
 underneath her external triumph."^ 
 
 The rival who, contrary to all expectation, sup- 
 planted Madame de Montespan; the prodigiously 
 clever woman who, according to a very jus't expres- 
 sion of M. Capefigue, was for so many years the sick- 
 
 1 Letters of the Princess Palatine, March 20, 1689. 
 
 2 Madame de SSvignfi, Letter o£ July 31, 1675. 
 
22 THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 nurse of a soul worn out with pride, love, and glory; 
 Madame de Maintenon wrote in the midst of her 
 own splendor to Madame de La Maisonfort: "Why 
 cannot I give, you my experience! Why cannot I 
 make you s'qq the ennui which devours the great, and 
 tlie troubles that fill their days! Do you not see 
 that I am dying of sadness in a fortune which could 
 not be easily imagined? I have been young and 
 pretty; I have enjoyed pleasures; I have spent years 
 in intellectual intercourse ; I have arrived at favor, 
 and I protest to j'ou, my dear child, that all condi- 
 tions leave a frightful void." 
 
 Again it is Madame de Maintenon who said to her 
 brother. Count d'Aubign^: "I can hold out no 
 longer; I would like to be dead." It is she who, 
 summing up all the phases of her surprising ca- 
 reer, wrote to Madame de Caylus two yeare before 
 her death: "One atones heavily for the pleasures 
 and intoxication of youth. I find, in looking back 
 at my life, that, since the age of twenty-two, which 
 was the beginning of my fortune, I have not had a 
 moment free from sufferings, and that they have 
 constantly increased." ^ 
 
 The women of the reign of Louis XV. afford no 
 
 fewer subjects for philosophical reflections. These 
 
 - pretended mistresses-, who in reality are only slaves, 
 
 seem to present themselves one after another like 
 
 1 Letter of Madame de Maintenon to Madame de Caylus, April 
 19, 1771. 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 humble penitents who come to make their apologies 
 to history and, like the primitive Christians, to 
 reveal publicly the miseries, vexations, and remorses 
 of their souls. Thej' tell us what their doleful suc- 
 cesses amounted to. Even while their triumphal 
 chariot made its way through a crowd of flatterers, 
 their conscience hissed cruel words into their ears. 
 Like actresses before a whimsical and variable public, 
 they were always fearing lest the applause might 
 change into uproar, and it was with terror underly- 
 ing their apparent coolness that they continued to 
 play their sorrj' part. 
 
 Do not all the favorites seem to unite in repeating 
 to us with Massillon: "Is it not true that the way 
 of the world and the passions is yet more painful 
 than that of the Gospel, and that the kingdom of 
 hell, if one may say so, suffers still more violence 
 than that of heaven?" If, among these mistresses 
 of the King, there were a single one who had enjoj^ed 
 her shameful triumphs in peace, who had called her- 
 self happy in the midst of her luxury and splendor, 
 one might have concluded that, from a merely human 
 point of view, it is possible to find happiness in 
 vice. But no; there is not even one. The Duch- 
 ess de Chateauroux and the Marquise de Pompadour 
 are not happier than the Duchess de La Valli^re and 
 the Marquise de Montespan. " 'O my God,' cried 
 Saint Augustine, 'Thou hast ordained it, and it has 
 never failed to happen, that every soul that is in dis- 
 order shall be its own torment. If we taste in it 
 
24 TUB COURT OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 certain moments of felicity, it is an intoxication 
 which does not last. The worm of conscience is not 
 dead; it is only benumbed. The alienated reason 
 presently returns, and with it return bitter troubles, 
 gloomy thoughts, and cruel anxieties. ' " ^ 
 
 Unfortunate victim of a roy^l caprice, the young 
 Duchess de Chateauroux, who lived but a day, " like 
 the flowei-s of the field," condenses into her brief but 
 tempestuous career all the miseries and deceptions 
 of vanity, all the tortures and anguish of physical 
 and moral pain. Madame de Pompadour at the 
 height of her favor is steeped in melanchol3^ Her 
 lady's maid, Madame du Hausset, the confidant of 
 her perpetual anxieties, said to her with sincere 
 commiseration: "I pity you, Madame, while every 
 one else is envying you," and the Marquise, satiated 
 with false pleasures, tormented with real sufferings, 
 remarked bitterly : " The sorceress said I would have 
 time to acknowledge my faults before I die ; I be- 
 lieve it, for I shall perish of nothing but chagrin." 
 
 When she dies she is no more regretted by Louis 
 XV. than Mademoiselle de La ValliSre and jSIadame 
 de Montespan had been hy Louis XIV. From one 
 of the windows of Versailles, during a frightful 
 storm, the King saw the carriage which was taking 
 the favorite's coffin to Paris. " The Marquise will 
 not have fine weather for her journey," said he. 
 Hardly had she gone down into the grave when the 
 
 1 MassUlon, Panegyriqtte de Sainte Madeleine. 
 
INTltODUCTION 25 
 
 poor dead woman was forgotten by all. The Queen 
 herself remarked it when she Avrote to President 
 Renault: "Here there is no more question of her 
 who is no more than if she had never existed. Such 
 is the world ; it is not worth the trouble of loving it. " 
 The destinies of the heroines of Versailles are 
 not interesting solely from the moral point of view, 
 as subjects of philosophical study, and sources of 
 Christian reflections. In their historical relations 
 also they have what may be called a symbolical im- 
 portance. Certain of these women sum up, in fact, 
 a whole society, personify an entire epoch. Madame 
 de JMontespan, the superb, luxuriant, ample beauty, 
 good to show to all the ambassadors; Madame de 
 Montespan, the grande dame, proud of her birth, her 
 charms, her wit, her riches, her magnificence; the 
 woman whose terrible railleries made her as much 
 feared as 'she was admired, so much so, in fact, that 
 the courtiers said they dared not pass under her win- 
 dows for fear of being shot at; the ostentatious, 
 dazzling mistress whom the ancients would have 
 represented as Cybele, can-ying Versailles upon her 
 forehead, is she not the very incarnation of haughty 
 and triumphant France at the culminating point of 
 the reign of Louis XIV. , that France which resusci- 
 tates the pomps of paganism and envelops the radi- 
 ant sovereign -yrhom it idolizes in clouds of incense ? 
 But the pride of the favorite will be punished like 
 that of her royal lover, and for her as for him humil- 
 iations will succeed to triumphs. 
 
26 THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 The rays of the sun have no longer the same 
 splendor. The royal star which is declining has 
 lost the ardor of its fires. A sincere but sometimes 
 rather narrow devotion comes after those superabun- 
 dant sins which, to use Tertullian's expression, wish 
 to possess all the light and knowledge of heaven. 
 Madame de Maintenon, with her temperate chai-aeter 
 and style, her respect for order and the proprieties, 
 Iier pietj' which has just a hint of ostentation, is the 
 living sjaiibol of the new court in which religion 
 replaces voluptuousness. But at the side of this 
 wisdom of repentant age, this reaction of austerity 
 against pleasure, there is still the contrast of youth. 
 'Tis the Duchess of Burgundy who represents this 
 protest of gaiety against sadness, of spring against 
 winter, of freedom of manners against the restric- 
 tions of etiquette. 
 
 After Louis XIV., the Regency. After compres- 
 sion, scandal. The new epoch is troublous, licen- 
 tious, dissolute. Is not the Duchess of Berry, so 
 fantastic, so capricious, so passionate, its very 
 image? As to the favorites of Louis XV., their sad 
 history marks out for us the stages of humiliation 
 and the moral decadence of absolute power. At 
 first the King takes his mistresses from among the 
 great ladies, then from the middle classes, lastly 
 from the women of the people. He descends from 
 the Duchess de ChS,teauroux to the Marquise de 
 Pompadour, from the Marquise de Pompadour to 
 Madame Dubarry. There is a gradual diminution 
 
INTRODUCTION 27 
 
 of prestige and dignity. Adultery derogates. Vice 
 throws off all manner of disguise. And yet, even 
 under the reign of Louis XV., patriarchal manners, 
 honest and truly Christian sentiments, characters 
 which do honor to human nature, may here and there 
 be found. Queen Marie Leczinska is like the epit- 
 ome of these virtuous types. Her domestic hearth 
 is near the boudoir of the favorites, and it is she 
 who preserves for the court the last traditions of 
 decency and decorum. 
 
 Last of all comes Marie Antoinette, the woman 
 who, in the most striking and tragic of all destinies, 
 represents not solely the majesty and the griefs of 
 royalty, but all the graces and all the agonies, all 
 the joys and all the sufferings, of her sex. 
 
THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 I 
 
 THE CHATEAU OF VERSAILLES 
 
 BEFORE recalling the r81e plaj^ed hj the women 
 of Versailles, something must be said of the 
 stage on which their destinies were fulfilled, and the 
 miraculous transformation by which a dismal and 
 gloomy spot, full of quicksands and marshes, with 
 neither view, water, trees, nor land, was made anew, 
 as one may say, in the image of the great King, and 
 became a marvel admired by all the world. Like 
 those great rivers which at their source are hardly 
 more than rivulets, the existence of the palace des- 
 tined one daj' to be so splendid commeitced in most 
 modest and simple proportions. 
 
 It was in 1624 that Louis XIII. had a hunting- 
 meet erected at Versailles on a rising ground pre- 
 viously occupied by a windmill. In 1627, at an 
 assembly of notables, which met in the Tuileries, 
 Bassompierre reproached the King with not com- 
 pleting the crown buildings, saying with this in- 
 tent: "It is not His Majesty's inclination to build; 
 
 29 
 
30 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 the finances of the Chamber are not exhausted hy his 
 sumptuous edifices, unless one Avould like to re- 
 proach him with the wretched ch&teau of Versailles, 
 in the construction of which a private gentleman 
 would not take much pride." ^ 
 
 In 1651, eight years after his father's death, Louis 
 XIV., then in his thirteenth j^ear, came for the firet 
 time to Versailles. From childhood he was attached 
 to this abode, and several years later he selected it 
 as the site of magnificent festivities. In the month 
 of Maj', 1664, he caused the performance there of the 
 Plaisirs de File encnantSe, diversions borrowed from 
 Ariosto's poem, and towards the execution of which 
 Benserade and President de P^rigny contributed the 
 recitations in verse, MoliSre and his troop the 
 comedy, LuUi the music and the ballets, and 
 the Italian mechanician Vigarani the decorations, 
 illuminations, and fireworks. 
 
 May 7, the first day of the fetes, there was tilting 
 at the ring in presence of the two queens, in a 
 grassy circle formed at the entrance of the great alley 
 now called the green carpet, tapis vert. The j^outh- 
 ful Louis XIV., wearing a costume sparkling with 
 all the crown diamonds, represented the Paladin 
 Roger in the island of Alcina. After the tournev, 
 in which he was the victor. Flora and Apollo came 
 to congratulate him in chariots drawn by nymphs, 
 
 1 See, on the origins of tlie palace, the curious and learned work 
 published by M. Le Roi, under the title, Louis XIIL e.t Versailles. 
 
THE CHATEAU OF VERSAILLES 31 
 
 satyi"s, and dryads. At the banquet, Time, the 
 Hours, and the Seasons waited on the guests, who 
 were shaded by thickets of lilacs, and coppices of 
 myrtles and roses; The next day. May 8, the 
 Princesse d^Ulide, a piece in which Molidre played 
 the parts of Lyciscas and Moron, was represented 
 on a stage erected in the middle of the same great 
 alley; May 9, a ballet in the palace of Alcides, 
 which simulated its conflagration ; May 10, a course 
 de tites in the castle moats ; May 11, a representation 
 of MoliSre's FdcJieux; May 12, a lottery in which 
 the prizes were pieces of furniture, silverware, and 
 precious stones, and in the evening, Tartuffe; May 
 13, Manage forcS ; May 14, departure of the King 
 and court for Fontainebleau. Mademoiselle de La 
 Valliere had been the heroine of these fetes, at 
 which Moliere extolled the favorite's amours in 
 presence of the Queen herself. 
 
 Versailles was not yet the royal residence, but 
 Louis XIV. came there from time to time to spend 
 some days, and occasionally several weeks, espe- 
 cially when he wished to dazzle eyes and fascinate 
 imaginations by the brilliancy of these ostentatious 
 festivities which resembled apotheoses. 
 
 September 14, 1665, there was a great hunt at 
 Versailles, when the Queen, Madame Henrietta of 
 England, with Mademoiselle de Montpensier and 
 Mademoiselle d'Alen§on, rode in amazonian cos- 
 tumes; in February, 1667, a tournament which over- 
 passed the limits of magnificence. 
 
S2 TUB WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 Tlie Gazette takes pains to describe the cortege 
 of court ladies, "all admirabl}- equipped and on 
 selected horses, led by Madame in the most superb 
 vest, and seated on a white horse with trappings of 
 brocade sown with pearls and precious stones." 
 Following the feminine squadron appeared the Sun- 
 King, " not less easily recognized by the lofty mien 
 peculiar to him than by his rich Hungarian habit, 
 covered with gold and precious stones, his helmet 
 with waving plumes, and the spirited horse which 
 seemed prouder of carrying so great a monarch than 
 of its magnificent trappings and its jewelled saddle- 
 cloth. "^ Then followed Monsieur, the King's 
 brother, in Turkish costume; then the Duke 
 d'Enghien, dressed as an Indian; then the other 
 noblemen, who formed ten quadrilles. 
 
 July 10, 1668, there were new rejoicings; during 
 the da}^ a representation of the Fites de V Amour et 
 de Bacchus, words by Quinet and music by Lulli, 
 and of Greorges Dandin, plaj^ed by Moli^re and his 
 troop; in the evening a banquet and a ball; at two 
 in the morning illuminations. The circumference 
 of the parterre of Latona, the grand alley, the ter- 
 race, and front of the palace were decorated with 
 statues, vases, and chandeliers lighted in an ingeni- 
 ous fashion, which made them appear as if glowing 
 with interior flames. Rockets crossed each other in 
 the air above the chateau, and when all these lights 
 
 ' Gazette of 10C7. 
 
THE CHATEAU OF VERSAILLES 33 
 
 were extinguished, says F^libien, in terminating his 
 description of the fete, it was perceived that daj-, 
 jealous of the advantages of such a night, had 
 begun to dawn. 
 
 September 17, 1672, the King's troop represented 
 jNIoliere's Femmes savantes at Versailles, who were 
 admirees d'un chacun, says the Grazette. Bourdaloue 
 preached the Lenten sermons there from February 
 8 to April 19, 1674; July 11, the Malade imaginaire 
 of Molidre, who had died the previous year, was 
 plaj'ed there ; in August came a series of grand fetes. 
 F^libien gives a striking description of the night of 
 August 31, 1674, when, under a dark and starless 
 skj, a most unheard-of rain of lights suddenly be- 
 came visible. All the parterres glittered. The 
 grand terrace in front of the chateau was bordered 
 with a double row of lights set two feet apart. The 
 steps and railings of the horseshoe, all the walls, 
 all the fountains, all the reservoirs, shone with 
 mj'riad flames. This pyrotechnic art, this blending 
 of fire and flowers and water which made the park 
 resemble the gai'den of Armida, had come from Italy. 
 The borders of the grand caiial were adorned with 
 statues and architectural decorations behind which 
 an infinity of lights had been placed to render them 
 transparent. The King, the Queen, and all the 
 court were on richlj^ ornamented gondolas. Boats 
 filled with musicians followed them, and Echo 
 repeated the sounds of an enchanted harmony. 
 
 After the next year, great works, begun by Levau 
 
34 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 and Dorba}', continued by Jules Hardoin-Mausait, 
 were undertaken at Versailles, where Louis XIV. 
 wished to take up his permanent residence. What 
 motives determined him to abandon the chateau of 
 Saint-Germain, where he was born, where he had 
 experienced the first sensations of love, that admi- 
 rably situated chateau whence one beholds so pic- 
 turesque a forest, so beautiful a stream, so vast and 
 magnificent a horizon? Nothing is lacking to Saint- 
 Germain, neither woods, waters, nor pi'ospect. Its 
 air is keen and salubrious. It seems made to inspire 
 great thoughts, and from the heights of that unpar- 
 alleled terrace which leans against the forest, one 
 contemplates one of the most varied and majestic 
 panoramas of the globe. 
 
 Had Louis XIV. expended for the enlargement 
 and embellishment of the old chateau (that whicli is 
 still existing) and the new chS,teau (that which for- 
 merly faced the Seine and was destroyed under 
 Louis XVI.) one half the sums expended on Ver- 
 sailles, what an incomparable palace, what a marvel, 
 one might have admired! What could not have 
 been made of the new ch§,teau of Saint-Germain (of 
 which nothing now remains but the pavilion of 
 Henry IV.), that elegant chateau whose staircases 
 appear from a distance like arabesques in relief 
 encrusted upon the side of the hill, and whose five 
 successive ten-aces, adorned with thickets, fountains, 
 and parterres of flowers, come down to the Seine at 
 Pecq? How could he prefer to such a residence 
 
THE CHATEAU OF VERSAILLES 35 
 
 and such a landscape, an obscure manor built on 
 ungrateful soil, surrounded by muddy ponds, with- 
 out views, without water, on an estate which, in- 
 stead of being favored by nature, it was necessary 
 to tyrannize over and subdue by force of art and 
 riches ? 
 
 AVas it, as has been said, the distant view of the 
 steeple of Saint-Denis, the final term of royal gran- 
 deur, which rendered Saint-Germain so antipathetic 
 to Louis XIV. ? Did that steeple which from the 
 horizon seemed to be saying to him : " Memento homo 
 quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. Remember, 
 man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt 
 return," rebuke the pride of life and omnipotence 
 which overflowed in him ? Such a thought seems to 
 us pusillanimous. It would be unworthy of the 
 great King. We incline rather to the belief that 
 what Louis XIV. found displeasing in Saint-Ger- 
 main was the memory of the time when, driven from 
 Paris by the troubles of the Fronde, he had been 
 taken by night to the old chS,teau. Doubtless he 
 disliked to have the capital which had insulted his 
 childhood constantly in view from his window. 
 
 To tear, himself away from an importunate souve- 
 nir; to efface completely, even in thought, the last 
 vestiges of rebellious acts against royal authority; 
 to choose a residence which was nothing, in order to 
 make of it the most radiant of palaces; to take 
 pleasure in this transformation as being the triumph 
 of pride, of strength, of will ; to create all for him- 
 
36 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 self, architecture, gardens, fountains, horizon; to 
 constrain nature to bend beneath the j^oke and avow 
 itself vanquished, like the revolution, — such was 
 the dream of Louis XIV., and this dream he realized. 
 
 From 1675 to 1682, the works at Versailles were 
 carried on with astonishing rapidity. The grand 
 apartments of the King and the staircase called that 
 of the Ambassadoi-s were completed. The Gallery of 
 Mirrors was constructed at the spot where a terrace 
 occupied the middle of the facade, on the side of the 
 gardens. The south wing, called the Princes' wing, 
 was added to the chateau. The buildings to right 
 and left of the first court in front of the chS,teau, 
 called the Ministers' wings, were finished. The 
 large and small stables were built. 
 
 Finallj'-, in 1681, the chapel was transferred to 
 the present site of the Salon of Hercules and the ves- 
 tibule below it. April 30, 1684, Francis de Harlay, 
 Archbishop of Paris, blessed the chapel, and on the 
 6th of May following, Louis XIV. definitively in- 
 stalled himself at Versailles.-^ 
 
 The King established himself in the very centre 
 of the palace. The salon of the CEil-de-Bceuf ^ was 
 then divided into two rooms: the Bassani chamber. 
 
 I If one wishes to get au idea of the enlargements of Versailles, 
 he has only to look at Van der Meulen's picture In the King's 
 ante-chamber (room 121 in M. Soulifi's Notice du Musee). This 
 picture, numbered 2145, represents Vei-sailles as it was before the 
 works undertaken by Louis XIV. 
 
 - Eoom 123 of the Notice du Musee. 
 
THE CHATEAU OF VERSAILLES 37 
 
 SO called because it contained several paintings by 
 that master, where the princes and nobles admitted to 
 the sovereign's levee waited ; and the former cham- 
 ber of Louis XIII., where Louis XIV. slept, from 
 1682 to 1701. Adjoining tliis chamber was the 
 grand cabinet where the ceremonies of the levee and 
 the couch^e took place, where the King gave audi- 
 ence to the nuncio and the ambassadors, and received 
 the oaths of the chief officials of his household. ^ 
 The next room ^ was at this period divided into two. 
 That nearest to the King's chamber was called the 
 Cabinet of the Council, and in it Louis XIV., with 
 his ministei-s, took the greatest decisions of his 
 reign ; the other was called the Oabinet des Termes 
 or des Pemiques. 
 
 The Queen and the Dauphin were lodged, the one 
 on the first story, the other on the ground-floor, in 
 the south part of the old chateau of Louis XIII. , 
 that which has a view of the orangery and the Swiss 
 lake. The Queen's apartments ended through the 
 Peace Salon, at the Gallery of Mirrors, the master- 
 piece of the new Vei-sailles. At the other extrem- 
 ity of the gallery began, with the War Salon, 
 the rooms designated as the grand apartments of the 
 King, state and reception rooms bearing mytho- 
 logical names : halls of Apollo, Mercury, Diana, and 
 Venus. 
 
 1 Room 124 of the Notice. This room became the hedchamber 
 of Louis XIV., and lie died there. 
 
 2 Salle du Conseil, No. 125 of the Notice. 
 
38 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 The governor of the palace and the King's con- 
 fessor lodged in the north wing, that which has since 
 been rebuilt by the architect Gabriel. Beyond the 
 site of the present chapel were placed the legitimated 
 children, the princes of Cond^ and of Conti, the 
 governor of the Childi-en of France, and a goodly 
 number of great officials and chaplains. The Chil- 
 dren of France and the Orleans family resided in the 
 great south hall, opposite the gardens. Finallj^, the 
 secretaries of State, the ministers of the King's 
 household, of foreign affairs, war, and the navy, 
 were installed in the two projecting buildings in 
 front of which are now placed the statues of cele- 
 brated men. These immense constructions, greatly 
 subdivided interiorly, served as a habitation for sev- 
 eral thousand persons. 
 
 Versailles was finished. With very slight modi- 
 fications it offered the same spectacle which it 
 presents to-day. Seen from the town side, the 
 monument, though grandiose, is incongruous. Its 
 composite architecture, the noticeable contrast be- 
 tween the brick and the stone, between the primi- 
 tive chS,teau and its immense additions, have a some- 
 what astounding character. Seen from the park, on 
 the contrary, it is majestic, regular, and supremely 
 harmonious. This fagade, say rather these three 
 fagades, more than six hiindred yards in width and 
 having altogether three hundred and seventy-five 
 openings into the garden; this projecting building 
 where the master dwelt, and which throws out in 
 
THi: CHATEAU OF VERSAILLES 39 
 
 the midst of a long right line wings which seem to 
 di-aw back as if to keep at a respectful distance; 
 these thickets fashioned into walls of verdure ; these 
 reservoirs framed in precious marbles, which seem 
 like so many halls in open air, dependent on the 
 palace of which they are the complement, — all this 
 profoundly impresses the eyes and the mind. 
 
 And yet it has a great defect. Hardly has one 
 made a few steps, after descending the first staircase, 
 when the ch&teau sinks down and disappears, like 
 the sun setting on the coast. Is it not the image 
 of that absolute monarchy which, after shedding so 
 dazzling a glow, was suddenly to be extinguished 
 and disappear from the horizon? Yet in spite of 
 this fault of perspective, the edifice has a sort of 
 radiant serenity, and never, perhaps, was the gran- 
 deur of a man better identified with the splendor of 
 a palace. There is an intimate relation between the 
 King and his ch§,teau. The idol is worthy of the 
 temple, the temple of the idol. There is always 
 something immaterial, something moral, so to speak, 
 in monuments, and they derive their poesy from the 
 thought connected with them. For a cathedral, it 
 is the idea of God. For Versailles, it is the idea of 
 the King. Its mythology, as has been justly re- 
 marked, is but a magnificent allegory of which Louis 
 XIV. is the reality. It is he always and every- 
 where. Fabulous heroes and divinities impart their 
 attributes to him or mingle with his courtiers. 
 
 In honor of him, Neptune sheds broadcast the 
 
40 TUE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 waters which cross in air in sparkling arches. 
 Apollo, his favorite sj^mbol, presides over this en- 
 chanted world as the god of light, the inspirer of 
 tlie Muses ; the sun of the god seems to pale before 
 that of the great King : Nee plurihus impar. Nature 
 and art combine to celebrate the glory of the sover- 
 eign bj- a perpetual hosannah. All that generations 
 of kings have amassed of pictures, statues, and 
 precious movables, is distributed as mere furniture 
 in the glittering apartments of the chateau. One 
 inhales as it were an odor of incense. The intoxi- 
 cating perfumes of luxurj'^ and power throw one 
 into a sort of eestas}'^ that makes comprehensible the 
 exaltation of this monarch, enthusiastic over him- 
 self, who, in chanting the hjanns composed in his 
 praise, shed tears of admiration. 
 
II 
 
 LOUIS XIV. AND HIS COUKT IN 1682 
 
 WHEN Louis XIV. definitively established his 
 residence at Versailles, in 1682, the princi- 
 pal women of the court who were installed there 
 with him were the Queen, aged forty-four years, 
 like himself, born in 1638, married in 1660, long- 
 afflicted by her husband's infidelities, and now 
 happy in beholding his return to more virtuous 
 sentiments; the Dauphiness, a Bavarian princess, 
 born in 1660, married in 1680, very feeble in health, 
 gentle and melancholy in disposition; the Duchess 
 of Orleans, sometimes designated as Madame and 
 sometimes as the Princess Palatine, born in 1652, 
 married in 1671 to Monsieur, the King's brother, a 
 German unable to accustom herself to her new coun- 
 try ; the Princess de Conti, legitimated daughter of 
 Louis XIV. and ilademoiselle de La Vallidre, born 
 in 1666, married in 1681 to Prince Armand de 
 Conti, nephew of the great Cond^, a young woman 
 of exceptional grace and beauty ; the two other legit- 
 imated daughters of the King, Mademoiselle de 
 Nantes, born in 1673, and Mademoiselle de Blois 
 
 41 
 
42 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 in 1677, who Avere to marry, some years later, one 
 the Duke of Bourbon, and the other the Duke of 
 Chartres (the future regent); Madame de Monte- 
 span, their mother, then foi'tj'-one years old, already 
 at the end of her left-handed reign, but still liv- 
 ing at court in the double cajjacity of lady of the 
 Queen's palace and the mother of legitimated chil- 
 dren, but no longer bearing any sway over either the 
 heart or the senses of Louis XIV. ; and finally, 
 Madame de Maintenon, already very influential 
 under a modest exterior, still beautiful in spite of 
 her forty-seven years, on equally good terms with 
 both King and Queen, and rewarded, since 1680, 
 for the cares she had bestowed, as governess, on the 
 children of Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan, 
 by a place expressly created for her which did not 
 bind her to any assiduous service while it gave her 
 an honorable position at court: that of second lady- 
 in-waiting to the Dauphiness. 
 
 The parts played by the women of Versailles can- 
 not be understood without studying beforehand the 
 character of the sovereign who was the animating 
 spirit of this palace and who strongly impressed him- 
 self not merely on his own realm but on all Europe. 
 Never has any monarch exercised such a prestige 
 over his court; all that shone around him was but 
 the pale reflection of this dazzling luminar}^ It 
 was from the Sun-King that each woman borrowed 
 lustre, and he must be spoken of before their figures 
 are traced. 
 
LOUIS XIV. AND HIS COURT IN 1682 43 
 
 Whatever one may say, the life of Louis XIV. 
 gains on close examination. Defects and qualities 
 were alike great iu this accomplished type of abso- 
 lute monarchy, of royalty by right divine. Louis 
 XIV. was not merely majestic, he was amiable. 
 Those who surrounded him, the members of his 
 family, his ministers, his domestics, loved him. 
 
 This sovereign, intimidating to such a point that, 
 according to Saint-Simon, it was necessary to begin 
 by accustoming one's self to see him if, in speaking 
 with him, one did not wish to run the risk of com- 
 ing to a standstill, was nevertheless full of benevo- 
 lence and affability. " Never was a man so naturally 
 polite, nor with so well-regulated a politeness, nor 
 one who better discriminated age, rank, and merit. 
 . . . Never did it happen to him to say a disobliging 
 thing to any one."^ The Princess Palatine, usually 
 so caustic and severe, paid homage to his qualities 
 both as man and sovereign. "When the King 
 chose, " she says in her correspondence, " he was the 
 most agreeable and amiable of men. He joked in a 
 comical way and pleasantly. . . . Although he 
 loved flattery, he often mocked at it himself. . . . 
 He knew perfectly well how to content people even 
 while refusing their requests; his manners were 
 most affable, and he spoke with such politeness that 
 it touched their heai-ts. . . . When he acted on his 
 own initiative, he was always good and generous." 
 
 1 Memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon. 
 
44 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 To him pleasure was merely an accessory. 
 Throughout his entire reign he never ceased to 
 work eight hours every day. He wrote in his 
 Memoirs, intended for his son's instruction, that 
 for a king not to work was ingratitude and audacity 
 towards God, and injustice and tyranny towards 
 men. "These conditions of royalty," he added, 
 " which va?ij sometimes appear to you hard and vexa- 
 tious in so high a place, you would find sweet and 
 easy were it a question of arriving thither. . . . 
 Nothing will be more fatiguing to you than great 
 idleness should you have the misfortune of falling 
 into it. Disgusted with affairs in the first place, 
 next with pleasures, you will at last be disgusted 
 with idleness itself." Work, that is to say duty, 
 was a source of incessant satisfaction for the great 
 King. " To have one's ej^es open over all the earth," 
 he wrote in his Memoirs, " to learn incessantly the 
 news of all the provinces and all the nations, the 
 secrets of all courts, the dispositions and the weak 
 points of all princes and all foreign ministers, to be 
 informed about an infinity of things of which we 
 are supposed to be ignorant, to see all around us 
 what people are endeavoring to their utmost to con- 
 ceal, to discover the most remote views of our own 
 courtiers, — I know not what other pleasure would 
 not be abandoned for this one, even if solely moved 
 by curiositj"." 
 
 Louis XIV. was a supreme artist who played his 
 part of king with facility and conviction. He was 
 
LOUIS Xir. AND ms COURT IN 1682 45 
 
 also a poet in action whose existence, formed to strike 
 the imagination of his subjects, unrolled itself in an 
 uninterrupted series of grand and marvellous deeds ; 
 a sovereign enamoured of glory and the ideal, " who 
 took a delighted admiration in great battles, in acts 
 of heroism and courage, in warlike preparations, in 
 the skilfully combined operations of a siege, in the 
 terrible affrays of battle, and, in the depths of forests, 
 in the noisy tumult of great hunting exploits."^ . 
 
 On his deathbed, Louis XIV. accused himself of 
 having been too fond of war. He might also have 
 accused himself of having been too fond of women. 
 Yet he had certain illusions respecting them, and 
 sincerely believed that they had never ruled him. 
 He boasts as much — wrongly as we believe — in the 
 Memoirs he addressed to the Dauphin. "In aban- 
 doning our hearts," he wrote, "we must remain 
 absolute masters of our minds ; we must make a dis- 
 tinction between the tenderness of a lover and the 
 resolutions of a sovereign, so that the beauty who 
 makes our pleasures shall not be free to speak to us 
 concerning our affairs. . . . You know what I have 
 said to you many times about the influence of favor- 
 ites ; that of a mistress is far more dangerous. . . . 
 As the prince ought always to be a perfect model of 
 virtue, it would be well for him to avoid the frail- 
 ties common to the rest of mankind, the more so 
 because he is sure that they cannot remain hidden." 
 
 ' Walckenaer, Memoires sur Madame de Sevigne, t. V. 
 
46 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 Louis XIV. did not always succeed in putting 
 these beautiful and prudent maxims into practice; 
 but, culpable as they were, his amours at all times 
 preserved a certain poetic quality. In the midst of 
 his splendors, the great King thought the joy of lov- 
 ing and of being loved was the supreme happiness. 
 Far from wishing to say : Veni, vidi, vici, he courted 
 his mistresses patiently. He comprehended their 
 scruples, he esteemed their resistance, he honored 
 their repentance. Impassioned for love more than 
 for pleasure, he remained sentimental in his most 
 evanescent attachments. As has been remarked by 
 the Princess Palatine, if women wished to please 
 him, it was absolutely necessary for them if not to 
 love him, at least to pretend to do so. The first 
 really profound impression which was made on him 
 by Madame de Maintenon was caused by an evidence 
 of her sensibility. Seeing that her grief at the death 
 of Mademoiselle de Montespan's oldest child had 
 made her lose flesh: "She knows how to love," 
 said he. "It would be a pleasure to be loved by 
 her." 
 
 This sovereign, so often accused of cruel egotism, 
 often showed exquisite delicacy of heart. Madame 
 de La Fayette, so good a judge in mattei-s of senti- 
 ment, says as much in her Memoii-s: "The King, 
 who is good-hearted, has an extraordinary tender- 
 ness, especially for women." He desired to be loved 
 by them as much as to possess them. " For him, no 
 commerce with them could be lasting which did not 
 
LOUIS XIV. AND HIS COURT IN 10S2 47 
 
 include that of mind and soul.''^ With his in- 
 contestable beauty of face and figure, his majestic 
 sweetness, his penetrating, sympathetic voice, his 
 chivalrous courtesy, his exquisite politeness toward 
 women of every rank, and the supreme elegance of 
 manners and language which distinguished him 
 among all others as the "King-bee," he would have 
 had, even as a private person, the ability to " create 
 the greatest disorders of love."^ 
 
 He often discovered that all the fascinations of 
 riches, the pomp of thrones, the intoxications of 
 pride and power were not worth a kiss, a smile, and 
 amidst the magnificence of his Asiatic court he fre- 
 quently told himself, like a poet of our own day: — 
 
 "fitre admire ii'est rieii, I'aHaire est d'etre aime."^ 
 
 Is not the perfume of the violet more charming 
 than that of incense, and was not a tender word from 
 La Vallidre sweeter to his ear and heart than the 
 overstrained compliments of his most skilful cour- 
 tiers? But the man whom one would love now 
 would no longer be Louis, it would be the King. 
 By an admirable law of Providence, nothing that is 
 really beautiful can be purchased: neither j-outh, 
 health, nor gaiety, neither consciousness, beaut}', 
 talent nor glory, above all not love. Voluptuous 
 pleasure may be bought, and always costs too much, 
 
 1 Walckenaer, Memoires sur Madame de Sevigne, t. V. 
 
 2 Memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon. 
 
 2 To be admired is nothing, the thing is to be loved. 
 
48 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 for voluptuousness is a A'eiy petty thing. As to 
 love, all the knowledge and all the treasures of love 
 cannot acquire it. Louis XIV. is absolute master. 
 Doubtless, if the fancy seized him, almost any 
 woman would still throw herself at his head. But 
 could he find another La Vallidre among all those 
 beauties ? 
 
 1682 is the beginning of his repentance, the year 
 when the King returns to virtue, Avhen he meditates 
 seriously on the advantages of order and duty even 
 from the merely human point of view. His last 
 sensual passio:i had been for Mademoiselle de Fon- 
 tanges, who died the previous year. With her was 
 extinguished the great flame of the King's amours. 
 His affection for Madame de Maintenon will be far 
 more intellectual than voluptuous. In that com- 
 merce there will be more room for the mind than for 
 the body, and the lover will disappear almost entirely 
 to give XDlace to the devotee. The tragic destiny of 
 ^Mademoiselle de Fontanges, the rapid honors, atoned 
 for so quickly and so painfuUj'^, the tabouret as 
 duchess, the carriages with six horses, the luxurj^ 
 jewels, splendors, and then the thunderbolt, the 
 terrible death after an unfortunate Ij-ing-in, the sus- 
 picion of poison, the remark of the Abbess de Chelles, 
 the favorite's sister, on receiving her icy heart: " This 
 heart belonged to God at first; the world had gained 
 it. God lias at last resumed what was His, but it 
 was not yielded to Him without pain"; all this had 
 profoundly impressed the mind of Louis XIV. 
 
LOUIS XIV. AND niS COUST IN 1GS2 49 
 
 Since then the words of great preachers had sounded 
 more forcibly than usual in his ears, and the voice 
 of his conscience spoke more loudly than that of his 
 courtiers. 
 
 From the depths of the cloister where she had been 
 enclosed eight years already, the retreat and the 
 silence of another woman inspired him with pious 
 reflections and salutary thoughts. The Duchess de 
 La Vallidre, now become Sister Louise of Mercy, 
 had said that if the King came to her convent, she 
 would hide herself so effectually that he could not 
 find her.i But Louis XIV., penetrated with admi- 
 ration for the repentance of the sinner whose fault 
 he had occasioned, no longer desired to trouble the 
 calm of the asylum where she had sought refuge from 
 both herself and him. When she lost her brother in 
 1676, he had sent her word that if he were a good 
 enough man to see a Carmelite so pious as she, he 
 would go in person to tell her how he regretted the 
 loss she had sustained. Louis XIV. has often been 
 accused of having completely forgotten the woman 
 he had so much loved. It is an unjust reproach, if 
 one may credit M. Walckenaer.^ 
 
 According to this judicious critic. La ValliSre was 
 never more present to the King's thoughts than after 
 she had abandoned his court. Never had she ap- 
 peared so adorable to him as when the sight of her 
 
 ^ Memoirs of the Princess Palatine. 
 
 ^ AValckenaer, Memoires sur Madame de Sevigne, t. V. 
 
50 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 had been forbidden liim. He joyfully granted all 
 she asked, not for herself, but for her relatives, and 
 was glad to learn that the Queen and all the court 
 gave the pious Carmelite marks of their interest and 
 veneration. It was thus that at the foot of the 
 altar, Sister Louise of Mercy asked from God the 
 conversion of Louis XIV. and obtained it. 
 
 This sovereign, however calumniated by certain 
 historians of our day, was never a vulgar debauchee. 
 When it is remembered that at the age of forty-four, 
 being still in the full vigor of moral and physical 
 strength, he put an end to all scandals and thence- 
 forth lived an irreproachable private life until his 
 death, in spite of the seductions surrounding him 
 on every side, it is impossible not to render homage 
 to such a triumph of religious sentiment. 
 
 There was nothing in that consciousness of royal 
 dignity with which he has been wrongfully re- 
 proached, as if it were a culpable pride, which was 
 incompatible with reverence for the Divinity. Be- 
 fore all things, Louis XIV. was a very spiritual 
 man. Believing in the altar and the throne, he had 
 faith in God first and then in himself, the anointed 
 of the Lord. Heaven was his ideal, and under 
 heaven, roj-alty; the royalty, which represented the 
 right of force and the force of right, the majestic, 
 tutelary royaltj^ which, like the sun, shed the splen- 
 dor and beneficence of its beams on poor and rich, on 
 small and great. Louis XIV. had a very just opin- 
 ion of himself. So great as he esteemed himself in 
 
LOUIS XIV. AND HIS COURT IN 1682 51 
 
 the sight of men, so little did he think himself in 
 the sight of God. Better than any other could he 
 apply to himself Corneille's line : — 
 
 " Pour etre plus qu'un roi, te crois-tu quelque chose ? " ' 
 
 The sovereign who would have defied all other 
 monarchs taken together, kneeled humbly before an 
 obscure j)riest. The worthy inheritor of Charle- 
 magne asked pardon for his sins from the son of a 
 peasant. It is this mixture of Christian humility 
 with royal pride which gives an aspect so imposing 
 to the character of Louis XIV. The religious sen- 
 timents taught him from his cradle by his mother 
 constantly recurred to his mind, even in his most 
 lamentable erroi-s. When he was a child this impas- 
 sioned mother, kneeling before him, cried with trans- 
 port: "I would respect him as much as I love him." 
 But this exclamation was not an idle flattery. It 
 might be called an act of faith in the principle of 
 royalty. 
 
 The first impressions of the child were but 
 strengthened in the man. There was always in him 
 somewhat of both the sovereign and the pontiff. 
 He reigned with the same solemn gravity Avith 
 which sincerely convinced priests officiate. Soul of 
 the State, source of all grace, all justice, and all 
 glory, he considered himself the lieutenant of God 
 
 1 Dost think thou art somewhat because thou art more than a 
 kin?? 
 
52 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 upon earth, and it was in that capacity that he had 
 a veneration for himself which the great preachers 
 incessantly confirmed. Bossuet's ideas of govern- 
 ment are simply a commentary on that political faith, 
 intimately associated with religious faith, of which 
 it is the corollary. To tlie great bishop as to the 
 great king, roj-alty is not a trade, but a priesthood, 
 and a sovereign who should not have the sentiment 
 of monarchical dignity would be as blameworthy as 
 a priest who should not respect the cult of which 
 he is the minister. It was to this theorj', the very 
 essence of voyal power, that Louis XIV. owed that 
 authoritative phj^sical and moral attitude which 
 Saint-Simon styles "the constant dignity' and con- 
 tinual law of his exterior." 
 
 The ascendencjr which he thought it not simply 
 his right but his duty to exercise over all his sub- 
 jects, be they what they might, made itself especially 
 felt by those who were near him. The government 
 of his court, his family, his gynteceum, was subject 
 to the same rules and doctrines as the affairs of State. 
 In him the paternal and the royal authority were 
 combined. Nothing escaped his control. His 
 wishes were irrevocable decrees, and his son, the 
 Dauphin, behaved toward him like the most submis- 
 sive and respectful of all his courtiers. Revolution- 
 ary times may criticise such a S3'stem, but it is 
 admirable none the less. The principle of author- 
 itj', imposed on Nature herself as the genei-al law of 
 creation, is the basis of all organized societ}'. 
 
LOUIS XIV. AND ms COURT IN 1GS2 53 
 
 It is the glory of Louis XIV. to have been the 
 convinced representative, the living s3'mbol of this 
 principle; to have comprehended that where there 
 is no religious there is no political discipline, and 
 that where there is no political there is no military 
 discipline. The same theories are applicable to 
 churches, palaces, and camps. Indispensable au- 
 thority is still more precious than necessary liberties, 
 and in matters of government as in those of art, 
 beauty is impossible without unity. The entire pro- 
 gramme of Louis XIV. was a constant aspiration 
 toward the unity which is harmony. That is why 
 Napoleon, in excusing the defects of a sovereign 
 whose glory he was so well adapted to appreciate, 
 said with admiration: "Are there not spots on the 
 sun? Louis XIV. was a great king. It was he 
 who raised France to the first rank among nations. 
 What king of France since Charlemagne can be 
 compared to Louis XIV. under all his aspects?" 
 
Ill 
 
 QUEEN MARIE THBEESE 
 
 TO find among types disturbed by pride, ambi- 
 tion, and tlie love of pleasure, a face of supreme 
 sweetness, a truly Christian character, a pure, can- 
 did, angelic soul, is a veritable satisfaction, I might 
 almost say a repose to the observer. One looks with 
 composure at simplicity beneath the diadem ; humil- 
 ity on the throne; the qualities and virtues of a 
 nun in the heart of a queen; a short but Avell- 
 filled life; a rSle seemingly eclipsed, but in reality 
 more serious and above all more noble and respect- 
 able than that of many celebrated women; at great 
 moral sufferings Christianly and courageously sup- 
 ported; in a word, at an irreproachable type of piety 
 and goodness, of conjugal tenderness and maternal 
 love. Such was Marie Th^rdse of Austria, the pious 
 companion of Louis XIV. 
 
 The French monarchy has had the privilege of 
 being sanctified by a certain number of queens whose 
 virtues might be called a compensation for court 
 scandals, and who have contributed more than any 
 others to preserve the moral authority of the throne. 
 
 54 
 
QUEEN MABIE THllRESE 55 
 
 Just as under the reigns of the later Valois Claude 
 of France, Elisabeth of Austria, and Louise de Vaud6- 
 mont redeemed the vices of Francis I., Charles IX., 
 and Henry III. by their purity of heart, so Marie 
 Th^rdse may be said to have recompensed morality 
 for the injuries inflicted on it by Louis XIV. 
 History should not forget this woman in whose veins 
 flowed the blood of Charles V. and that of Henry 
 IV. ; this sovereign who wore her royal mantle 
 with dignity even while comparing it to a winding- 
 sheet; this model wife who loved her husband with 
 all the strength of her soul and never approached him 
 but with a mingled respect, fear, and tenderness; 
 this devoted mother who made it her care to move 
 the heart "of the young Prince whose mind was com- 
 mitted to the charge of Bossuet; this holy woman 
 who has proved that a palace may become a sanctu- 
 ar}', and that a Christian heart may beat under vel- 
 vet and ennine as well as under a robe of frieze. 
 
 Marie Th^r^se, born like Louis XIV. in 1638, was 
 but a few daj's j-ounger than he. Her father was 
 Philip IV., King of Spain, and her mother Isabella 
 of France, daughter of Henry IV. and Maria de' 
 Medici. Hence she was cousin-german to Louis 
 XIV. The Christian sentiments of this princess 
 who reckoned Saint Elisabeth of Hungary and Saint 
 Elisabeth of Portugal among her ancestors, did not 
 prevent her from being conscious of the glory of her 
 family. A nun who was aiding her to make her 
 examination of conscience for a general confession. 
 
56 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 asked her one day, if before her marriage, she had 
 never sought to please or desired to be loved. 
 "No," replied the Queen. "Could I have loved 
 any one in Spain? There were no kings at my 
 father's court." 
 
 Marie Therese was not remarkable from the phys- 
 ical point of view. Her Germanic rather than 
 Spanish countenance, her dull white complexion, 
 her very blond hair, her large pale blue eyes, her 
 red and hanging lips, her heavy features, her small 
 figure, rendered her neither beautiful nor ugly. 
 Still, at the time of her maniage she had not lacked 
 overstrained compliments and enthusiastic descrip- 
 tions. All Parnassus had set to work. A multi- 
 tude of French and Latin verses, in the following 
 strain, had been composed: — 
 
 " Therese seule a pu vaincre par ses regards 
 Ce superbe yainqueur, qui triomplie de Mars." ^ 
 
 " Victorein Martis prcsda, spolii isque superbum 
 Vincere qua posset, sola Theresa fuit." 
 
 But this Queen whose hand had been desired by so 
 many princes, and whose marriage had so much 
 political importance, made a silence all round her as 
 soon as she was installed in the Louvre and at 
 Saint-Germain. The timidity of her character, her 
 instinctive horror of the slanders and calumnies so 
 
 1 Theresa only has heen able to vanquish by her glances 
 This superb victor who triumplis over Mars. 
 
QUEEN MABIE TH]iUi:SE 57 
 
 frequent in courts, her remoteness from all intrigues, 
 her passionate admiration for the King whom she 
 believed far too superior to herself for her to dare 
 offer him any political counsel, all aided to keep 
 her ignorant of government secrets^ Nevertheless, 
 when Louis XIV. made foreign wars, he decorated 
 her with the title of regent. But in spite of these 
 more nominal than real functions, Marie Th4r§se 
 busied herself very little with the affairs of State, 
 and the ministers continued in fact, if not in law, to 
 hold only from the sovereign. On formal occasions 
 Louis XIV. addressed his bulletins of victory to the 
 Queen. It was she who received official notification 
 of the crossing of the Rhine. When her husband 
 was making a campaign, people said: "The King is 
 fighting, and the Queen praying." 
 
 Marie Th^r^se had not a superior intelligence, but 
 she united a great sentiment of dignity to much tact 
 and good sense. To Bossuet, who was charged 
 with the education of the Dauphin, she said : " Do 
 not permit anything, sir, in the conduct of my son 
 which may wound the sanctity of the religion he 
 professes and the majesty of the throne to which he 
 is destined." Her convictions as to the origin and 
 character of the royal power were absolutely like 
 those of her husband. She testified a boundless 
 admiration for him, and not one of the women who 
 were enamoured of him loved him more strongly and 
 more constantly. At the beginning of her marriage, 
 Louis XIV. had treated her not only with great 
 
58 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 respect, but with real tenderness. When she brought 
 the Dauphin into the world, the King was shedding 
 tears of anguish so long as the pains of her delivery 
 lasted, and at five o'clock in the morning he went to 
 confession and communion.^ In eleven years Marie 
 Th6r6se had three sons and three daughters and lost 
 them all very young with the exception of the 
 Dauphin. She endured these cruel deaths with 
 admirable resignation but with a lacerated heart. 
 
 Her husband's infidelities, concealed at first, pub- 
 lic later on, caused her nothing less than torture. 
 Assuredly it was a sad spectacle to see the King's 
 favorites forming part of the Queen's household and 
 apparently waiting on a woman of whom, under the 
 externals of respect, they were in reality the rivals 
 and persecutors^ Mademoiselle de La Vallidre, 
 maid of honor to Marie Th^rese, made her suffer all 
 the torments of jealousy and outraged conjugal loveTS 
 More than once the unhappy Queen was heard to 
 exclaim with bitterness: "That gii4 will be the 
 death of me." Mademoiselle de La Valli^re rode in 
 the royal carriage with Madame de ]\Iontespan and 
 appeared thus at the -frontiers, the camps, and the 
 armies. 
 
 "\The people," says Saint-Simon, "hastened from 
 all parts to see the three queens, and asked each 
 other in all simplicity if they had seen them.') 
 Thirty-six years of the most austere penitence in 
 
 1 Memoii-s of Madame de Motteville. 
 
QUEEN MARIE THlSRkSE 59 
 
 the strictest conventual enclosure and the most se- 
 vere mortifications did not seem to the Duchess de 
 La Valli^re, now become Sister Louise of Mercy, a 
 sulificient expiation for the griefs she had occasioned 
 the saintly Queen. Between the repentant favorite 
 and the forgiving wife there were established, in the 
 holy silence of the cloister, friendly relations which 
 form one of the most touching souvenirs of history. 
 A member of the Paris clergy, M. I'Abb^ Duclos, 
 has devoted a long and learned work to the compara- 
 tive study of Marie Th^rdse and Mademoiselle de 
 La Valliere. It is in reality an edifying subject, 
 and I do not wonder that it thrust itself upon the 
 pious meditations of a priest. Nowhere was Marie 
 Th^rese more loved and venerated than in that 
 Carmelite convent in the rue Saint-Jacques where 
 she came to visit the woman who had exchanged the 
 r81e of a king's mistress for that of a servant of 
 God. 
 
 Some time before her own scandalous favor began, 
 Madame de Montespan had said: "God preserve me 
 fi-ora being the King's mistress ! But if I were so, 
 I should be very much ashamed before the Queen." 
 The woman who used this language was precisely 
 she who was to play her part as favorite with the 
 utmost pomp and pride. And yet, at the bottom of 
 lier soul the triumphant beauty, the superb sultana, 
 so infatuated with her charms and her wit, her 
 luxury and splendor, her elevation and her power, 
 felt herself belittled in presence of this good and 
 
60 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 pious Queen, the mere sight of whom was a mute 
 reproach. For awhile she succeeded in deceiving 
 laer and in passing for an exemplary woman. But 
 the Queen, who, though she did not readily believe 
 in evil, was not without perspicacity, was quickly 
 disabused. One day she said: "I know more about 
 it than they think, and I am nobody's dupe, what- 
 ever they may fancy." 
 
 Louis XIV., who felt himself guilty toward this 
 Queen so worthy of affection and respect, tried to 
 make amends by the deference he displayed for her. 
 He treated her with gentleness and courtesy both 
 in public and private, and through attachment and 
 conscience as an honest man as well as through 
 interest in his dynasty, he never entirely neglected 
 her. When he came back to her, saj's the Princess 
 Palatine, "she became so gay that j)eople remarked it 
 every time. . . . Then she laughed, and twinkled, 
 and rubbed her little hands. . . . She had such an 
 affection for the King that she tried to read in his 
 eyes whatever would give him pleasure; providing 
 he looked kindly at her she was happy all day."^ 
 She neither acted, thought, nor lived except in him. 
 The fear of displeasing him turned her cold with 
 fright. "That poor princess," says Madame de 
 Caji^lus in her Souvenirs, "had such a dread of the 
 King and such great natural timidity that she neither 
 dared speak to him nor run the risk of a tete-S,-tete 
 
 1 Letters of the Princess Palatine. 
 
QUEEN MARIE TUliRi:SE 61 
 
 with him. I have heard Madame de Maintenon say 
 that the King having sent for the Queen one daj-, 
 she asked her to go with her, so that she might not 
 appear alone in his presence ; but that she only con- 
 ducted her to the door of the room and there took H;he 
 liberty of pushing her so as to make her enter, and 
 that she observed such a great trembling in her whole 
 person that her very hands shook with fright." 
 
 How, with a wife so worthy of respect, so irre- 
 proachable as Marie Th^r^se, could a sovereign who, 
 like Louis XIV., had the notion of justice and in- 
 justice, of respect for himself and his people, have 
 so far forgotten hiniself as to recognize, publicly and 
 solemnly, the children of a double adultery? This 
 is a real problem. The fault, we are bound to say, 
 was less due to the King's pride than to the idolatry 
 of the nation. The chief offenders were those ser- 
 vile courtiers who through interest and cupidity far 
 more than through admiration deified the monarch 
 in open Christendom, and, if they had received per- 
 mission, would have raised altars as well as tri- 
 umphal arches to him. /Never would Louis XIV. 
 have permitted these legitimations if public opinion 
 had been more moral. One is obliged to recognize 
 that in this affair neither the clergy, the nobility, nor 
 the people at large possessed the necessary energy 
 and dignity. Great scandals are accomplished only 
 by degrees. Sovereigns do not yield to them unless 
 they are supported by the base sentiments of those 
 around them. Louis XIV. had at first no thought 
 
62 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 of legitimating his bastards, still less of putting 
 them in the line of succession to the crown. He 
 was led to it by a combination of different circum- 
 stances: in the first place, I confess, by that pride 
 which made him rate himself, like another Jove, 
 above the laws of his Olympus ; then by the impulse, 
 the vertigo of those audacious sins, those piches 
 d'abondance which, as Bossuet says, "wish to enjoj'^ 
 all the light of day and all the knowledge of heaven." 
 He had paternal affection also, and greater, perhaps, 
 than all these, a desire to rehabilitate and console 
 the women of whose faults he had been the cause. ) 
 
 But in spite of everything, the legitimations are 
 monstrous actions, unjustifiable attacks upon moral- 
 ity, societj', and religion, and on this head Saint- 
 Simon's wrath is only too just. But does not the 
 responsibility fall, in part at least, on those detest- 
 able flatterers of whom Racine spealis who are the 
 panders and slaves of royal vices? Does not one 
 recall these curious remarks of the austere Duke de 
 Saint-Simon concerning his own father: "Louis 
 XIII. was really enamoured of Mademoiselle de 
 Hautefort. . . . My father was young and gallant, 
 and he could not understand a king so amorous and 
 so little able to conceal it, who did not go any 
 farther. He thought it was timidity, and on this 
 principle, when the King was once speaking to him 
 passionatel}'' about this girl, my father proposed to 
 him to become his ambassador and bring the affair to 
 a speedy conclusion." 
 
QUEEN MARIE TlIlSTlESE 63 
 
 Could we believe it? The man who urged Louis 
 XIV. most strongly to make scandalously fine alli- 
 ances for his bastards was the great Condd. The 
 marriage of his nephew, Prince de Conti, to a daugh- 
 ter of Mademoiselle de La ValliSre, and that of his 
 grandson to a daughter of Madame de Montespan, 
 overwhelmed him with joy. 
 
 "The King," says Madame de Caylus, "would 
 never have thought of raising his bastards so high 
 but for the anxiety shown by the two Princes of 
 Cond^ to link themselves with him by this sort of 
 marriages. Condd hoped to efface in this way the 
 impression the past might have left on the King's 
 mind; his son displayed the zeal and baseness of a 
 courtier who wanted to make his fortune." It must 
 be admitted that the attitude of such a man as the 
 victor of Rocroy is, not indeed an excuse, but an 
 attenuating circumstance for Louis XIV. When 
 flatterers arrive at a certain limit one cannot demand 
 wisdom of kings. How can a prince believe him- 
 self still a man when idolatrous subjects treat him as 
 a demigod? We find but one thing surprising, and 
 that is that, in spite of his flatterers, Louis XIV. 
 still retained so much good sense as to desire and 
 will his own conversion. 
 
 "It is ver}' true," says the Princess Palatine, 
 " that our King has given scandal by his mistresses, 
 but he has had a great repentance for it." He had 
 never yielded to voluptuousness withoiit remorse, 
 and even at the time of his most violent passions, a 
 
64 TUE WOMEN OF VESSAILLES 
 
 secret struggle, a relentless battle between pleasure 
 and duty went on within him. In the very height 
 of his most stormy temptations he had returns to 
 virtue. Religious faith never abandoned him. He 
 never but once failed to be present at Mass, and that 
 in war-time when to do otherwise was impossible. 
 
 From the 1st of January, 1674, he had brought 
 about a considerable modification in the Queen's 
 household. Suppressing the maids of honor, several 
 of whom had doubtful reputations, he had set about 
 replacing them by women manied to great person- 
 ages and specially renowned for conjugal fidelity. 
 He was freeing himself by degrees from the tyranny 
 of his senses, and his passion for Madame de Monte- 
 span was on the decline when, in 1680, a new idol, 
 Mademoiselle de Fontanges, suddenly kindled a new 
 flame. He took to dancing again with the ardor of 
 a very young man. Like Mademoiselle de La Val- 
 liere, the favorite received the title of duchess. 
 Her sister was appointed Abbess of Chelles, just as 
 Madame de Montespan's sister had been appointed 
 Abbess of Fontevrault. 
 
 In 1680, on New Year's Da}^ she was present at 
 the King's Mass " extraordinarily decked with jewels 
 on a robe of the same stuff as Her ilajesty's, and 
 both of them with blue ribbons."^ La Fontaine 
 addressed her the most laudatory of epistles. She 
 seemed at the height of favor when, carried off by a 
 
 1 Bussy Rabutiu's Letters to La Riviuie, January 10, IGSO. 
 
^^iJ^X^^^^ 
 
 MADEMOISELLE DE LA VALLIERE. 
 
QUEEN MARIE TUJ^ItilSE 65 
 
 sudden dealh, after a pregnancy, June 28, 1681, 
 she once more proved that» as Bossuet has said, 
 health is but a name, life but a dream, and the 
 graces and pleasures only a dangerous amusement. 
 
 In this terrible death Louis XIV. beheld a lesson, 
 a warning from on high, and thenceforth he returned 
 in good earnest to the principles of virtue and duty. 
 Madame de Maintenon, who boasted of loving him 
 not for himself, but for God, used all her influence 
 to keep him faithful to the Queen. When he finally 
 established his residence at Versailles, in 1682, that 
 princess was satisfied with the affection he evinced 
 for her. Madame de Caylus affirms in her Souvenirs 
 that he lavished attentions on her to which she was 
 unaccustomed. He saw her more frequently and 
 tried to amuse and divert her. Her son the Dau- 
 phin, and her daughter-in-law, the Bavarian Dau- 
 phiness, also showed her the greatest deference. 
 
 Her apartments at Versailles, composed of five 
 large rooms, ending at the marble staircase at one 
 extremity and at the Galler}- of Mirrors at the other, 
 were furnished magnificentl}-. The Queen occupied 
 the chamber already mentioned in the introduction 
 to this studj', and from which may be seen the 
 Oranger}^ the Swiss lake, and the hills of Satory. 
 She was fond of leaving this splendid abode in order 
 to go and pray in convents or visit hospitals. She 
 might be seen waiting on the sick with her own 
 royal hands, carrj'ing them their nourishment like 
 a simple infirmarian, and when the doctoi-s remarked 
 
66 TBE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 on this in the interests of her OAvn health, she replied 
 that she could not employ it better than in serving 
 Jesus Christ in the persons of the poor. 
 
 Notwithstanding the return of affection manifested 
 for her by the King, she continued to live humbly 
 and modestlj', busying herself Avith her domestic 
 affairs, and not with those of State. The G-azette 
 officielle never mentions this good Queen except to 
 announce that she had fulfilled her religious duties 
 in her parish church or had gone to spend the day 
 with the Carmelites of the rue Bouloi. 
 
 Marie Th^rdse, happy and consoled, rejoiced in 
 the kindness of the King and the birth of her grand- 
 son, the Duke of Burgundy. Far from being jealous 
 of the increasing influence of Madame de Maintenon, 
 she congratulated herself on it as one cause of the 
 pious sentiments of Louis XIV., and never could it 
 have occurred to her mind that Scarron's M'idow, the 
 former governess of the bastards, would soon be the 
 King's wife, and Queen of France in all but name. 
 
IV 
 
 ilADAME DE MONTESPAN IIJ 1682 
 
 LOUIS XIV. had repented sincerel5^ After 
 the death of Mademoiselle de Fontanges he 
 had definitely forsaken mistresses, and was giving 
 edification instead of scandal. Madame de Monte- 
 span, who was treated with consideration on account 
 of her birth and rank, and as being the mother of 
 legitimated children, still acted as superintendent of 
 the Queen's household. But Louis XIV. never saw 
 her except in public, and she no longer counted for 
 anything as favorite or mistress. In spite of her 
 desperate efforts to retain her empire she was forced 
 to let the left-hand sceptre slip from her grasp, and 
 after making a hard battle against fate, after having 
 employed her last batteries, she was obliged to own 
 herself irremediably defeated. In 1682 she had 
 given up the struggle, and religion was offering 
 her a balm for the wounds inflicted by spite and 
 pride. 
 
 She was then forty years old and still preserved 
 the lusti'e of her beauty. She did not owe her 
 defeat to the diminution of her charms, but rather 
 
 07 
 
68 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 to the progress of religious sentiments in the soul of 
 Louis XIV. 
 
 Before examining what the haughty favorite be- 
 came, let us see what she had been in the days of 
 her shameful victories. 
 
 A haughty and opulent beauty, a forest of fair 
 hair, flashing blue eyes, a complexion of splendid car- 
 nation and dazzling whiteness, one of those alluring 
 and radiant countenances which shed brightness 
 around them wherever they appear, an incisive, 
 caustic wit, sparkling with life and animation, an 
 inextinguishable thirst for riches and pleasure, 
 luxury and domination, the manners of a goddess 
 audaciously usurping the place of Juno on Olym- 
 pus, passion without love, pride without dignity, 
 splendor without poetry: that was Madame de 
 Montespan. 
 
 Born in 1641, at the chS,teau of Tonnay-Charente, 
 of the Duke de Mortemart and Diana de Grand- 
 seigne, she was maid of honor to the Queen in 1660 
 and in 1663 was married to the Marquis de Monte- 
 span. She had been brought up very religiously and 
 went to communion every week. Nothing, at this 
 period, could have made her foresee the sorry r81e to 
 which ambition and vanity, far more than an impulse 
 of the heart, were to condemn her youth. Moreover, 
 we must do her the justice of admitting that she did 
 not succumb without a struggle. It is said that she 
 entreated her imprudent husband to take her awa^' 
 from the perils of the court while there was still 
 
MADAME DE MONTESPAN IN 1682 69 
 
 time. It cost M. de Montespan something not to 
 have been more jealous. Madame de Caylus remarks 
 concerning this that far from having been born 
 depraved, the future favorite had a character natu- 
 rally disinclined to gallantry and tending towards 
 virtue. "She was flattered at being mistress, not 
 solely for her own pleasure, but on account of the 
 passion of the King. She believed she could make 
 him always desire what she had resolved never to 
 grant him. She Avas in despair at her first preg- 
 nancy, consoled herself for the second one, and in 
 all the others carried impudence ac far as it could 
 go."i 
 
 Her great favor lasted about thirteen years. This 
 was the epoch of the intoxication of courtiers and 
 the prostration of peoples. The court was like a 
 sort of Christian and monarchical Olympus of which 
 King Louis XIV. was the Jove. " Inferior gods and 
 goddesses moved beneath him. Their virtues were 
 extolled and their very vices paraded with an audac- 
 ity of superiority which seemed to establish between 
 the people and the throne the difference between the 
 morality of gods and that of men. Louis XIV. had 
 made himself accej)ted as an exception in all things, 
 even in humanitj%"2 The most admirable geniuses 
 had become the accomplices of this new idolatry. 
 Did not Moli^re say in his Amphitryon : — 
 
 ^ Souvenirs of Madame de Caylus. 
 2 Lamartine, Etude sur Fenelon. 
 
70 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 " Un partage avec Jupiter 
 N'a rien du tout qui deshonore, 
 Et sans doute il ne peut etre que glorieux 
 De se voir le rival du souverain des Dieux." ' 
 
 M. de JMontespan was not of this opinion, but he 
 was considered a ridiculous person, a fool. 
 
 The good La Fontaine, offering to Madame de 
 Montespan the seventh book of his fables, fairly 
 outstripped the limits of flattery in his dedica- 
 tion : — 
 
 " Sous vos seuls auspices ces vers 
 
 Seront juges, malgre I'envie, 
 
 Dignes des yeux de I'univers. 
 Je ne merite pas une f aveur si grande ; 
 
 La Fable en son nom la deraande ; 
 Vous savez quel credit ce mensonge a sur nous. 
 S'il procure a mes vers le bonheur de vous plaire, 
 Je croirai lui devoir un temple pour salaire : 
 Mais je ue veiix batir des temples que pour vous."* 
 
 1 A partnership with Jupiter 
 
 Has nothing at all dishonoring in it, 
 And doubtless it cannot be other than glorious 
 To behold oneself the rival of the sovereign of the gods. 
 
 2 Under j'our auspices alone these verses 
 Will be judged, in spite of envy, 
 
 As worthy of the eyes of the universe. 
 I do not merit so great a favor ; 
 
 Fable demands it on her own behalf ; 
 You know w^hat credit fiction lias with us. 
 If it shall procure for my verses the happiness of pleasing yon, 
 I should feel that I owed It a temple as reward ; 
 But I will build no temples save for you. 
 
MADAME DE MONTESPAN IN 16S2 71 
 
 Adulation was carried so far that the courtiers 
 were grateful to the favorite for having given seven 
 children ^ to the King, and made ito adverse criticism 
 on their legitimation. The post of King's mistress 
 was considered as a public function, a great court 
 office, having its rights and duties, its ceremonial 
 and etiquette. Even Colbert, the inflexible minis- 
 ter, the marble man, vir marmoreus, the glacial per- 
 sonage whom Madame de S(^vign4 styled the North, 
 was constantly occupied with the love affairs of Louis 
 XIV. and Madame de Montespan. It was to him 
 that the King wrote, June 15, 1678: "I hear that 
 Montespan allows himself to say indiscreet things ; 
 he is a fool whom you will do me the kindness to 
 have closely watched. ... I know he threatens to 
 see his wife, and as he is capable of it, and the con- 
 sequences might be dreaded, I rely on you to keep 
 him quiet." 
 
 1 Here is the list of the seven children of Louis XIV. and 
 Madame de Montespan : — 
 
 1. A daughter, born in 1669, who died at the age of three 
 years; 
 
 2. The Duke du Maine, born in 1670, married in 1692 to Made- 
 moiselle de Bourbon-Charolais, died in 1736 ; 
 
 3. The Count de Vexin, born in 1672, died in 1683 ; 
 
 4. Mademoiselle de Nantes, born in 1673, married to the Duke 
 de Bourbon in 1685, died in 1743 ; 
 
 o. Mademoiselle de Tours, born in 1674, died in 1681 ; 
 
 6. JIaderaoiselle de Blois, bom in 1677, married in 1692 to the 
 Duke de Chartres (the future regent), died in 1749; 
 
 7. The Count de Toulouse, born in 1678, married in 1728 to 
 Mademoiselle de Noailles, died in 1737. 
 
72 THE WOMKN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 To all appearance Madame de Montespan was 
 happ3^ Her beautiful face shone with the glow of 
 her apotheosis. She was the haughty sultana, the 
 idol, the conquering beauty. Madame de S6vign<5, 
 the great admirer of success, cast ecstatic glances 
 toward the triumphant mistress. She had a naive 
 enthusiasm for that marvellous robe "of gold on 
 gold, re-embroidered in gold, and above that a 
 shaggy gold, restitched with a gold mixed with a 
 certain gold, which makes the divinest stuff that ever 
 was imagined." She wrote to her daughter : " iladame 
 de Montespan was covered Avith diamonds the other 
 day ; no one could stand the lustre of such a divinity. 
 ... O my daughter, what triumph at Versailles! 
 what redoubled pride! what a solid establishment! 
 what pleasure, even by distractions and absence! " 
 
 And j^et Madame de Montespan was troubled and 
 uneasy. The scandal of her life was disturbed by 
 occasional inclinations toward repentance. Ali-eady 
 there was going on in her soul a latent, relentless 
 Avar between heaven aud earth, between duty and 
 sensual pleasure. "The King," says Madame de 
 Caylus, "was religious at bottom, and showed it 
 even in his greatest disorders Avith Avomen, for that 
 Avas the only Aveakness he ever had. The great 
 feasts caused him remorse, for he was equally 
 troubled at not performing his devotions aud at 
 performing them badly. JMadame de Montespan 
 had the same sentiments, and it Avas not solely to 
 show her conformity to the King that she displayed 
 
MADAME DE MONTESPAN IN 16S2 73 
 
 them. She had been perfectly well brought up. 
 She showed it, as the King did at all times, and I 
 remember to have heard that she fasted so rigidly in 
 Lent as to have her bread weighed." 
 
 Saint-Simon makes the same remark. He says 
 that "great glutton and gourmand as she was, 
 nothing in the world could have made her fail to 
 observe the regulations of the Church concerning 
 the fasts of Lent and the Ember Days, and she left 
 the King to go and recite some prayers every day. " 
 
 One day the Duchess d' Uz6s expressed her aston- 
 ishment at such religious scruples. "What! Ma- 
 dame," replied the favorite, "because I do one bad 
 thing must I do all the others ? " 
 
 Nothing is more painful for the soul than these 
 half-pieties, these half-conversions, these bursts of 
 repentance which bring the fear of hell and take 
 away the hope of paradise. "Virtue," Massillon 
 has said, "is a hidden manna; to taste all its sweet- 
 ness you must fathom it thoroughly; but the more 
 you advance, the more do consolations abound, the 
 calmer grow the passions, the straighter are the 
 paths, the more you applaud yourself on having 
 broken the chains which you did not drag without 
 regret and secret sadness. Thus, so long as you 
 confine yourself to mere attempts at virtue, you will 
 taste nothing but its repugnances and bitterness ; 
 and as you have not the fidelity of the just, you 
 ought not to expect their consolations."^ 
 
 1 Massillon, Sermon sur le salu(. 
 
74 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 Such was the state of Madame de Montespan's 
 heart when in Holy Week of 1675 she wanted to 
 perform her Easter duties publicly at Versailles. 
 The priest to whom she addressed herself, the Abb^ 
 Ldcuyer, flatly refused to give her absolution so long 
 as the scandal of adultery continu(\d. Thereupon 
 the wrath of the irascible Duchess was kindled and 
 she carried her complaint to Louis XIV. 
 
 The King summoned the cur^ of the parish to 
 which the Abb6 L^cuyer was attached. The cur4 
 had the courage to sustain his vicar. Then Bossuet 
 was consulted. The worthy successor of the bishops 
 of the primitive Church did not hesitate a single 
 moment. He replied that in such circumstances an 
 entire, absolute separation was an absolute condition 
 for being admitted to the sacraments, and he pro- 
 claimed " the imperious duty of denying absolution 
 to public sinners living in notorious habits of dis- 
 order and refusing to quit them." Louis XIV. 
 bowed respectfully to the decision of the man of 
 God. He finally resolved to break with Madame de 
 Montespan. 
 
 This most unexpected result — for Louis XIV. was 
 then in the full vigor of manhood and as ardent as 
 ever in his passion for his mistress — was due to the 
 counsels of Bossuet and the preaching of Bourda- 
 loue. 
 
 The preachers had a real influence at court, and 
 exercised over both the sovereign and society at 
 large a moral ascendancy Avhich has been described 
 
MADAME DE MONTESPAN IN 1682 75 
 
 with as much skill as exactness by a distinguished 
 ecclesiastic, M. the Abb6 Hurel.^ Bourdaloue, the 
 admii-able orator, so grand in his simplicity, so 
 venerable in his modesty, the puissant, irresistible 
 dialectician whose compact arguments made him 
 excel in giving pitched battles to the consciences of 
 his hearers,' and of whom the great Cond^ said, as 
 he saw him ascending the pulpit: "Silence! there 
 is the enemy! " Bourdaloue was without contradic- 
 tion one of the most active agents in the conversion 
 of Louis XIV. He had preached at court the Ad- 
 vent of 1670 and the Lents of 1672, 1674, and 1675. 
 Bold as a tribune and courageous as an apostle, 
 he turned the iron in the wound. The pitiless 
 enemy of adultery, he exclaimed with holy candor: 
 " Have you not seen again that person, the reef on 
 which your firmness and your constancy have been 
 shattered? Have you not again sought the occa- 
 sions so dangerous for you? . . . Ah ! Christians, 
 how many conversions would not your single exam- 
 ple produce? What an attraction would it not be 
 for certain sinners, discouraged . and fallen into 
 despair, if they could say to themselves: 'There is 
 that man whom we have seen in the same debauch- 
 eries as ourselves, and behold him converted and 
 submissive to God. ' " Then, addressing himself 
 more directly still to Louis XIV., the orator added 
 
 1 Las Orateurs sacres a la cour de Louis XIV. par M. VAbbe 
 Hurel. We recommend this curious and learned work to all who 
 are interested in studying the great century. 
 
76 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 in the same sermon: "Truth is what saves kings; 
 Your Majesty seeks for it, loves those who make it 
 known to him, can have nothing but contempt for 
 those who disguise it from him, and, far from resist- 
 ing it, will esteem it glorious to be vanquished by 
 it." 
 
 Bossuet's exhortations were not less urgent. His 
 functions as preceptor to the Dauphin gave him fre- 
 quent access to the King, and he used them to plead 
 energetically the cause of duty and virtue. It was 
 he who, in his sermon on the feast of the Purifica- 
 tion, delivered at court, had said: "Let us fly dan- 
 gerous occasions and not presume upon our strength. 
 One cannot long resist his vigor when he has to 
 employ it against himself." It was he who wrote 
 to M. de Bellefond: "Pray to God for me; pray 
 Him either to deliver me from the greatest burden 
 that can be imposed on a man, or else to put to death 
 all that is man in me, so that He may act alone. 
 God be thanked, during the whole course of this 
 afi'air I have not yet thought that I am in the 
 world ; but that is not all ; one should be, like Saint 
 Ambrose, a real man of God, a man of the other life, 
 in whom all things speak, whose every word is an 
 oracle of the Holy Spirit, whose whole conduct is 
 heavenl}-; pray, pray, I entreat you. " 
 
 Louis XIV., reconciled Avith God and with him- 
 self, had received his Easter Communion on Holy 
 Saturday (April, 1675). A few days later, on 
 quitting Versailles to rejoin his army, he declared 
 
MADAME DE MONTESPAN IN 1GS2 11 
 
 to the Queen, to Bossuet, and to Pere La Chaise, 
 that all was finally at an end between him and 
 Madame de Montespan. The favorite had sub- 
 mitted. She also. had communicated and had taken 
 shelter at Paris in a modest and unknown house. 
 Bossuet went thither to give her instructions and 
 confirm her in the right path. "I find Madame de 
 Montespan sufficiently tranquil," he wrote to Louis 
 XIV. " She occupies herself greatly in good works. 
 I see her much affected by the verities I propose to 
 her, and which are the same I uttered to Your 
 Majesty. To her as to you I have offered the words 
 by which God commands us to yield our whole hearts 
 to Him ; they have caused her to shed many tears. 
 ]\Iay God establish these verities in the depths of 
 both 3'our hearts, in oi-der that so many teai-s, so 
 much violence, so many efforts as you have made to 
 subdue yourselves may not be in vain ! " 
 
 The attitude of Bossuet throughout this affair has 
 been criticised with culpable levity. Madame de 
 S^vign^, who does not always weigh her expressions 
 and too frequently judges men and things with the 
 giddiness of a worldly woman, has spoken of a con- 
 formity between the counsels of the bishop and those 
 of Madame de Montespan's adherents, of a strong 
 accord between the interests of the policy of the 
 King's mistress and those of Christianity. ^ Cha- 
 teaubriand has been still more unjust in his Analyse 
 
 1 Letter to Madame de Grignan, July 13, 1675. 
 
78 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 raisonnSe de I'Sistoire de France. " We ask our- 
 selves," he says, "hovsr a prince could have a recog- 
 nized mistress whom honor, genius, and virtue came 
 to worship ; this idea made its entrance in the seven- 
 teenth century. Bossuet undertook to reconcile 
 Louis XIV. and Madame de Montespan." 
 
 Nothing can be more inexact than this assertion, 
 to which M. Floquet and M. Pierre Clement have 
 already done justice. 
 
 No ; Bossuet was not one " of these teachers who, 
 in their unfortunate and inhuman complaisance, 
 their deadly pity, lay cushions under the elbows 
 of sinners and seek a cloak for their passions." ^ 
 Was the man a pander who vrrote to Louis XIV. 
 in July, 1675: "Sire, the feast of Pentecost is ap- 
 proaching, when Your Majesty has resolved to com- 
 municate. Although I doubt not that you have 
 thought seriously of what you have promised to 
 God, as you have requested me to remind you of it, 
 the time has come when I feel myself still more 
 bound to do so. Reflect, Sire, that you cannot be 
 truly converted if you do not labor to remove from 
 your heart not merely the sin but the occasion which 
 leads you to it. True conversion does not content 
 itself with destroying the fruits of death, as says the 
 Scripture, that is to say, the sins , but it goes even 
 to the root, which will infallibly cause them to 
 sprout forth again if it be not eradicated." 
 
 1 Bossuet, Oraison funebre de Canet. 
 
MADAME DE MONTESPAN IN 16S2 79 
 
 With what respectful firmness, what nobility of 
 thought and language, the great bishop addresses 
 himself to the great King! "I hope," he writes in 
 the same letter, " that the great matters which daily 
 occupy Your Majesty more and more, will greatly 
 aid in curing you. Nothing is talked of now but 
 the beauty of your troops and what they are capable 
 of executing under so great a leader. For my part. 
 Sire, I am all the while secretly thinking of a far 
 more important war and a much more difficult vic- 
 tory which God proposes to you. 
 
 "Meditate, Sire, on these words of the Son of 
 God; they seem to have been uttered for great kings 
 and conquerors : What doth it profit a man, He says, 
 to gain the whole world and lose his own soul? 
 And what gain can recompense him for so great a 
 loss? Of what use will it be to you. Sire, to be 
 redoubtable and victorious externally, if within you 
 are vanquished and a captive ? Pray God then that 
 He may set you free; I will so pray to Him with 
 all my heart. My anxieties for your salvation in- 
 crease from day to day, because I daily understand 
 better what your dangers are. May God bless Your 
 Majesty! May God grant you victory, and, by vic- 
 tory, peace within and without! The more sincerely 
 Your Majesty gives your heart to God, the more 
 you place your hope and confidence in Him, the 
 more also will you be protected by His powerful 
 hand." 
 
 This letter produced an impression on the soul of 
 
80 THE WOMEN OF VEUSAILLES 
 
 Louis XIV. He communicated on Whitsunday, 
 June 2, in the camp of Latines, two days befoi-e 
 Mademoiselle de La Vallidre was professed as a 
 Carmelite nun. JIadame de Montespan also ap- 
 proached the Holy Table. It was believed that a 
 serious conversion had been effected. The Marquise 
 liad returned to her chateau of Clagny, near Ver- 
 sailles. The Queen, alwa3's good and generous, 
 forgave her from the bottom of her heart and allowed 
 her to perform her functions as lady of the palace. 
 
 Well-informed people were not greatly touched 
 by the pious dispositions of the haughty Marquise 
 who, far from appearing ashamed of the scandals she 
 had given, lorded it over the magnificent construc- 
 tions of her Clagny palace like Dido in the midst of 
 rising Carthage. "You cannot imagine," wi'ote 
 Madame de Sdvigne, June 12, 1675, "what triumph 
 she is in amongst her workmen, who number some 
 twelve hundred; the palace of Appolidon and the 
 gardens of Armida are a light description of it." 
 While the poor Queen, deceived once more, visited 
 Clagny and took iladame de Montespan sometimes 
 to the Trianon and sometimes to the Carmelite con- 
 vent, a secret con-espondence had been renewed 
 between the King and his mistress. Louis XIV., 
 still at the camp of Latines, wrote to Colbert on 
 June 5: " Continue to do what Madame de Monte- 
 span wishes. Send me word what orange-trees have 
 been taken to Clagny." And on the 8th of the same 
 month: "The expense is excessive, and I see from 
 
MADAME DE MONTESPAN IN 16S2 81 
 
 this that nothing is impossible to you when it is a 
 question of pleasing me. Madame de Montespan 
 sends ine word that you have acquitted yourself 
 very well in what I commanded, and that you are 
 always asking if she wants anything; continue al- 
 ways to do so." The flame, far from being extinct, 
 was about to burn more ardently than ever. 
 
 Intoxicated with his new triumphs and forgetful 
 of the sacred promises made at the hour of departure, 
 Louis XIV., leaving his army of Flanders, returned 
 to court after an absence of several months (July, 
 1675). Bossuet, who in spite of all his efforts had 
 not been able to prevent Madame de Montespan's 
 return, went to meet the sovereign at Luzarches. 
 The mere sight of the austere prelate was a mute 
 reproach to the King. As soon as he perceived 
 Bossuet, whose face wore an expression of great 
 sadness, he exclaimed quickly : " Say nothing to me, 
 sir, say nothing to me ; I have given my orders and 
 they will be executed." 
 
 The Avhole court was anxious to see what would 
 happen. It was agreed, says Madame de Caylus, 
 that the King should come to Madame de Monte- 
 span's house, but, in order to give the scandal- 
 mongers no occasion for faultfinding, it Avas also 
 agreed that the gravest and most respectable ladies 
 of the couii; should be present at this inteiwiew. 
 
 " The King came therefore to Madame de Monte- 
 span's house, as had been decided ; but he gradually 
 drew her into a Avindow seat, where they whispered 
 
82 THE WOMEN OF VEESAILLES 
 
 for a long time, wept, and said what is usually said 
 in such cases; afterwards they made a profound 
 reverence to these venerable matrons and passed into 
 another chamber, and from thence came Madame the 
 Duchess of Orleans and afterward M. the Count of 
 Toulouse." 
 
 Madame de Caylus adds in her Souvenirs, always 
 written with subtlety and malice: "Here I cannot 
 refuse to express a thought which occui-s to my 
 mind. It appears to me that the traces of this com- 
 bat of love and jubilee may still be seen in the 
 character, the physiognomy, and the whole person of 
 Madame the Duchess of Orleans." 
 
 To judge from appearances, the favorite had re- 
 gained all her empire. "Her beauty is extreme," 
 wrote Madame de S^vign6. " Her attire is like her 
 beauty, and her beauty like her attire. . . -^ I have 
 been told that the other day Quanto ^ was seen lean- 
 ing her head familiarly on her friend's shoulder; it 
 was thought this affectation was meant to convey: 
 ' I am better off than ever. ' " 
 
 Some days later Madame de S^vign^ declared that 
 the favorite's star was on the decline. " Quanto's 
 star is growing pale; there are tears, natural cha- 
 grin, affected gaiety, sulkiness. People look, they 
 obseiT^e, they think they see rays of light on coun- 
 tenances which, a month ago, they found unworthy 
 
 1 Letter of August 7, 167C. 
 
 2 Quanto and Quantora are the sobriquets given by Madame de 
 Sfivignfe to Madame de Montespan. 
 
MADAME BE MONTESPAN IN 1682 83 
 
 to be compared with others."^ "Everybody thinks 
 that the friend is no longer in love. . . . On the 
 other hand, the attitude of friendship is not definitely 
 taken; so much beauty still and so much pride do 
 not easily take a second place. Jealousies are very 
 keen; but did jealousies ever prevent anything?"^ 
 The witty Marquise concludes by this very just re- 
 flection: "If Quanto had really tied her bonnet- 
 strings at Easter the year she returned to Paris, she 
 would not be in her present agitation ; she was well- 
 inclined to take this step; but human weakness is 
 great, people like to husband the remains of beauty, 
 and this economy ruins more than it enriches."^ 
 
 Discontent with oneself; the lassitude of illicit 
 loves ; the disquiet of a troubled soul which is still 
 seeking happiness in vice but commences to see that 
 it can only be found iia virtue; the remorse which 
 will not be stifled; the secret sadness that gnaws 
 the soul, — Louis XIV., hesitating between good and 
 evil, had<arrived at these premonitory symptoms of 
 repentance of which Saint Augustine's Confessions 
 give so striking a description. Meanwhile, unfaith- 
 ful to both his wife and his mistress, he was still 
 paying court to the Princess de Soubise, Mademoi- 
 selle de Fontanges, and other idols, worshipped on 
 one day only to be abandoned on the next. Ma- 
 dame de S^vign4 wrote, April 6, 1680: "Madame 
 de Montespan is enraged. She wept a good deal 
 
 1 Letter of September 11, 1676. = Letter of September 30. 
 8 Letter of October 16. 
 
84 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 yesterday. You can judge of the martyrdom her 
 pride suffei-s, and it is still more outraged by the 
 high favor of Madame de Maintenon." And Bussy 
 Rabutin, A^jril 30 of the same year: "Madame de 
 Montespan is fallen. The King no longer looks at 
 her, and you may be sure the courtiere follow his 
 example." 
 
 Louis XIV. thought to console her for the triumph 
 of Mademoiselle de Fontanges by. appointing her 
 superintendent of the household to the Queen, who, 
 "wishing to gratify her and treat her honorably," 
 granted her a pension under this title (April, 1679). 
 But the repudiated favorite, the mistress once 
 "thundering and triumphant," was nevertheless in 
 despair. Her enemies, blinded by hatred, accused 
 her, in defiance of all truth, of having poisoned her 
 rival, the Duchess of Fontanges, and the correspond- 
 ence of the Princess Palatine shows the following 
 traces of this odious and unjust suspicion: "Ma- 
 dame de Montespan was an incarnate fiend, but the 
 Fontanges was good and simple. The latter is dead, 
 they say, because the former put poison in her milk. 
 I do not know whether this is true, but what I do 
 know well is that two of the Fontanges people died, 
 saying publicly that they had been poisoned." 
 
 Louis XIV., thenceforth satisfied as to the bitter- 
 ness, the satietj'', and the anguish of guilty passions, 
 at last returned to God. The Avork of Bossuet had 
 been accomplished. Saint-Sijnon, who does full 
 justice to the conduct of the saintly prelate, says 
 
MADAME DE MONTESPAN IN 1682 85 
 
 concerning him : " He often spoke to the sovereign 
 with a freedom worthy of the first centuries and first 
 bishops of the Church ; he. interrupted the course of 
 the disorder many times; at last he made it end." 
 
 The conversion of Louis XIV. had this time a 
 definitive character; but this result must not be 
 attributed solely to religion ; it was also due to the 
 influence of the woman of whom we are about to 
 speak: Madame de Maintenon. 
 
JIADAJIE DE MAINTENON IN 1682 
 
 WHY are we so tender hearted for Mademoi- 
 selle de La Vallidre ? I greatly fear it is 
 on account of her sin, not on account of her repent- 
 ance. Why are we so hard towards Madame de 
 Maintenon ? I greatly fear it is on account of her 
 A'irtue." This remark of an eminent critic, M. 
 Hippolyte Rigault, is very just. It agrees with the 
 opinion of another not less enlightened judge. " It 
 seems," says M. Saint-Marc Girardin, "as if the 
 world and posterity begrudged to Madame de Main- 
 tenon a triumph gained by reason on behalf of 
 honesty. Unable to prevent her from succeeding by 
 reason, the world indemnified itself by giving her a 
 reputation for frigidity and harshness very conti-ary 
 to her character. Since reason must needs be trium- 
 phant, the world insisted that it should at least be 
 unamiable." 
 
 A fair and luminous figure has been overshadowed. 
 We forget that the woman represented under a 
 gloomy, almost sinister aspect, was a charmer, an 
 
 enchantress whom F^nelon characterized as "reason 
 
 86 
 
MADAME DE MAINTENON IN 1682 87 
 
 speaking through the mouth of the Graces," whom 
 Racine had in mind when writing these verses of 
 Esther: — 
 
 " Je ne trouve qu'en vous je ne sais quelle graee 
 Qui me charme toujours, et jamais ne me lasse." * 
 
 Madame de Maintenon's adversaries carried the 
 day at first against her admirers. But our own- 
 epoch, impassioned for historical verities, has revised 
 a false judgment. 
 
 Two able and convinced writers, the Duke de 
 Noailles and M. Th^ophile Lavall^e, full of respect 
 for a memory unjustly accused, have, as one may 
 say, succeeded in resuscitating the true Madame 
 de Maintenon. Baron de Walckenaer had already 
 called attention to the fact that this woman, appre- 
 ciated in such divei"se fashions, is the one historical 
 pereonage concerning whom we possess the most 
 documents proceeding from her mouth or Avritten 
 by her pen. "Hence it is to be regretted," said he, 
 " that even the most judicious historians have pre- 
 ferred contemporary satires to the certain and au- 
 thentic testimony furnished by herself, and have 
 converted a simple and interesting history into a 
 vulgar and incomprehensible romance." 
 
 At present the truth has come to light. Madame 
 de Maintenon's defenders have left nothing remain- 
 
 1 Only in you I find a nameless grace 
 Which charms me always and which never tires. 
 
88 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 ing of the invectives of Saint-Simon and the Princess 
 Palatine against a woman who deserves the esteem 
 of posterity whatever malevolence may say. Since 
 the i^ublication of the Duke de Noailles's fine work 
 there has been a sort of literary tourney on the sub- 
 ject of Madame de Maiutenon, and the great critic 
 Sainte-Beuve has been umpire. "M. Lavall^e," he 
 says, "has experienced what happens to all fair 
 minds who approach this distinguished person and 
 take pains to know her in her ordinary life. . . . He 
 has done justice to that mass of fantastic and odi- 
 ously vague imputations which have long been in 
 circulation concerning the pretended historical rSle 
 of this celebrated woman. He has seen her as she 
 Avas, wholly occupied with the King's salvation, his 
 reform, his decent amusements, the interior of the 
 royal family, and the amelioration of the people." 
 
 The revolutionarj' school, which likes to drag the 
 memory of the great King thi-ough the mud, natu- 
 rally detests the eminent woman who Avas his com- 
 panion, his friend, and his consoler. Writers of 
 this school would like to make of her a type not 
 simply odious and fatal, but ungi-aceful, antipathetic, 
 without radiance, charm, or any sort of fascination. 
 She is too frequently recalled to mind under the 
 aspect of a worn old woman, stiff and severe, with 
 tearless ej^es and a face without a smile. We forget 
 that in her youth she was one of the prettiest women 
 of her time- that her beauty was wonderfull}'' pre- 
 served, and that in her old age she retained that 
 
MADAME I)E MAINTENON IN 1GS2 89 
 
 superiority of style and language, that distinction of 
 manner and exquisite tact, that gentle firmness of 
 character, that charm and elevation of mind, which' 
 at every period of. her life gained her so much praise 
 and so many friends. 
 
 A rapid glance at a career so full of incident and 
 so curious to study will suffice to make us under- 
 stand how much sympathetic charm must have per- 
 tained to the woman who could please Scarron and 
 Louis XIV., Ninon de Lenclos and ]\Iadame de 
 Sdvign^, Madame de Montespan and the Queen, 
 great ladies and nuns, prelates and little children. 
 
 Fran9oise d'Aubign^, the future Madame de Main- 
 tenon, came into the world, November 27, 1635, 
 in a prison at Niort, where her father was confined, 
 covered with debts and under an accusation of con- 
 niving with the enemy. Cradled amid lamentations 
 instead of tender lullabies, she began life sadly. 
 On coming out of prison, her father took her at the 
 age of thi-ee years to IMartinique, where he went to 
 seek his fortune. He lost all he had at the gaming- 
 table and died, leaving his wife and child in povert3^ 
 When she was ten years old Fran9oise d'Aubign^ 
 . returned to France. Her mother confided her to 
 the care of an aunt, Madame de Villette, who brought 
 her up in the Protestant religion, of which her ances- 
 tor, the celebrated Thtiodore Agi-ippa d'Aubign^, had 
 been an intrepid champion. "I very much fear," 
 wrote Madame d'Aubign^ to Madame de Villette, 
 " that this poor little galeuse may give you a good 
 
90 TBE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 deal of trouble; that will be the result of your 
 goodness in being willing to take her. God give 
 her the grace to be able to requite you for it!"^ 
 Some time afterward, Fran§oise was withdrawn from 
 the Protestant hands of Madame de Villette and 
 entrusted to those of another and very zealous 
 Catholic relative, Madame de Neuillant. " I ruled 
 in the farmyard," she said afterward, "and it was 
 there my reign commenced. ... A little basket 
 containing our luncheon was hung on our arms, and 
 we were given a little book of Pibrac's quatrains, 
 of which we had to learji several pages everj-^ day. 
 Along with this a switch was put in our hands, and 
 we were charged to prevent the turkej's from going 
 where they ought not. " It is pretended that at this 
 period she received her first declaration of love, and 
 that from a young peasant. Did she recall it on the 
 day of her marriage with the great King ? 
 
 She was afterwards placed in a convent of Ureu- 
 lines at Niort, and subsequently in that of the 
 Ursulines of rue Saint-Jacques at Paris, where she 
 abjured Protestantism, but not M'ithout a vigorous 
 resistance. She already possessed that gift of pleas- 
 ing Avhich she retained throughout her life. " In my 
 childhood," she has said herself,^ "I was the best 
 little creature that you can imagine. ... I was 
 really what is called a good child, so much so that 
 everybody loved me. . . . When I was a little 
 
 1 Letter of JiUy 28, 1646. 2 Entretiens de Saint-Cyr. 
 
MADAME BE MAINTENON IN 1682 91 
 
 larger I lived in the convents ; you know hoAV much 
 I was loved by my mistresses and my companions. 
 ... I thought of nothing but obliging them and 
 making myself their servant from morning to night." 
 
 An orphan and without any resources, Fran9oise 
 d'Aubign^, at the age of seventeen, was married in 
 1652 to the famous poet Scarron, who was only forty- 
 two years old, but paralyzed, crippled in all his mem- 
 bers, — Scarron, the burlesque author, the buffoon 
 par excellence, who demands a brevet as Queen's 
 invalid, laughs at his afflictions, derides himself and 
 his pains, and who, while resembling, as he said, a 
 letter Z, while "having his arms shortened as well 
 as his legs and his fingers as much as his arms," 
 while being, in fine, "an abridgment of human 
 misery," amuses all the French social world by his 
 inexhaustible fancy, his frank, Gallic, Rabelaisian 
 gaiety. When the marriage contract is drawn up, 
 Scarron declares that he acknowledges in his future 
 wife four louis of income, two large and roguish 
 eyes, a very fine figure, a pair of beautiful hands, 
 and much wit. The notary asks him what settle- 
 ment he proposes to make on his wife. " Immortal- 
 ity," he answers. 
 
 What tact must not a girl of seventeen have needed 
 to make hei-self respected in the society of the bur- 
 lesque poet who said : " I shall not make her commit 
 any follies, but I shall teach her a good many." 
 Just the contrary is what will happen. Frangoise 
 d'Aubign^ will moralize Scarron. She will make 
 
92 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 his salon one of the most distinguished social centres 
 of Paris. The best people will regard it as an honor 
 to be admitted there. A young noble of the court 
 will be heard to say: "If it were a question of tak- 
 ing liberties with the Queen or with Madame 
 Scarron, I would not deliberate: I would sooner 
 take them with the Queen." Even Ninon de Len- 
 clos, Scarron's friend, will bow before such virtue. 
 And yet it is not admirers, aspirants, who are lack- 
 ing to the poet's wife, the belle Indientie, as people 
 like to call her, the siren of whom Petitot has made 
 such a charming picture in enamel, and whom 
 jNIademoiselle de Scud^ry celebrates in enthusiastic 
 terms in her romance Clelie, under the pseudonym 
 of Lyrianne. Queen Christina of Sweden says to 
 Scarron himself that she is not surprised to find him 
 the gayest man in Paris, in spite of his afflictions, 
 seeing that he has the most amiable wife in Paris. 
 
 With so good and charming a companion the poor 
 poet has less merit in supporting pain more patiently 
 than the stoics of antiquity. He died in October, 
 1660, in yerj Christian sentiments, and says on his 
 deathbed : " My only regret is that I can leave no 
 property to my mfe, whom I have every imaginable 
 reason to be satisfied with." 
 
 As a widow Madame Scarron seeks esteem, not 
 love. To please while remaining virtuous, to en- 
 dure, if need be, privations and even poverty, but to 
 win the title of a strong woman, to deserve the sym- 
 pathy and approbation of honest people, such is the 
 
MADAME BE MAIN TEN ON IN 1682 93 
 
 aim of all lier efforts. Well though veiy simply 
 dressed; discreet and modest, intelligent and dis- 
 tinguished, with that inborn elegance -which luxur}' 
 cannot give and .which only comes by nature ; pious 
 with a sincere and gentle piety; less occupied with 
 herself than with others; talking well and, which 
 is much rarer, knowing how to listen; taking an 
 interest in the joys and sorrows of her friends ; skil- 
 ful in amusing and consoling them; she is justlj' 
 regarded as one of the most amiable and superior 
 women in Paris. Economical and simple in her 
 tastes, she makes her accounts balance perfectly, 
 thanks to an annual pension of two thousand livres 
 granted her by Queen Anne of Austria. She is 
 cordially received by Mesdames de S^vign^, de Cou- 
 langes, de La Fayette, d'Albret, de Richelieu. This 
 is the most tranquil and doubtless the happiest 
 period of her life. But the death of her benefac- 
 tress, the Queen-mother (January 20, 1666), deprives 
 her of the pension which is her only resource. A 
 noble who is very rich, but old and a debauchee, 
 asks her in marriage, but she refuses him. She is 
 on the point of expatriating herself to follow the 
 Princess de Nemours, who is about to marry the 
 King of Portugal. Her star retains her in France, 
 where she will one day be almost Queen. She 
 writes to Mademoiselle d'Artigny: "Contrive for 
 me, I entreat you, the honor of being presented to 
 Madame de Montespan when I go to bid you adieu ; 
 so that I may not have to reproach myself with 
 
94 THE WOMEN OF VEBSAILLES 
 
 having quitted France without having seen its won- 
 der." Madame de Montespan is not yet the mis- 
 tress of Louis XIV., but her already famous beauty 
 and her position as lady of the Queen's palace gives 
 her influence. She finds Madame Scarron charming 
 and obtains the renewal of her pension of two thou- 
 sand livres, which prevents her going to Portugal. 
 
 Rejoiced at this solution of her difficulties, the 
 beautiful widow, wholly occupied with serious books 
 and works of charity, reading the Book of Job and 
 the maxims of La Rochefoucauld, visiting the poor 
 and bestowing alms in spite of the slenderness of 
 her income, installs herself very modestly in a small 
 apartment on the rue des Tournelles. Here it is 
 that capricious Fortune is coming to surprise her. 
 Madame de Montespan has become the mistress of 
 the King. Already she has had two children by 
 him: a daughter, born in 1669, who will live but 
 three yeare; and a son, born in 1670, who M'ill be 
 the Duke du Maine. These two infants, whose 
 birth is still a mystery, need an intelligent, devoted, 
 discreet woman to bring them up. Madame de 
 Montespan thinks of Madame Scarron. The wife 
 of Colbert, the great minister, had willingly under- 
 taken charge of the son and daughter of Louis XIV. 
 and Mademoiselle de La Vallidre. Madame Scarron, 
 solicited by the King himself, accepts the offer made 
 her in 1670. She becomes the governess, the second 
 iiiother, of the children of Louis XIV. and Madame 
 de Montespan. To conceal their existence they are 
 
MADAME HE MAIN TEN ON IN 1682 95 
 
 each placed separately, with a nurse, in a little house 
 outside of Paris. Leaving her friends, giving up 
 society, risking the loss of her reputation by a sin- 
 gular mystery, Madame Scarron courageousl}'^ sacri- 
 fices herself to her new r61e. The family of adultery 
 goes on increasing. The birth of the Count de 
 Vexin comes in 1672, of Mademoiselle de Nantes 
 (the future Duchess de Bourbon) in 1673, of Made- 
 moiselle de Tours in 1674. According to Madame 
 de Caylus, Madame Scarron is sent for each time. 
 She hides the baby under her scarf and herself under 
 a mask and takes a cab to Paris, dreading lest the 
 infant may begin to cry while on the road. In 1672 
 she established herself in a large isolated house not 
 far from Vaugirard. Madame de Coulanges writes 
 at this time to Madame de S6vign(5 : " As for Ma- 
 dame Scarron, her life is an astonishing sort of 
 thing. Without exception not a soul has inter- 
 course with her." Louis XIV., prejudiced at first 
 against the governess, whom he characterized as a 
 blue-stocking, begins to recognize her good quali- 
 ties. Her pension is increased from two thousand to 
 six thousand livres. 
 
 On December 20, 1673, the legitimation of the 
 Duke du Maine, the Count de Vexin, and Mademoi- 
 selle de Tours is registered. The following year 
 these three children are domiciled at Versailles with 
 Madame Scarron. She writes to her brother, Julj- 
 25, 1674 : " The life people lead here is very dissi- 
 pated and the days pass quickly. All my little 
 
96 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 Princes are establislied here, and I think forever. 
 That, like everything else, has its good and bad 
 side." 
 
 As soon as she set foot at court, Madame Scarron 
 laid down a programme for herself. " There is noth- 
 ing cleverer than irreproachable conduct," she says. 
 At first Madame de Montespan congratulates herself 
 on having near her a person so amiable, so witty, 
 and such good company. But this fancy does not 
 last long. The haughty favorite soon begins to tor- 
 ment the modest governess. Spats, reconciliations, 
 little tiffs, begin. Madame Scarron does not attack; 
 she defends herself. Louis XIV. does her justice 
 and recognizes her rare merits. At the close of the 
 year 1674 he gives her the money necessary to pur- 
 chase the estate of Maintenon, fourteen leagues from 
 Paris, ten from Versailles, and four from Chartres. 
 The governess of the legitimated children is thence- 
 forth styled the Marquise de Maintenon. 
 
 Were there on her side the skilfully devised 
 Machiavelian calculations, the subtle hypocrisies, 
 that her detractors have supposed? We do not 
 believe it. Is it her fault if her interests are at one 
 with her duties, if piety, which to her is an end in 
 itself, is to become a means in consequence of unfore- 
 seen circumstances? At bottom, what does she 
 desire above all things? To convert Louis XIV. 
 Does she Avish the adulterous commerce of the sov- 
 ereign and Madame de Montespan to cease? Yes. 
 Does she wish to become tlie King's mistress? No. 
 
MADAME BE MAINTENON IN 1GS2 97 
 
 When Louis XIV., tired of the pride and violence 
 of the favorite, departs from her, does Madame de 
 Maintenon try to monopolize him for hei"self ? Not 
 at all. It is Mademoiselle de Fontanges who will 
 pick up the left-hand sceptre. And when Mademoi- 
 selle de Fontanges dies, will Madame de Maintenon 
 have the notion of replacing her? In no wise. She 
 will have but one object: to bring back the King to 
 the Queen, and this object she will attain. 
 
 And yet people will say, she is the friend of 
 Madame de Montespan, she is under obligations to 
 her. That is true; but never, even at the time 
 when she had most need of her benefactress, has she 
 said a word of approbation, of encouragement, for 
 adultery. Never has she sacrificed her principles. 
 The fact of interesting oneself in natural children, 
 of bringing them up in a Christian manner, of pitj'- 
 ing and loving them, is no more a laudation of their 
 origin than the establishment of a foundling as34um 
 is the consecration of adultery or concubinage. Is 
 Madame de INIaintenon reproached for her amiabilitj', 
 her attentions to Madame de Montespan? But who 
 was there at the court of Louis XIV. who did not 
 show respect to the favorite? Did not the Queen 
 herself treat her kindly and accept her first as her 
 lady of the palace and afterwards as superintendent 
 of her household ? 
 
 There are also many who accuse Madame de Main- 
 tenon of hypocrisy in her inclination to withdraw, 
 and the promises she made herself to leave the court 
 
98 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 as soon as possible. But why forget that ambition, 
 like love, has its alternations of ardor and lassitude, 
 of passion and satiety? Do not the fruits one has 
 most desired often lose their savor the moment they 
 are possessed ? And is not reality the grave of hope ? 
 Madame de ]Maintenon one day said she would be an 
 enigma to posterity. Nevertheless she will only be 
 an enigma to herself. Ambitious and undeceived, 
 eager for honors whose nothingness she will be sen- 
 sible of, there will be no hypocrisy in her soul, but 
 plenty of contradictions. 
 
 The great defect of historians is their desire to 
 find characters all of a piece. In nearly all natures 
 there is both good and evil, truth and falsehood, 
 strength and weakness. Madame de Maintenon 
 does not escape this common law. She merits 
 neither the odious satires of her adversaries nor the 
 exaggerated praises of her admirers. But we do not 
 hesitate to declare, for our own part, that when it is 
 a question of judging this celebrated woman, the 
 balance ought, in our opinion, to lean to the side of 
 eulogy rather than to that of criticism. 
 
 Madame de Maintenon's detractors reckon it a 
 crime in her to have injured Madame de Montespan 
 by the pious counsels she gave to Louis XIV. 
 Would they prefer then that she should have made 
 herself the pander of adultery, and employed her 
 intelligence in reconciling the King with his mis- 
 tress ? Do they prefer the part of a go-between to 
 that of a moi-alizer? She is engaged to educate the 
 
MADAME BE MAINTENON IN 16S2 99 
 
 cliildren of Madame de Montespan, but certainly not 
 to favorize her amours. And j'et she is very well 
 aware of the malevolence, the calumnies, to which 
 her attitude may give rise. One of the Untretiem de 
 Saint-Ci/r proves this. "So there we were, irre- 
 trievably embroiled," she says, "without having had 
 any intention of breaking off, and even without hav- 
 ing formally done so. It certainly was not my fault, 
 and yet if either of us had any reason to complain it 
 was she, for she could say with truth: 'I was the 
 cause of her elevation, I gained her the King's 
 acquaintance and approval; she is becoming the 
 favorite and I am driven away.' It is true I had 
 many things to say in return. For was I wrong in 
 accepting the King's friendship on the conditions I 
 had laid down ? Was I wrong in having given him 
 good advice? Did not Madame de Montespan know 
 that I would neglect no means of breaking off her 
 guilty commerce ? " 
 
 A eurious thing is the respective situations of 
 these two women, both so witty and intelligent, of 
 whom Louis XIV. said: "I had more trouble to 
 make peace between them than to re-establish it in 
 Turkey." Madame de Maintenon wrote, June 14, 
 1679 : " Madame de Montespan is absolutely deter- 
 mined to believe that I am trying to be the King's 
 mistress. 'But,' said I to her, 'are there three of us 
 then?' — 'Yes,' she answered me, 'I in name, that 
 girl [Mademoiselle de Fontanges] in fact, and you 
 in heart. ' I replied that she paid too great heed to 
 
100 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 her resentment. She answered that she knew my 
 artifices and was only soiTy that she had not given 
 heed to her presentiments. She reproached me with 
 the presents she had given me and with those of the 
 King, and said she had nourished me and I was 
 stifling her. Do you understand the situation ? It 
 is a curious thing that we cannot live together, and 
 yet cannot separate. I love her and can never per- 
 suade mjself that she hates me." Again Madame 
 de Maint«non writes, in 1680 : " To-day Madame de 
 Montespan and I took a walk together ai-m in arm 
 and laughing a good deal; we are on none the better 
 terms for that." 
 
 Sovereigns or private persons, princesses or civil- 
 ians' wives, great ladies or women of the people, 
 how much they resemble each other! Had not La 
 Bruyere good reason to say: "At court and in the 
 city there are the same passions, the same frailties, 
 the same pettiness, the same caprices. ... If he has 
 good eyes, one may easily see the little town, the 
 rue Saint-Denis, transported as it were to Ver- 
 sailles and Fontainebleau." 
 
 Madame de Montespan, even while irritated with 
 the clever governess, must, after all, have recognized 
 that she was undergoing a sort of retributive pun- 
 ishment. Had she not supplanted her own fi-iend. 
 Mademoiselle de La Vallidre ? Had she not shame- 
 fully deceived Queen Marie Th^rdse? Does not 
 her conscience tell her that her chastisement is 
 deserved? She is vanquished. Let her resign her- 
 
MADAME DE MAINTENON IN 1682 101 
 
 self! Doubtless it is painful for this haughty Morte- 
 mart, who has always held her own with the great 
 King, who has looked the demigod in the face, to 
 humble herself before a woman she had rescued 
 from poverty, before a governess who is seven years 
 older than herself. But -what can be done about it ? 
 
 Thenceforward Madame de Maintenon's position 
 is beyond attack. The politic woman has no longer 
 any need to make a stepping-stone of the cradle of 
 the legitimated. It is not she who brings up the 
 last two children of Madame de Montespan and 
 Louis XIV. (the future Duchess of Orleans and the 
 Count de Toulouse). She has now her own settled 
 place at court. She is sought for and flattered. 
 When she spends a few days at her chateau of 
 Maintenon, the greatest personages go there to pay 
 their homage. Madame de S<5vign(? writes concern- 
 ing her, Julj' 17, 1680 : " People no longer approach 
 the lady without fear and respect, and the ministers 
 pay court to her like the rest. . . . She is intro- 
 ducing the King to an entirely new region ; I mean 
 the commerce of friendship and conversation, with- 
 out chicanery and without constraint; he appears 
 charmed with it." 
 
 At the age of ten years the little Duke du Maine, 
 Madame de Maintenon's cherished pupil, had just 
 passed out of the hands of men. Louis XIV. re- 
 warded the care she had bestowed on this child by 
 appointing her lady of the bedchamber to the Dau- 
 phiness. When this princess arrives in France she 
 
102 THE WOMEN OF VEBSAILLES 
 
 is met at Schlestadt by Bossuet and Madame de 
 Maintenon. " If," writes Madame de S^vign^, " Ma- 
 dame the Dauphiness fancies that all the men and 
 women have as much wit as these specimens, she will 
 be greatly deceived; truly, it is a great advantage 
 to be of the first order. "^ Madame de Maintenon 
 possesses the boon she had so much desired, consid- 
 eration. The most eminent prelates hold her in high 
 esteem. The devout party regard her as an oracle. 
 It is she who is laboring at the King's conversion, 
 she who is bringing him back to the Queen, she 
 who, with insinuating and gentle eloquence, pleads 
 at court the cause of morality and religion. 
 
 1 Letter of Feb. 14, 1680. 
 
VI 
 
 THE BAVAEIAK DAUPHINESS 
 
 AT the side of those imperious types which 
 impose themselves on the attention of poster- 
 ity, there is a place in history for more tranquil, 
 gentler, and more meditative figures who, in life, 
 remained in the shade, in silence, and who may be 
 said to retain a sort of modesty and reserve even 
 beyond the tomb. Princesses are met with Avhom 
 the tumult of the world, the eclat of power, the 
 splendor of luxury, could not detach from their 
 native melancholy; who have been humble and timid 
 in the midst of grandeurs; who have made a soli- 
 tude for themselves, and who, to use Bossuet's ex- 
 pression, have found in their oratories, spite of all 
 the agitations of the court, the Carmel of Elias, the 
 desert of John, the mountain which so often wit- 
 nessed the lamentations of Jesus. 
 
 There is a blending of benevolence and sadness, 
 of tenderness and chagrin, of compassion and kind- 
 ness, in the smile of these Avomen. They seem to 
 have occupied the highest situations only to in- 
 spire us with philosophic reflections and Christian 
 
 103 
 
104 THE WOM£N OF VERSAILLES 
 
 thoughts, to prove to us by their example that hap- 
 piness does not dwell in palaces, that external things 
 do not impart real joys, that "grandeur is a dream, 
 youth a flower, that fades, health but a deceptive 
 name."i We do not sufficiently contemplate these 
 plaintive, pale, and jnelancholy apparitions of his- 
 tory. But if one takes pains to study them seriously, 
 he soon becomes attached to them, he prefers these 
 Christian types to the visages of proud and sensual 
 women which reflect all the passions of paganism. 
 One is pleased with half tints after too glaring colors; 
 noise makes silence beloved, and the eye, wearied 
 by the raj^s of a too vivid flame, finds repose iu 
 softer lustre. 
 
 Among the number of these wise and prudent 
 women whose career is not fruitful in dramatic 
 catastrophes, but is none the less full of useful les- 
 sons, must be placed Marie Anne Christine Victoire, 
 daughter of the Elector Ferdinand, Duke of Bavaria, 
 and Dauphiness of France. The life of this Prin- 
 cess, born in 1660, married in 1680 to the son of 
 Louis XIV., died at Versailles in 1690, at the age 
 of twenty-nine, may be summed up in one word: 
 melancholy. She was one of those women, disgusted 
 with earth and aspiring to heaven, of whom Bossuet 
 might have said, as he did of the Queen: "The 
 earth, her origin and sepulchre, is not yet low 
 enough to receive her; she would like to disappear 
 
 1 Bossuet, Oraison funebre de la reine Marie-Therese. 
 
TEE BAVARIAN DAUPHINESS 105 
 
 altogether before the majesty of the King of kings." 
 Her education had been austere. The court of 
 Munich resembled a convent. "People rose there 
 at six o'clock every morning, heard Mass at nine, 
 dined at ten, were present every day at Vespers, and 
 by six in the evening there was no one there, that 
 being the hour when they took their supper in order 
 to go to bed at seven." ^ 
 
 Far from being dazzled by her new fortune, the 
 young Princess did not leave the pious and patri- 
 archal court where she passed her childhood without 
 profound regret. She produced a good impression 
 in her new home as soon as she made her appear- 
 ance. She was not beautiful, but her grace, her 
 manners, her natural dignity, and still more, her 
 merit, her learning, and her kindness gave her charm. 
 One of the persons sent by Louis XIV. to meet her 
 wrote to the King : " Madame the Dauphiness is not 
 pretty. Sire ; but pass over the first glance and you 
 will be very well content with her." She received 
 Bossuet, who had gone to meet her at Schlestadt, with 
 perfect courtesy. "I take an interest in all you 
 have taught M. the Dauphin," she said to him; "do 
 not, I beg you, refuse to give me your instructions 
 also, and be assured that I will endeavor to profit by 
 them." 
 
 The great bishop was struck bj' the knowledge of 
 the Princess. She had an accurate acquaintance 
 
 1 Memoires cle Coulanfjes. 
 
106 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 with all the languages spoken in Europe, and even 
 with the language of the Church, which had been 
 taught her in childhood.^ Bossuet was sincere when 
 he said of her, three yeai-s later: "We admired her 
 as soon as she appeared, and the King has confirmed 
 our judgment. "2 Appointed First Almoner to the 
 Dauphiness, he accompanied her from Schlestadt to 
 Versailles. During the journey a ceremony was 
 performed which strongly contrasted with the trans- 
 ports of joy the Princess had encountered on her 
 way ever since entering France. On Wednesday, 
 March 6, 1680, Bossuet put the ashes on her fore- 
 head in the seignorial chapel of the chateau of 
 Brignicourt-sur-Saulx. "Woman," said he, "re- 
 member that thou wert taken from the dust and must 
 one day return to it." Alas! the prediction was 
 accomplished ten years later, and the Princess, 
 beside whose deathbed Bossuet stood, reminded him 
 of the solemn words of that Ash Wednesday. ^ 
 
 Louis XIV. gave his daughter-in-law the most 
 friendly and courteous reception. She had Madame 
 the Duchess de Richelieu for lady of honor, Madame 
 de Maintenon for second lady of the bedchamber, 
 and Mesdemoiselles de Laval, de Biron, de Gontaut, 
 de Tonnesse, de Jarnac, de Rambures, as maids of 
 
 1 Pierre de La Broue, Bishop of Mu-epoix, Oraison funebre de la 
 Dauphine. 
 
 - Bossuet, Oraison funehre de la reine Marie-Tlierese. 
 
 3 See tlie learned and remarkable work of M. Floquet: Bossuet 
 preceptexir du Dauphin. 
 
THE BAVARIAN DAUPIIINESS 107 
 
 honor. The King came after dinner to spend sev- 
 eral hours in the room of the Princess, where he 
 found Madame de Maintenon, and to this visit he 
 devoted the time he had been accustomed to pass 
 with Madame de Montespan. 
 
 The early j^ears of the marriage of the Dauphiness 
 were tranquil. Her husband, who was but a year 
 older than she, showed at this time a sincere attach- 
 ment for her. The birth of their son, the Duke of 
 Burgundy, caused transports of joy not only at court 
 but throughout France. In the night of August 
 5-6, 1682, when the time of her delivery drew nigh, 
 Louis XIV. had a mattress carried into the chamber 
 of the Dauphiness, where he spent the night with 
 the Queen. He encouraged his daughter-in-law with 
 affectionate words. Several times he supported her 
 while she walked up and down in the chamber, 
 telling her he would be veiy well satisfied if she had 
 a daughter, providing she suffered less and were 
 promptly delivered. All the places and avenues of 
 Versailles were made as light as day by a multitude 
 of lanterns and torches carried by persons awaiting 
 the happy event. The next day, when the Princess 
 had brought a son ^ into the world, the joy bordered 
 on delirium. Everybody took the liberty of embrac- 
 ing the King.2 gpinola bit his finger in the warmth 
 
 1 Tlie Dauphiness was brought to bed in the Superintendent's 
 pavilion, situated at tlie extremity of the south wing, opposite the 
 Swiss lalce. 
 
 - Abb6 de Choisy, Memoires pour servir a Vhistoire de Louis 
 XIV. 
 
108 TUB WOMEN OF VHESAILLES 
 
 of his enthusiasm, and hearing him cry out: "Sire," 
 said he, "I ask Your Majesty's pardon; but if I had 
 not bitten you, you would not have paid any atten- 
 tion to me." There were dances, illuminations, 
 transports, every%vhere. The people who were mak- 
 ing bonfires burned even the flooring intended for 
 the grand gallerj'. "Let them alone," said Louis 
 XIV., smiling; "we will have other flooring." He 
 showed the newly born to the crowd, and the air 
 resounded with enthusiastic acclamations. 
 
 Madame de Maintenon wrote to her friend, Ma- 
 dame de Saint-G^ran, the next day, August 7, 1682: 
 "The King has made a very fine present to Madame 
 the Dauphiness ; he has had the little prince in his 
 arms for a moment. He congratulated Monseigneur 
 like a frieud; he gave the first tidings to the Queen; 
 in fine, everybody says he is adorable; Madame de 
 Montespan is withering at our joy. We are living 
 with every appearance of sincere friendship. Some 
 people say I want to put myself in her place, not 
 knowing either my aversion for that sort of com- 
 merce nor the aversion I wish to inspire in the King 
 for it. Some think that I wish to bring her back to 
 God. There is a better made heart for which I have 
 greater hopes." 
 
 This heart, that of Louis XIV., was daily inclin- 
 ing more toward religion. The time of scandals was 
 over. Every cloud had disappeared from the con- 
 jugal sky of Louis XIV. and Marie Th^rese. The 
 quarrels of Madame de Montespan and Madame de 
 
THE BAVARIAN DAUPUINESS 109 
 
 Maintenon were appeased. These two ladies no 
 longer visited each other. But whenever they met 
 elsewhere they spoke and even held conversations so 
 lively and cordial in appearance that any one who 
 had seen them and was not conversant with court 
 intrigues would have thought them the best friends 
 in the world. ^ Speaking of Madame de Maintenon, 
 the Queen said gratefully: "The King has never 
 treated me with so much tenderness as since he lis- 
 tened to her." The year 1683 promised to be a happy 
 one for the saintly and gentle companion of Louis 
 XIV. But death was approaching rapidly. A 
 terrible malady was about to carry off the Queen, 
 who was only forty-five years old. 
 
 This good and virtuous princess of whom Bossuet 
 has said: "Slie goes with the Lamb, for she is 
 worthy " ; this Queen who wore the lilied mantle as 
 if it were haircloth; this woman who was one of 
 those elect souls of whom the Apostle Saint John 
 says: "They are without spot before the throne of 
 God, sine maculd enim sunt ante thronum Dei " ; this 
 pious Marie Th^rdse died, as she had lived, with 
 angelic sweetness. Louis XIV., who had caused 
 her so many troubles, mourned for her sincerely. 
 " What ! " he cried, " there is no more a Queen in 
 France. What! I am a widower; I could never 
 have believed it, and yet I am so, and of the most 
 meritorious princess. . . . This is the first pain 
 she has ever given me." 
 
 1 Souvenirs de Madame de Caylus. 
 
110 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 Louis XIV., so often accused of coldness and 
 egotism, had on the contrary a great fund of kind- 
 ness. He had been too affectionate a son to be an 
 absolutely bad husband. He wrote on the subject of 
 the death of Anne of Austria, in the Memoirs 
 intended for the Dauphin: "However great might 
 be the courage on which I wished to pique myself, 
 it was impossible that a son bound by the ties of 
 nature could see his mother die without excessive 
 grief, since even those toward whom she had acted 
 as an enemy could not avoid regretting her, and 
 avowing that there had never been a more sincere 
 piety, a more intrepid firmness, more generous a 
 bounty. The vigor with which this princess had 
 maintained my dignity when I could not m5'self de- 
 fend it, was the most important and useful service 
 that could ever be rendered me. . . . My respect for 
 her was not one of those constrained duties which are 
 performed for the sake of decorum. The habit I had 
 formed of having ordinarily the same dwelling and 
 the same table with her, the assiduity with which I 
 was seen to visit her several times every day, no 
 matter how pressing my affairs inight be, were not 
 a law I had imposed on myself for reasons of State, 
 but a sign of the pleasure I took in her company." 
 
 No ; whatever people may say, the man who wrote 
 these lines was not wanting in heart. No one has 
 felt more keenly that incomparable grief, that rend- 
 ing which tears fi-om you more than half your soul: 
 the loss of a mother. Mademoiselle de Montpensier, 
 
THE BAVARIAN DAUPHINESS 111 
 
 an ocular witness of the death of Anne of Austria, 
 says that at the moment when she yielded her last 
 breath, Louis XIV. " was stifling ; they threw water 
 on him; he was suffocating." All night long he 
 shed torrents of tears. 
 
 The death of Queen Marie Th^rSse did not cause 
 him such painful anguish, but still he manifested 
 a keen sensibility on this occasion. "The court," 
 says Madame de Caylus, " was pained by his grief. 
 That of Madame de Maintenon, which I observed 
 very closely, seemed to me sincere and founded upon 
 esteem and gratitude. I would not say as much for 
 the tears of Madame de Montespan, whom I remember 
 to have seen entering Madame de Maintenon's apart- 
 ments, but I cannot say why or wherefore. All that 
 I know is that she wept a good deal and that all her 
 actions seemed to show a trouble founded on that of 
 her mind, and perhaps on the fear of falling into the 
 hands of her husband." 
 
 Marie Thdrdse died July 30, 1683, at the chateau 
 of Versailles, in the bedchamber which has a view 
 of the Orangery and also of the Swiss lake, -and of 
 which we have already had several occasions to 
 speak.i After the Queen's death this room was 
 occupied by the Dauphiness, who, from the hierarchi- 
 cal point of view, had become the principal woman 
 of the court. The King wished to make the salon 
 of his daughter-in-law the most brilliant centre in 
 
 1 Room No. 115 of the Notice du Musee de Versailles. 
 
112 THE WOMEN OF YERSAtLLES 
 
 France. He sometimes went to see her, taking with 
 him his rarest jewels and stuffs for her to select from ; 
 the rest were divided into lots which the maids of 
 honor and ladies who had been presented drew lots 
 for, or perhaps had the honor of playing for with 
 her, and even Avith the King. While hoca was in 
 fashion, and before the King had wisely interdicted 
 so dangerous a game, he played it in the apartments 
 of Madame the Dauphiness; but when he lost he 
 paid as many louis as the others had staked small 
 pieces.^ 
 
 However, in spite of all the court amusements, the 
 Dauphiness yielded to an invincible sadness. She 
 was stifling in this atmosphere of intrigues, agita- 
 tions, and tumultuous pleasures. Disgusted with 
 that "region where joys are visible but false, and 
 whose vexations hidden but real,"^ where "eagerness 
 for the spectacles, the dclat, and the applause at the 
 theatres of Molidre and Harlequin, for banquets, 
 hunts, ballets, and tourneys conceals so many anxie- 
 ties and fears," she found like Bruydre that "a 
 healthy mind acquires at court a taste for solitude 
 and retreat." In spite of all his obliging atten- 
 tions, Louis XIV. could not succeed in making 
 her love the world nor induce her to hold court 
 receptions. She passed her life sadly in the small 
 rooms contiguous to her Versailles apartments with 
 
 1 Souvenirs de Madame de Cayltis. 
 
 2 La BruySre, De la Cour. 
 
THE BAVAUIAN DAUPUINESS 113 
 
 a German woman whom she liked, and who was 
 called La Bessola, as her sole companion. 
 
 This chambermaid, whom the Princess Palatine 
 represents under an odious aspect, had nothing bad 
 about her, according to Madame de Caylus. Never- 
 theless, she was accused of keeping the princess 
 sequestrated, as one might say, and preventing her 
 from responding to the King's gracious attentions. 
 The Dauphin, tired of the perpetual tete-a-tSte of his 
 wife and La Bessola, who always talked in German, 
 a language he was unacquainted with, sought other 
 society. He was smitten with Mademoiselle de 
 Rambures, one of his wife's maids of honor, and he 
 fell into the habit of spending most of his time at 
 the house of his natural sister, the beautiful and 
 witty Princess de Conti, the daughter of Louis XIV. 
 and Mademoiselle de La ValliSre. 
 
 The Dauphiness did not even try to retain a heart 
 which was escaping from her. Either through 
 timidity or lack of self-confidence, she accepted her 
 lot with painful resignation, while suffering bitterly 
 on account of it. Hopeless of consoling her, Louis 
 XIV. left her to the solitude from which nothing 
 could induce her to emerge, and she ended by being 
 deserted by all the court as well as by the King. 
 Madame de Caylus remarks with much justice: 
 "Perhaps the good qualities of the Princess contrib- 
 uted to her isolation. The enemy of scandal and 
 mockery, she could neither endure nor comprehend 
 the raillery and malignant style of the court, all the 
 
114 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 less because she did not understand its subtleties." 
 Madame de Caylus adds this judicious observation : 
 "I have seen foreigners, even those whose spirit 
 seemed most friendly toward French manners, some- 
 times disconcerted by our continual irony." 
 
 A painting by Delutel, after Mignard,^ now hung 
 in the Hall of the Queen's Guards, represents the 
 Dauphiness surrounded by her husband and her 
 three sons. The Dauphin, wearing a red velvet coat, 
 is sitting near a table, caressing a dog. The Prin- 
 cess is at the other side of the table, with the little 
 Duke of Berry 2 on her lap. In front of her the 
 Duke of Anjou,^ in a blue robe, is sitting on a cush- 
 ion ; the Duke of Burgundy, in a red robe and wear- 
 ing the order of the Holy Spirit, is standing up and 
 holding a lance. In the air two Loves support a 
 rich draperj' with one hand and scatter flowers with 
 the other. This painting seems to breathe tran- 
 quillity. A charming quiet and satisfaction marks 
 the aspect of the Dauphiness. But the picture is 
 more allegorical than real, and does not show the 
 Princess as she actually was. Her vexations, her 
 sufferings, her gloomy presentiments, do not appear 
 in it. This is not the exact image of the woman 
 about whom Madame de La Fayette says in her 
 Memoirs: "This poor Princess sees nothing but 
 
 1 No. 2116 of the Notice du Musee de Versailles. 
 ' The Duke of Berry, liorn August 31, 1686. 
 'The Duke of Anjou (the future Philip V. of Spain), horn 
 December 19, 1683. 
 
THE BAVARIAN DAUPHINESS 115 
 
 the worst for herself and takes no part whatever in 
 festivities. She has very bad health and a sad dis- 
 position which, added to the little consideration she 
 enjoys, deprives her of the pleasure which any one 
 except the Princess of Bavaria would feel in arriv- 
 ing at almost the first place in the world." 
 
 Far from rejoicing at her lofty fortune, she longed 
 for Germany where her childhood had passed so 
 modestlj', and said to another German woman, 
 Madame the Duchess of Orleans (the Princess Pala- 
 tine): "We are both of us very unhappy, but the 
 difference between us is that you tried to avoid it as 
 much as you could, while I desired with all my might 
 to come here ; therefore I have deserved my unhap- 
 piness more than you." She thought like Massillon 
 that "grandeur is a weight which wearies," "that 
 nothing which must pass away can be great; it is 
 but a theatrical decoration; death closes the scene 
 and the representation; each lays aside the pomps 
 belonging to his character and his fictitious titles, 
 and both sovereign and slave are reduced to their 
 nothingness and primitive vileness." 
 
 The Dauphiness had a presentiment of her ap- 
 proaching end. People thought her mad because 
 she was constantly saying that she felt herself irrev- 
 ocably lost. But the poor Princess, who well knew 
 that her moral and physical sufferings were but too 
 real, smiled sadly when people seemed incredulous 
 concerning them. "I shall have to die to justify 
 myself," said she. Bossuet has remarked in his 
 
116 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 funeral oration on Queen Marie Th^rdse: "Even 
 innocent souls have the tears and the bitterness of 
 penitence." Melancholy and piety are not incom- 
 patible ; no sky. is so clear as to have no clouds, and 
 Christ Himself has wept. 
 
 Short in duration, long in suffering, the life of 
 the Dauphiness was hidden beneath a sombre veil. 
 This young Princess, for whom Providence had at 
 first seemed to reserve the most brilliant destiny, 
 was to die at the age of twenty-nine, worn out by 
 chagrin and consumed by languor. Convinced that 
 her last delivery had killed her, she tenderly em- 
 braced her son, the Duke of Berry, and as she gave 
 him her blessing, she repeated this line of Andro- 
 mache : — 
 
 " All ! mon fils, que tes jours coutent cher k ta mere ! " ^ 
 
 The earth, which was like an exile to her, seemed to 
 her, moreover, unworthy of regrets. She died " will- 
 ingly and with' calmness," according to the expres- 
 sion of her compatriot the Duchess of Orleans. A 
 few houi-s before breathing her last sbe had said to 
 this Princess, her companion in misfortune: "To- 
 da]"^ I shall prove that I have not been mad in com- 
 plaining of my sufferings." 
 
 ' All ! my sou, how dear thy life has cost thy mother ! 
 
VII 
 
 THE JLA-REIAGE OF MADAME DE JLA.INTENON 
 
 "nr HAVE had an astonishing fortune, but it is 
 
 _J_ not my work. I am where you see me with- 
 out having desired it, or hoped for it, or foreseen it. 
 I say this only to you, because the world would not 
 believe it." 
 
 Thus Madame de Maintenon expressed herself in 
 one of her conversations with the Demoiselles of 
 Saint-C}T, and we believe this appreciation is exact. 
 
 The premature death of the Queen was an event 
 which surprised everybody. Twenty-three years 
 before, August 26, 1660, she who then called herself 
 Madame Scarron had just been present at the solemn 
 entry of Louis XIV. and Marie Th^r^se into their 
 good city of Paris. She wrote the next day to her 
 friend, Madame de Villarceaux: "I do not think 
 anything so beautiful can ever have been seen, and 
 the Queen must have retired last night very well 
 satisfied with the husband she has chosen." 
 
 He who should then have said to the wife of the 
 burlesque poet: "This husband whom you admire 
 so much will one day be your own," would certainly 
 
 117 
 
118 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 have seemed to her a strange prophet. The fictions 
 of romance are not nearly so prodigious as the reali- 
 ties of history, and when Madame de Maintenon at 
 the age of fifty, saw a king of forty-seven, and what 
 a kino-! come to offer to be her husband, she must 
 have thought herself the plaything of a dream. One 
 would be tempted to believe that she could only 
 have been the companion of an aging sovereign who 
 had already lost the greater part of his prestige. 
 But the absolute contrary is true. 
 
 The year when Louis XIV. espoused Scarron's 
 widow was the apogee, the zenith, of the royal star. 
 Never had the sun of the great King been more 
 imposing, nor his haughty device: Nee pluribus 
 imjmr, more dazzling. It was the epoch when, in 
 face of his motionless enemies, he enlarged and for- 
 tified the frontiers of the realm, conquered Stras- 
 bourg, bombarded Genoa and Algiers, finished the 
 luxurious constructions of his splendid Versailles, 
 was the ten-or of Europe and the idol of France. 
 
 And 3'^et Louis XIV. was in love with Madame 
 de Maintenon while Madame de Maintenon was not 
 in love with Louis XIV. ! She had veneration, 
 gratitude, devotion for him, but not love. There is 
 nothing surprising in that. Women, in fact, are 
 seldom enamoured of the men to whom they owe 
 their fortune. In general, they like better to protect 
 than to be protected. They find it sweeter to 
 inspire gratitude than to experience it. What they 
 like best of all is to show their superiority, and. 
 
MARRIAGE OF MADAME I)E MAINTENON 119 
 
 precisely because their sex seems to be condemned 
 by nature to a dependent situation, they are happy 
 when the r81es are exchanged, when it is they who 
 dominate, protect, . oblige. Madame de Maintenon 
 owed Louis XIV. too much to be enamoured of him. 
 
 Let us add that the age at which she married him 
 was no longer that of love, and that the simplicity, 
 the freshness of ideas and sentiments of a young 
 ingSnue from across the Ehine cannot be expected in 
 a woman of fifty. Madame de Maintenon felt that 
 the King would have been ridiculous if he had loved 
 her as he did Mademoiselle de La Vallidre, and that 
 the time for erotic ecstasies was irrevocably passed. 
 She justly reflected that Louis XIV. was faithful to 
 God rather than to her, and that the fear of hell and 
 the desire for salvation had the greatest share in the 
 unexpected change which had been suddenly pro- 
 duced in the morals of a sovereign until then so 
 voluptuous and so fickle. In the Louis XIV. of 
 1684 the devotee took precedence of the lover, piety 
 carried the day against passion, and it was religion 
 still more than tenderness, more even than habit, 
 which prevented Madame de Maintenon from having 
 rivals. 
 
 To sum up, the King's sentiment for her was of 
 the most complex kind. There was in it a mingling 
 of religion and phj-sical love, a calculation of rea- 
 son and an impulse of the heart, an aspiration after 
 the mild joj's of family life and romantic inclina- 
 tion, a sort of compact between French good sense, 
 
120 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 subjugated by the wit, tact, and wisdom of an 
 eminent woman, and Sj)anisb imagination, allured 
 by the notion of having extricated this elect woman 
 from poverty in order to make her almost a queen. 
 Finall}-, it must be noted that Louis XIV., always 
 spiritual, always religious, was intimately convinced 
 that Madame de Maintenon had been sent to him by 
 heaven for his salvation, and that the pious counsels 
 of this saintly woman, who knew how to render 
 devotion so amiable and attractive, seemed to him 
 to be so many inspirations from on high. 
 
 It must not be believed, however, that the affec- 
 tion of Louis XIV. for Madame de Maintenon was 
 purely ideal. If the soul counted in it for nearly 
 all, the senses stood for something. On this head 
 we shall content ourselves with invoking the testi- 
 mony of the Abb^ de Choisy : — 
 
 "He was unwilling to remarr}^" saj-s the abb6, 
 "thi-ough tenderness for his people. He already 
 had three grandsons, and wisely judged that the 
 princes of a second marriage might, in coui-se of 
 time, cause civil wars. On the other hand, he could 
 not dispense with a wife. Madame de INIaintenon 
 pleased him greatly. Her gentle and insinuating 
 wit promised him an agreeable intercoui-se capable of 
 recreating him after the cares of royaltj-. Her per- 
 son was still engaging, and her age prevented her 
 from having children." 
 
 It must not be forgotten, moreover, that the life 
 of women who are veritably beautiful resembles 
 
MAllRIAGE OF MADAME DE MAINTENON 121 
 
 that of nature in having its bright autumnal days, 
 its Saint Martin's summer. The time of conquests 
 with such women is far more prolonged than people 
 ordinarily believe.. The truth in respect to this is 
 unknown because of a widespread prejudice which 
 limits feminine successes to a certain age, and 
 because lovers, being no longer flattered by the 
 afEection of women who are not young, sometimes 
 take as much pains to hide their passion as they 
 would to display it if their idols were only twenty. 
 For my own part I am persuaded that men above 
 forty are less pleasing than women of the same age. 
 Their monej'-, their position, or their wit may still 
 procure them successes, but deprived of these ad- 
 vantages they would produce no impression. On 
 the other hand, women who have passed their fortieth 
 year, when their beauty is real, still preserve charms 
 which make them loved for themselves independ- 
 ently of any advantage except their beauty. But 
 this does not prevent the men who make laws and 
 impose ideas from asserting that a woman of thirty 
 is as old as a man of forty. To our mind, this 
 theory is merely another proof of masculine fatuity. 
 
 Madame de Maintenon is not the only example of 
 a woman whose prestige has survived her youth. 
 Diana of Poitiers was nineteen years older than 
 Henry II. She was forty-eight when the prince 
 ascended the thsone, and when he died, twelve years 
 later, she was still his mistress, the queen of his 
 heart. The son of Madame de S^vign^ was only 
 
122 TSE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 twenty-four when he hecame enamoured of Ninon de 
 Lenclos, then fiftj'-five, and gave up Champmesl(S, 
 then in the full splendor of her youth and talent, 
 for her. Like Diana of Poitiers and Ninon de Len- 
 clos, Madame de Maintenon was remarkably well 
 preserved. Shie had never had any children, and 
 the regularity of her conduct had contributed to 
 banish wrinkles from her noble and tranquil visage. 
 She reminded one of those last fair days of autumn 
 when the sun's raj^s, though they dazzle less, have 
 none the less a penetrating softness. As the Abb(5 
 de Choisy says : " She was not j'^oung, but she had 
 lively and brilliant eyes, her face sparkled with 
 intelligence. " 
 
 Even Saint-Simon, her pitiless detractor, is obliged 
 to admit " that she had nmch wit, incomparable grace, 
 an easy and sometimes a reserved and deferential air, 
 together with a manner of speech which was gentle, 
 just, well-chosen as to words, and naturally eloquent 
 and brief." Lamartine, that admirable genius who 
 had an intuitive appreciation of things, has defined 
 the sentiment of Louis XIV. better than anyone: 
 " The scruples of Louis XIV. had been aided by his 
 attraction toward Madame de Maintenon, a mature 
 beauty, but preserved by the retirement and chastity 
 of her life from that worldly evaporation which soon 
 withers other women. An attachment to Madame 
 de Maintenon seemed to him almost the same thing 
 as an attachment to virtue itself. The charms of 
 confidence and piety, intercourse with a spirit both 
 
MAUEIAGE OF MADAME BE MAINTENON 123 
 
 upright and refined, the pride of raising what one 
 loves to one's own level, and finally, it must be said 
 to the King's honor, the safe counsels he received 
 from this superior woman, — all these lofty and ten- 
 der emotions had increased Madame de Maintenon's 
 empire, so feminine yet so virile, to absolute domi- 
 nation. "^ 
 
 It appears that Louis XIV. was barely a widower 
 when he offered her his hand. M. de La Rochefou- 
 cauld had taken her by the arm at the very moment 
 when the Queen's soul departed, and pushing her 
 into the royal apartment, had said to her: "This is 
 not the time to leave the King; he needs you." 
 
 For an instant a project of marriage between 
 Louis XIV. and the Infanta of Portugal was talked 
 of. But this rumor was speedily contradicted. The 
 King preferred Madame de Maintenon to the young- 
 est and most brilliant princesses of Europe. 
 
 M. Lavall^e, who has made a conscientious study 
 of Madame de Maintenon's life, has fixed upon the 
 first six months of the year 1684 as the period when 
 the secret marriage was contracted, but has not been 
 able to ascertain the exact day. It was mysteriously 
 celebrated in a private oratory of Versailles by the 
 Archbishop of Paris, in presence of P^re La Chaise 
 who ^aid the Mass, of Bontemps, first valet-de- 
 chambre to the King, and of Madame de Montchev- 
 reuil, one of Madame de Maintenon's best friends. 
 
 I Lamartine, £tude sur Bossuet. 
 
124 THE WOMEN OF VEUSAILLES 
 
 Saint-Simon speaks of it with horror as "the most 
 profound humiliation, the most public, most lasting, 
 most unheard-of," a humiliation "which posterity 
 will be unwilling to credit, reserved by fortune, not 
 to dare mention Providence here, for the haughtiest 
 of kings." This was not Arnauld's opinion: "I do 
 not know," he writes, "what can be reprehended in 
 this marriage contracted according to the regula- 
 tions of the Church. It is not humiliating except 
 in the estimation of the feeble-minded, who think 
 it a weakness in the King to be able to resolve on 
 marrying a woman older than himself and so far 
 below him in rank. This marriage unites him with 
 a person whose mind and virtue he esteems, and in 
 intercourse with whom he finds innocent pleasures 
 which recreate him after his great occupations." ^ 
 
 Madame de Maintenon seemed to have attained 
 the summit of her desires. But she was too intelli- 
 gent, she had studied the problems of human destiny 
 too closety and anxiously, not to be attacked by sad- 
 ness. It was she who wrote : " Before being at court 
 I can testify that I had never known ennui; but I 
 have experienced it thoroughlj' since then, and I 
 believe I never could have borne up under it if I had 
 not thought that it M'as there God wished me to be. 
 There is no true happiness but in serving God." 
 
 This melancholy of which the expression inces- 
 santly recurs, like a plaintive and monotonous re- 
 
 1 Arnauld, letter to M. de Vancel, June 3, 1688. 
 
MARRIAGE OF MADAME DE MAINTENON 125 
 
 frain, in Madame de Maintenon's letters, is all the 
 more striking because it is a profound instruction. 
 Here we have a woman, better say a fair}', who, at 
 the age when the- most splendid beauties hear the 
 hour strike for their retirement, arrives at a truly 
 prodigious situation and at fifty years of age takes 
 possession of a sovereign of forty-seven in all the 
 prestige of victory and power; a Avoman who with 
 an ability that borders on witchery supplants all 
 the fairest, richest, and noblest young girls in the 
 world, not one of whom would not have been proud 
 to unite herself with the great King; a woman who, 
 after having been several times reduced to poverty, 
 becomes, next to Louis XIV., the most impor- 
 tant personality in France! And yet she is not 
 happy! Is it because the King does not love her 
 enough? Not at all. For the letters he writes her 
 if he is obliged to remain away from her for several 
 days are expressed in this fashion : " I profit by the 
 occasion of Montchevreuil's departure to assure you 
 of a verity which pleases me too much to let me tire 
 of telling it to you ; it is that I cherish jo\i always, 
 that I esteem you more highly than I can express, 
 and that in fine, whatever affection you may have 
 for me, I have still more for you, being with all my 
 heart entirely yours."-' 
 
 If she is sad, is it because one step yet remains to 
 be taken in the marvellous ladder of her fortune? 
 
 1 Letter written during the siege of Mons, April, 1691. 
 
126 THE WOMEN OF VEliSAILLES 
 
 Is it because she has not been able to transform her 
 almost royal armchair into a throne? In no wise. 
 If she had been recognized as Queen she would still 
 have remained sorrowful, and her brother might still 
 liave said to her: " Had you then a promise of espous- 
 ing the Eternal Father ? " 
 
 However, she had converted a fickle man into a 
 constant one. This quinquagenarian had fixed the 
 sovereign whose heart La Valli^re with all her love, 
 Montespan with all her wit, had not been able to 
 retain. During more than thirty years she was to 
 reign without a rival over the soul of the greatest of 
 all kings, and it was not the monarch alone but the 
 monarchy which was to incline respectfully before 
 hei". The whole court was at her feet, soliciting a 
 word, a glance. As the ladies of Saint-Cj-r say in 
 their notes, " parliaments, princes, cities, regiments, 
 addressed themselves to her as to the King; none of 
 the nobles of the realm, the cardinals and bishops, 
 knew any other way." She was at the culminating 
 point of repute, consideration, and fortune, and 5'^et, 
 I repeat, she was not happy! 
 
 F^nelon wrote to her, October 4, 1689: "God often 
 tries others by crosses which appear as crosses. You 
 He desires to crucify by apparent prosperitj', and to 
 give you a clear knowledge of the nothingness of the 
 world by means of the wretchedness attached to all 
 that is most dazzling therein." 
 
 Arrived at the height of grandeur, Madame de 
 Maintenon experienced that disquietude, that fa- 
 
MARRIAGE OF MADAME DE MAINTENON 127 
 
 tigue, which is nearly always the companion of satis- 
 fied ambition. She was tempted to say with La 
 Bruy^re: "Two thirds of my life are over; why dis- 
 turb myself so much about what remains? The 
 most brilliant fortune is not worth the torment which 
 I give myself. Thirty years will destroy those giants 
 of power which were seen to raise their heads by 
 dint of violence, and all those whom I beheld so 
 eagerly and by whom I hoped to attain greatness ; the 
 greatest of boons, if any boons there be, is repose, 
 retirement, and a place which would be one's own." 
 Arrived at an incredible position, the wife of the 
 greatest king on earth regretted Scarron's house — 
 she says it herself — "as the duck regrets its muddy 
 pond." The spectacle of grandeurs seen too near at 
 hand no longer dazzled her eyes. Taught by experi- 
 ence she said with La Fontaine : — 
 
 " Que la Fortune vend ce qu'on croit qu'elle donne," ' 
 
 and if her mind, fatigued with luxury, power, and 
 glory, was transported back to the days of mediocritj', 
 it was because she had then neither a marquisate of 
 Maintenon nor an apartment on the same footing 
 with that of Louis XIV., while she did possess two 
 treasures, precious in far other wise, which were 
 hers in Scarron's dwelling, but which she had lost in 
 the Versailles of the Sun-King — two treasures 
 really beautiful, truly inestimable, one of which is 
 called Youth and the other Gaiety. 
 
 ^ How Fortune sells what she is supposed to give ! 
 
VIII 
 
 MADAHIE DE MAINTENON'S APAETJIEXT 
 
 PEOPLE forget quickly in France, and venera- 
 tion for the past is dwindling, along with every 
 other sort of veneration. If time is a destroyer, man 
 is a still greater one: Tempus edax, homo edacior. 
 Could one believe that the apartment of IMadame de 
 Maintenori, that celebrated apartment in which, dur- 
 ing thirtj- 3'ears, Louis XIV. passed a great part of 
 his daj-s and evenings, is now merely a small 
 museum containing nothing but pictures of the 
 battles of the French Revolution? There is not a 
 single piece of furniture belonging to the time of 
 Louis XIV. ; not a portrait of Madame de Main- 
 tenon; not a souvenir, not an inscription which 
 recalls the illustrious companion of the great King! 
 Ignorant and heedless, strangers in our own land, 
 we spurn with disdainful feet the debris which we 
 should hold sacred. One jnight fancy us embar- 
 rassed by the importance of our annals, the abun- 
 dance of our glories. We look with indifference at 
 our monuments and our ruins. How many there 
 are who visit the palace of Versailles without troub- 
 
 128 
 

 MADAME DE MONTESPAN. 
 
MADAME BE MAINTENON'S APARTMENT 129 
 
 ling themselves to inquire for the room of Madame 
 de Maintenon or that of Marie Antoinette! It 
 would be tiresome and expensive to buy and consult 
 a catalogue. 
 
 It would be well to bring about a reaction against 
 this forgetfulness of traditions, this neglect of the 
 past. Histoiy needs Cuviers as nature does. His- 
 tory is a great drama the decorations and scenes of 
 which should be revived as well as the personages. 
 To this life of the dead, movement is neeessaiy, the 
 animation of resuscitated actors whose faces are 
 beheld and whose voices listened to. The work of 
 reconstruction should be complete. M. Theophile 
 Lavall^e has remarked in the introduction he has 
 composed to a learned and curious work by M. Le 
 Roi,^ that in sj)ite of the attempts that have been 
 made, it may be said that the history of the ch&teau 
 of Versailles has yet to be written, 
 
 "It would be fortunate in the existing period of 
 revolutions, demolitions, and transformations if it 
 could be done quickly; for Vei-sailles, that great 
 creation of Louis XIV., has been subjected, espe- 
 cially since the establishment of historical galleries, 
 to such distressing alterations, that it is no longer 
 recognizable save on the exterior." 
 
 I do not deny that the general idea which presided 
 over the restoration of the palace may have had a 
 
 ' Curiosites Mstoriques sur Lo>iis XIII., Louis .XTF., et Louis 
 XV., by M. Le Eoi, curator of the I/ibrary of Versailles. 
 
130 THE WOUEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 certain grandeur from the patriotic point of view. 
 But considered from that of art and history it Avas 
 absolutely bad. 
 
 To place the annals of the Revolution and the 
 Empire in the Sanctuar}' of Monarchy by divine right 
 was to deprive the dwelling-place of the great King 
 of all its distinctive features. The image of Napo- 
 leon is as much out of place at Versailles as the 
 statue of Louis XIV. would be on the summit of 
 the Vend6me column. 
 
 It must not be forgotten, however, if one desires 
 to be just, that Louis-Philippe was far from being 
 free to act in the matter of the Versailles restora- 
 tions. All Europe was pervaded by a revolutionary 
 influence so violent that the restoration of the 
 palace of Absolute ilonarchy was a very difficult 
 thing. 
 
 At the moment M'hen the work was undertaken, 
 the time seemed to be drawing nigh when one might 
 say with the poet: "The ruins themselves have per- 
 ished." Etiam periere ruince. In his GrSnie du 
 Ohristianisme Chateaubriand had written apropos of 
 Versailles : " This palace which is like a great city 
 b}^ itself, these marble stairways which seem to rise 
 to the clouds, these statues, these reservoii-s, these 
 woods, are now either crumbling, or covered with 
 moss, or withered, or overthrown." 
 
 Count Alexandre de Laborde relates that a trav- 
 eller who had seen Versailles in all its pomp in 
 1789, at the opening of the States General, was curi- 
 
MADAME DE MAINTENON'S APARTMENT 131 
 
 ous to return there after several years of absence. 
 Hastening across tlie grass that was growing in the 
 courts, he entered this dwelling of kings and found 
 solitude, devastation, sick-beds in the gilded gal- 
 leries, flocks pasturing in the gardens, statues 
 thrown down and mutilated. Then plunging into 
 the adjacent woods he climbed the hill of Satory, 
 and as the last rays of the sun sadly illumined the 
 majestic and melancholy edifice in the distance, he 
 repeated this striking passage from the author of Les 
 Ruines : " Here was the seat of a powerful empire ; 
 these places now so deserted were once animated by 
 a living multitude ; these walls, where now a gloomy 
 silence reigns, resounded with festivities and shouts 
 of gladness, and now behold what remains of a vast 
 domination: a lugubrious skeleton, an obscure and 
 empty souvenir, a deathlike solitude; the palace 
 of kings has become the resort of fallow deer! How 
 has so much glory been eclipsed?"^ 
 
 Such was, let us not forget it, the degradation of 
 the ch&teau of Versailles, when Louis-Philippe, in 
 spite of the outcries of the modem iconoclasts, 
 undertook to repair it. The Citizen-King could not 
 save the palace of the Sun -King otherwise than by 
 placing it, as one might say, under the tutelage of 
 republican and imperial glories. To obtain pardon 
 for an attempt contrary to the destructive interests 
 of the demagogues, he had to commission a horde of 
 
 1 Volney, Les Ritines. 
 
132 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 second-rate aitists whose works were much more 
 remarkable for their number than their merit. 
 Thence arose this confusion between the most in- 
 congruous genres ; this bizarre assemblage of glories 
 which seem astonished to find themselves side by 
 side; this Pantheon which has the characteristics 
 of a Babel. 
 
 M. Lavall(5e remarlis with much justice: "The 
 National Museum has caused the interior of the 
 chS,teau of Versailles to undergo a complete trans- 
 formation. The intention of this museum was ex- 
 cellent, but the execution is not on a level with it. 
 Undertaken by men little versed in the history of 
 the seventeenth centuiy, it has unfortunately ruined 
 the most interesting parts of the ch§,teau, and it is 
 thus that Madame de Maintenon's apartment, now 
 almost unrecognizable, is occupied by three galleries 
 of the campaigns of 1793, 1794, 1795. 
 
 It is certain now that the persons emploj'ed in the 
 restoration of Versailles did not even know the site 
 of Madame de Maintenon's apartment. It was on 
 that account that no one thought of placing a por- 
 trait of this celebrated woman in the rooms she 
 formerly occupied. They might easily have decided 
 the point by studying Saint-Simon with moderate 
 attention. But no one took this trouble. In order 
 to solve the question it was necessaiy for M. Le 
 Roi to publish, in 1848, the opuscule entitled: "In 
 what part of the chateau of Versailles was the apart- 
 ment of Madame de Main tenon situated?" The 
 
MADAME BE MAINTENON'S APARTMENT 133 
 
 conclusions arrived at in this work leave no further 
 room for doubt. The marble staircase, or staircase 
 of the Queen, ended in a vestibule. At the left of 
 this vestibule is the hall of the King's guards.^ At 
 the right, opposite this hall, is Madame de Main- 
 tenon's apartment. At present the traces of it are 
 barely discoverable. In fact, it is not merely en- 
 tirely stripped of furniture, but it has been shortened 
 by the stairway constructed by Louis-Philippe in 
 order to carry the marble staircase to the attics, 
 which cuts in two the former apartment of the 
 King's companion. 
 
 This apartment, en suite with that of Louis XIV., 
 was composed of four rooms, the two ante-chambers 
 of which now form but a single room (the hall of 
 1795).^ Next to these ante-chambei's came Madame 
 de Maintenon's bedchamber (liall of 1794).3 This 
 room, which has been subdivided since the establish- 
 ment of the historical galleries in order to carry the 
 marble staircase up to the second story, formed in 
 the time of Louis XIV. one large room lighted 
 by three windows. Between the door by which it 
 was entered and the chimney-piece, now destroyed,* 
 was, says Saint-Simon, "the King's armchair against 
 
 1 Room No. 120 of the Notice dti Musee, by M. Soulifi. 
 
 2 Koom No. 141 of the Notice du Musee. 
 
 3 Koom No. 142 of the Notice du Musee. 
 
 * This chimney-piece was at the end of the room, at the right 
 of tlie picture representing the comhat of Boussu, No. 2295 of the 
 Notice. 
 
134 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 the Avail, a table in front of him, aud a folding- 
 chair around it for the minister who was working. 
 On the other side of the chimney-piece a niche of 
 red damask, an . armchair, where Madame de Main- 
 tenon sat with a small table in fi-ont of her. A lit- 
 tle further ofE was her bed, in an alcove.^ Opposite 
 the foot of the bed a door and five steps. "^ 
 
 At home with the King, says Saint-Simon once 
 more, "they were each in his armchair, with a 
 table in fi-ont of each, in the two chimney corners, 
 she on the side next the bed, the King with his back 
 to the wall, on the side of the door of the ante-cham- 
 ber, and two stools in fi-ont of his table, one for the 
 minister who was coming to work and the other for 
 his bag." 
 
 In fine, there was nothing splendid about this 
 apartment. "I do not know," says M. Lavall^e, 
 "if the chambermaid of some parvenu of our own 
 days Avould be content witli this unique chamber 
 where Louis XIV. came to work, and where Ma- 
 dame de Maintenou ate, slept, dressed herself, and 
 received the whole court, and which every one en- 
 tered as she said, as if into a church. For that 
 
 1 Madame de Mainteuou's bed was in the place now occupied 
 bj- the stucco staircase, built under the reign of Louis-Philippe, 
 which continues the marble staircase. The five steps which led 
 to the fourth and last room of the apartment (grand cabinet of 
 JIadame de ilaintenon — room No. 143 of the Notice) have been 
 removed, the flooring of the latter having been lowered. 
 
 - Introduction to Curiosites histoi-iques on Louis XIII., Louis 
 XIV., aud Louis XV., by M. Le Koi. 
 
MADAME DE MAINTENON'S APARTMENT 135 
 
 matter, the princes, the princesses, even the King 
 himself, were not more commodiously lodged. 
 Everything had been sacrificed to pomp, brilliancy, 
 and display in this magnificent chS,teau. Louis 
 XIV. was perpetually on the stage and playing his 
 part as king uninterruptedly, but amidst all these 
 paintings, gildings, marbles, and splendors not a 
 single one of the conveniences of our days was to be 
 had; one froze in these immense rooms, these grand 
 galleries, these chambers open on every side." 
 
 Now that we know the apartment of the companion 
 of Louis XIV., let us glance at the existence she led 
 there. She generally rose between six and seven 
 o'clock and went at once to Mass, where she received 
 communion three or four times a week. Her day 
 •was spent in good works, writing, and in visits to 
 Saint-Cyr. The King came regularly to see her 
 every day between five and six in the evening 
 and remained until ten, the hour when he went to 
 supper. 
 
 Madame de Maintenon's retinue was very modest. 
 The King gave her 48,000 livres annuall}', plus a 
 New Year's gift of 12,000 livres, nearly all of which 
 sum was devoted to alms. Her old servant Manon, 
 who had been her companion in days of adversity, 
 still remained with her, and she had also a few silent 
 and respectful domestics. Her existence may be 
 described briefly as a life of abnegation, constraint, 
 and obedience. Her rank which placed her between 
 private pex-sons and queens being indeterminate, it 
 
136 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 would have been difficult for her to have lived habit- 
 ually amid the etiquette of the court. Hence she 
 seldom left her apartment. Voltaire sa3's that her 
 elevation, so far as she was concerned, was simply a 
 retreat. 
 
 While Madame de Maintenon thus withdi-aws 
 into herself, the court around her is full of commo- 
 tion. The marble staircase at the foot of which is 
 the apartment of the Dauphin, and which leads to 
 those of the Dauphiness, ^Madame de Maintenon and 
 Louis XIV., is incessantly crowded with those men 
 " who are masters of their gestures, their eyes, their 
 faces, who hide their evil functions, smile at their 
 enemies, disguise their passions."^ '-They ascend 
 this staircase to attend the levee and the couchee of 
 the King. They pass through the hall of the guards 
 (room No. 120 of the Notice du MnsSe), the King's 
 ante-chamber (room No. 121), and then into the 
 Ohambre des Bassans, where they await the mon- 
 arch's rising. 
 
 The Ohambre des Bassans,^ so called, says F^li- 
 bien, because several pictures by Bassano were hung 
 above the doors and the wainscoting, is the waiting- 
 room Avhich precedes the bedchamber of Louis XIV. 
 
 ' La Bniyere, La Com: 
 
 2 Room No. 12-3 of the Notice du Musee. Under Louis XIV. 
 this hall, which at present forms the salon of the OEil-de-Bceuf, 
 was divided into two rooms : the first was that of the Bassans, the 
 second served as the King's bedchamber until 1691, when he 
 installed himself in the succeeding room (Xo. 124) to remain there 
 until his death. 
 
MADAME HE MAIA^TENON'S AfABTMENT 137 
 
 It has several different entries: the familiar entry 
 for the princes, the grand entry for the great crown 
 officials, the first entry for those whose duties entitle 
 them to come in, the entry for the officials of the 
 King's chamber. The ceremonial is regulated in 
 the most precise manner. The two leaves of the 
 folding door are never opened except for the Dauphin 
 and the princes of the blood. The door opens for 
 each person admitted and closes at once behind 
 him. 
 
 " One must gently scratch the doors of the cham- 
 ber, the ante-chambers, and the cabinets, not rudely 
 strike them. Moreover, if one wishes to ^c\ss out 
 when the doors are closed, it is not permissible to 
 open them one's self, but they must be opened by 
 the usher. "^ 
 
 Louis XIV. rises at eight o'clock and says his 
 prayers. Then he stej)s out of the balustrade sur- 
 rounding his bed and says: "To the council." He 
 works with his ministers until half-past twelve. 
 Afterwards, escorted by the princes, the in-incesses, 
 the officials, and the great nobles, he goes to Mass, 
 crossing the Gallerj- des Glace?, where any one may 
 see him, present a petition, and even speak to him. 
 He passes through the salons of War, Apollo, Mer- 
 cury, Mars, Diana, Venus, and Abundance ^ to reach 
 
 1 Etat de France in 1694. 
 
 2 These salons, which fonn what are called the grand apart- 
 ments of the King, are numljered 112, 111, 110, 109, 108, 107, 100, 
 in tlie Notice du Musee. 
 
138 TJIE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 the chapel, 1 which rises from the ground floor to the 
 second story. The altar and the pulpit, in which 
 Bossuet, Bourdaloue, and Massillon preached by 
 turns, are below. The upper part is occupied by 
 galleries. 
 
 " The nobles form a vast circle at the foot of the 
 altar, where they remain standing with their backs 
 turned to the priest and the sacred mysteries, and 
 their faces raised towards their King, who is seen 
 kneeling on a rostrum, and on whom all their minds 
 and hearts seem to be fixed. One cannot fail to see 
 a kind of subordination in this custom, for the peo- 
 ple seem to adore the prince, and the prince to adore 
 God. "2 
 
 After Mass the King dines, usually on few dishes, 
 and alone in his chamber. At two o'clock he shoots 
 in the park, walks in the gardens, or hunts the deer 
 either on horseback or in an open carriage. Toward 
 five or six o'clock he repairs, as we have said al- 
 ready, to Madame de Maintenon's apartment and 
 
 1 This chapel must not be confounded with the existing chapel, 
 which was not inaugurated until 1710. The Salon of Hercules 
 (No. 106 of the Xolice) , which now serves as entrance to the grand 
 apartments, was the chapel from 1682 to 1710. That part of the 
 palace containing the Salon of Hercules and the vestibule below it, 
 unites the north wing to the centre. Tlie chapel, which combined 
 the height of the ground floor and that of the first story, was on 
 this site. A picture, representing Dangeau receiving investiture as 
 grand master of tlie order of St. Lazarus, reproduces its interior. 
 This picture is in room 9 of the Notice du Musee, and is numbered 
 164. 
 
 - La Bruj'ere, La Cow. 
 
MADAME BE MAINTENON'S APARTMENT 139 
 
 there he works again with his ministers during a 
 great part of the evening. He leaves her towards 
 nine or ten o'clock and then goes either to the play 
 or to the Apartment. 
 
 What is designated by this title is the reunion of 
 the whole court in the apartments of the King. The 
 Mercure galant of 1682 gives a curious description 
 of these soirees which were established in the fii-st 
 year of the definitive installation of Louis XIV. at 
 Versailles. "The King," says the Mercure, "per- 
 mits admission to his grand apartment of Versailles 
 on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday of each week, 
 and all sorts of games to be played there from six 
 in the evening until ten, and these days are called 
 Apartment days." 
 
 People ascend the great staircase of the King, 
 or of the Ambassadors, that magnificent staircase 
 decorated by the sculptures of Coysevox, and the 
 paintings of Lebrun and Van der Meulen.^ They 
 enter the salon of Abundance,^ so-called because 
 there are bas-reliefs representing Abundance over 
 the marble door. Refreshment tables are laid in this 
 salon, which is adorned with pictures by Carracci, 
 Guido, and Paul Veronese. Then they pass into the 
 salon of Venus, filled with splendid furniture, and 
 
 1 The staircase of the Ambassadors, also called grand staircase 
 of the King, was in the north wing, and led to the grand apait- 
 nients of Louis XIV. It was destroyed in 1750 in consequence of 
 the alterations made in the apartments of Louis XV. 
 
 2 Room 106 of the Notice du Musee. 
 
140 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 then into that of Diana, where the billiard tables 
 are, and where orange trees are blooming in silver 
 tubs. The salon of Mars, where one may admire 
 six of Titian's portraits, Jesus and the pilgrims to 
 Emmaus, by Veronese, The Family of Darius at the 
 feet of Alexander, by Lebrun, is the room where they 
 play. In the middle of it, on a table covered with 
 green velvet, there is a trou-madame of inlaid wood 
 surrounded by hangings of red velvet fringed -with 
 gold. There are also tables for card-playing and 
 for games of chance. The next room is the salon 
 of Mercury, where the state bed is, and pictures by 
 Carracci, Titian, and Van Dyck. 
 
 Then comes the magnificent salon of Apollo, 
 which is the Throne room. At the end of it is a 
 platform covered by a Persian carpet with a gold 
 ground on which stands a silver throne eight feet 
 high. Four statues of infants canying flower bas- 
 kets support the seat and the back, which are covered 
 with red velvet. Domenichino's David, Rubens' 
 Tomyris, and pictures by Guido and Van Dyck 
 adorn this salon, which is that where Louis XIV. 
 gives audience to foreignambassadors, and which on 
 Apartment days is devoted to music and dancing. 
 
 On those days there is great stir and animation. 
 Diamonds and jewels sparkle in the dazzling lustre 
 of chandeliers. People are ecstatic over the resplen- 
 dent toilettes of the most beautiful women in France. 
 A perfume of elegance and aristocracy exhales from 
 amidst the lights and flowers. 
 
MADAME DE MAINTENON'S APARTMENT 141 
 
 "Some choose one game and some another. Still 
 othera only desire to watch the playing, or to Avalk 
 about and admire the assembly and the richness of 
 these grand apartments. Although they are filled, 
 one sees none but men and women of high rank. 
 People are entirely free to converse there. . . . 
 Respect, however, prevents them from raising their 
 voices too high, so that the noise one hears is not 
 disagreeable. . . . The King lays aside his gran- 
 deur in order to play with many of the assembly who 
 have never had such an honor. He goes from one 
 game to another. He will not allow any one to rise 
 nor interrupt the game when he approaches."^ 
 
 The reunion breaks up at ten o'clock, the hour 
 when Louis XIV. takes his supper, usually au grand 
 convert, with the royal family in the room called the 
 King's ante-chamber. 2 Here is the nave, a piece of 
 jeweller's work in silver gilt shaped like a dismasted 
 vessel. In it are kept the- King's napkins between 
 scented cushions. Everybody who passes in front 
 of the nave, even the princesses, must salute it, as 
 they do the King's bed when entering the bed- 
 chamber. 
 
 Supper ended, Louis XIV. enters his chamber, 
 where he receives his private family, his brother, 
 and his children, with their husbands or wives. He 
 chats until the couchee, which takes place toward 
 
 1 Mercure yalant. Decemljer, 1682. 
 
 2 Koom 121 o£ the Notice du Musee. 
 
142 THE WOMEN OF VEB8AILLES 
 
 midnight, or one o'clock at latest. The greatest 
 nohles strive for the honor of holding the candlestick 
 while the sovereign undresses. As Saint-Simon 
 remarks, it is a distinction, a favor which is counted 
 on, so skilful is Louis XIV. in making something 
 out of nothing. 
 
 The task of the courtiers is ended for to-day. 
 The lights are extinguished. All subsides into 
 darkness and silence. At last it is the hour for 
 repose. But one sleeps little or sleeps badly in 
 this region which La Bruy^re speaks of, " which is 
 some forty-eight degrees of elevation fi-om the pole 
 and more than eleven hundred leagues by sea from 
 the Iroquois and the Hurons." Here the "joys are 
 visible but false, and vexations hidden but real." 
 The night's slumber is disturbed by reminiscences of 
 yesterdaj^, and b}^ anxieties for to-morrow, and one 
 forgets neither his ambitions nor his cares, because 
 whether sleeping or waking one thinks of nothing 
 but his own interests. 
 
IX 
 
 THE MAEQUISE DE CATI.US 
 
 AMIDST the court of Versailles, now grown 
 old and saddened, one sees here and there 
 young, smiling, luminous faces, fresh and lively 
 countenances which brighten up the palace, eyes 
 that sparkle, gracious, intelligent, and sympathetic 
 smiles, sweet and persuasive voices, enchanting 
 women whose charm sheds somewhat of light and 
 poesy over ceremonial gravities and the weariness 
 of etiquette. 
 
 Louis XIV. loved youth. As to Madame de 
 Maintenon, who had never had any children and who 
 had, nevertheless, the qualities necessary to make 
 her a good mother, she made herself amends for the 
 cruelty of fate by watching with maternal solicitude 
 over the children whom she cherished. It wa« thus 
 she educated her niece a la mode de Bretagne, the 
 pretty and graceful Mademoiselle de Murgaj'-Vil- 
 lette, a tj'pical French woman, gay, satirical, even a 
 trifle caustic, animated, amusing, captivating and 
 captivated. 
 
 She merits special mention in the galaxy of Ver- 
 143 
 
144 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 sailles, this little magician who handled the pen as 
 well as she did the fan, this clever woman who has 
 had the honor of being cited by Sainte-Beuve as the 
 model of those exquisite qualities which are summed 
 up in the word urbanity, this enchantress to whom 
 Madame de Maintenon said : " You know very well 
 how to dispense with pleasures, but pleasures cannot 
 dispense with you." 
 
 Marguerite de Mur§ay-Villette, Marquise de Cay- 
 lus, was born in Poitou, in the year 1673. Benja- 
 min de Valois, Marquis de Villette, had espoused 
 Arth(5mise d'Aubign^, daughter of the famous Theo- 
 dore Agripj)a d'Aubign^, the soldier-poet, the au- 
 stere and imperious Calvinist, the haughty and 
 satirical companion of Henry IV., Theodore Agrippa 
 d'Aubign^, whose soli was the father of Madame 
 de Maintenon. The little de Mur§a3'-Villette was 
 seven years old, and her father, who was in the navy, 
 was on duty when her aunt d la mode de Bretagne, 
 Madame de Maintenon, resolved to conveit her to 
 Catholicism. 
 
 This Avas the moment when Louis XIV. was con- 
 verting the Huguenots of his realm with their will 
 or against it. The child was taken away from her 
 family and conveyed to Saint-Germain. 
 
 "At first I cried a good deal," she says in her 
 Souvenirs, "but the next day I found the King's 
 Mass so beautiful that I consented to become a 
 Catholic on condition that I should hear it every 
 day and that no one should whip me. That is all 
 
THE MAliQUISE DE CAXLVS 145 
 
 the controversy that was employed and the only 
 abjuration that I made." 
 
 M. de Mur9ay-Villette was indignant at first, but 
 he ended by growing milder and embracing the 
 Catholic religion himself. As the King was con- 
 gratulating him, he responded: "This is the only 
 occasion in my life when it has not been my object 
 to please Your Majesty." 
 
 Madame de Maintenon, who had the vocation and 
 the aptitudes of a teacher, took pleasure in occupy- 
 ing herself with her niece. 
 
 "I was brought up," says the latter, "with a care 
 for which Madame de Maintenon cannot be too much 
 praised. Nothing happened at court without her 
 causing me to make such reflections on it as I was 
 capable of, approving me when I thought justly, and 
 correcting me when I thought badly. My days 
 were spent among masters, reading, and honest and 
 well-regulated amusements; my memory was culti- 
 vated by obliging me to learn verses by heart, and 
 as I was under the necessity of giving an account of 
 my reading or of any sermon I heard, I was forced 
 to pay attention. In addition to this I had to write 
 a letter ever}' day either to a member of my family 
 or some other person whom I might choose, and this 
 I had to take to Madame de Maintenon every even- 
 ing that she might either approve or correct it, 
 according as it was well or ill done." 
 
 At the age of thirteen Mademoiselle de Villette 
 was already charming, and her hand was asked for 
 
146 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 by the greatest nobles, M. de Iloquelaure and M. 
 de Boufflers. Madame de Maintenon thought she 
 ought not to accept such brilliant offers for her 
 niece. 
 
 "My niece is not a sufficiently good match for 
 you," she said to M. de Boufflers. "Still, I am not 
 insensible to the honor j^ou pay me. I will not give 
 her to you, but in future I shall consider you as my 
 nephew." 
 
 The woman who used this language often dis- 
 played what may be called an ostentatious modesty. 
 She rather gloried in making a commonplace mar- 
 riage for her charming niece, and selected for her a 
 husband devoid of merit, fortune, or command, M. 
 de Tubieres, Marquis de Caylus. The youug wife 
 was only thirteen years old. The King gave her 
 only a moderate allowance and a collar of pearls 
 worth ten thousand 6cus. 
 
 But shortly after her marriage she had an apart- 
 ment at Versailles, where her beauty did not fail 
 to excite enthusiasm. Saint-Simon, who did not 
 admire too readily, exclaims concerning her: "Never 
 was there a visage so intelligent, so affecting, never 
 such grace and wit, never such gaiety and amuse- 
 ment, never was a creature more attractive." 
 
 The eulogies of the Abbd de Choisy are not less 
 expressive: "Mirth and laughter beamed around 
 her ; her mind was still more amiable than her vis- 
 age ; . . . and if her natural gaiety had permitted 
 her to retrench certain little airs rather too coquet- 
 
THE MAEQUISE BE CAYLUS 147 
 
 tish, which all her innocence could not justify, she 
 would have been a perfect person." 
 
 Madame de Caylus was one of the heroines of 
 those representations of Esther which continue to 
 be one of the most pleasing episodes of the second 
 half of the great reign. 
 
 In 1685 Madame de Maintenon had founded at 
 Saint-Cyr, quite close to Vei-sailles, a house for the 
 gratuitous education of one hundred and fifty noble 
 but poor young girls. Religion and literature were 
 both in high esteem there. Some of the pupils of 
 the senior class — the blues — had declaimed Cinna, 
 Andromaque, and JjyJiigSnie, in presence of their 
 companions. But it was soon perceived that they 
 were but too well inclined to the business, especially 
 for the recitation of the love scenes. Madame de 
 Maintenon wrote to Racine: "Our little ones have 
 just been playing your Andromaque, and have played 
 it so well that they shall never play it again, nor 
 any other of your pieces." 
 
 But though tragedy was proscribed, poetry was 
 by no means forsaken. Madame de Maintenon, who 
 admired Racine greatly, begged him to compose a 
 sort of moral and hi-storical poem for Saint-Cyr from 
 which human love should be rigorously excluded. 
 This was in 1688. Racine was nearly fifty, and had 
 renounced the theatre twelve years before, being 
 then in the plenitude of genius and inspiration. 
 Religious scruples had driven him from the stage, 
 and he had offered to God the most painful sacrifice 
 
148 TEE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 possible to an artist: that of his renown. This 
 great poet had condemned himself to silence, and 
 with his own hands taken the coursera from the 
 triumphal chariot which drew him through the 
 starry spheres of art. He trembled with joy Avhen 
 he saw a means of reconciling his former inclina- 
 tions with the sentiments which had turned him 
 away from them. The poet and the devotee were 
 at last to come to terms. Esther was the fruit of 
 their alliance, that exquisite work which is akin 
 both to tragedy and elegy, that poem full of tender- 
 ness and tears which is worthy of the poet of whom 
 his son said: "My father was a man all senti- 
 ment, all feeling." Aroused as it were from a long 
 slumber, Racine had drawn from this repose a fresh- 
 ness of impressions, a new originality. " At fifteen 
 years old," says M. Michelet, "Madame de Caylus 
 saw the birth of JSsther, inhaled its first perfume, 
 and understood its spirit so well that she seemed, by 
 the emotion of her voice, to add somewhat to it." 
 
 It was not originally intended that she should 
 play any part in it. But one day when Racine was 
 about to read several of the scenes to Madame de 
 Maintenon, she began to declaim them in so moving 
 a style that the enthusiastic poet composed a pro- 
 logue, that of Piety, expressly for her. 
 
 The first representation was given at Saint-Cyr, 
 January 26, 1689. The vestibule of the dormitories, 
 situated on the second floor of the pupils' great stair- 
 case, was divided into two parts, one for the stage, 
 
THE MARQUISE BE CATLUS 149 
 
 and the other for the spectators. Two amphitheatres 
 had been erected at the side of the room, a small one 
 for the ladies of the community, and a larger one for 
 the pupils. The smallest children, the reds, were 
 on the highest row of seats, then came the greens, 
 the yellows, and at the bottom of all the oldest girls, 
 the blues, all wearing ribbons of their class colors. 
 The play was given in the daytime, but all the win- 
 dows had been closed, and the stairways, passages, 
 and the hall itself glittered with lights in crystal 
 chandeliers. Between the two amphitheatres were 
 seats for the King, Madame de Maintenon, and 
 several spectators admitted as an exceptional favor 
 to the honor of applauding JEstJier. 
 
 Louis XIV. arrived at three o'clock in the after- 
 noon, and the piece began a few minutes later. 
 Madame de Caylus recited her prologue in an affect- 
 ing and melodious voice which excited a buzz of 
 enthusiastic emotion in the noble audience. Her 
 seventeen years, her pure tones, her tender and ideal 
 beauty, made her seem like an angel. From the first 
 lines of the prologue success was assured. Louis 
 XIV. felt himself rejuvenated. Here at last was a 
 diversion worthy of the great King. How easily 
 one pictures to himself this half-pious, half-profane 
 animation; these naive and charming young girls 
 who say a Veni Creator before they go on the stage ; 
 these improvised actresses who are electrified by the 
 music, the poetry, the footlights, and, still more 
 than all these, by the presence of him who is their 
 
150 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 protector, their earthly Providence! The greatest 
 of kings in the house ; the greatest of poets in the 
 greenroom; actresses who vie with each other in 
 tenderness and grace ; verses altogether noble, ideal, 
 and harmonious; choirs whose celestial melody is 
 the hymu of prayer, the canticle of divine love; a 
 splendid Mise en scStie ; admirable decorations ; Per- 
 sian costumes glittering with the crown jewels, and, 
 still more alluring than even the prestige of the 
 throne and the beams of the royal sun, the charm of 
 youth, the freshness of imaginations, the sweet and 
 penetrating poetry of the souls of young girls, — 
 Avhat a spectacle, what an intoxication! Esther is 
 played by Mademoiselle de Veilhan, Elise by Made- 
 moiselle de Maisonfort, AssuSrus by Mademoiselle 
 Lastic, J.??iaw by Mademoiselle d'Abancourt, Zares by 
 Mademoiselle de Marsilly, Hydasi}e by Mademoiselle 
 de Mornaj-. The r81e of MardochSe is played to 
 perfection by Mademoiselle de Glapion, that young 
 person who caused Racine to say : " I have found a 
 MardochSe whose voice goes to one's very heart." 
 
 The poet is behind the scenes acting as stage man- 
 ager. Mademoiselle de Maisonfort, who is fright- 
 ened, has had a momentary failure of memory. 
 When she returns to the greenroom, he says to her: 
 "Ah! Mademoiselle, here is a piece spoiled." The 
 beautiful young girl at once begins to cry; Racine 
 consoles her and pulling out his handkerchief wipes 
 her eyes, as one would do for an infant. She returns 
 to the stage and plaj^s like a finished actress. Her 
 
TBE MARQUISE DE CAYLUS 151 
 
 eyes are somewhat red still, and Louis XIV., whom 
 nothing escapes, whispers : " The little canoness has 
 been crying." 
 
 Madame de Maintenon can hardly conceal her joy 
 at the success of her dear children. Louis XIV., 
 touched and enraptured, grants his approbation, the 
 most precious of rewards, to the poet and the ac- 
 tresses, and when the representation is ended, Racine, 
 "who loves God as he formerly loved his mis- 
 tresses,"^ hastens to the chapel and falls on his 
 knees in a transport of gratitude. 
 
 The succeeding repr<^sentations are still more 
 brilliant than the first. Madame de Caylus takes 
 the part of Esther and surpasses herself in it. A 
 childish divertisement, as Racine said himself, at- 
 tracts the eager attention of the whole court. The 
 favor of an invitation is more desired and more dif- 
 ficult to obtain than that of a journey to Marly. 
 Louis XIV. enters first, and stands at the threshold, 
 cane in hand, until all the guests are in the hall. 
 Madame de S^vign^, who is admitted to the repre- 
 sentation of February 19, 1689, cannot contain her 
 joy. She sits next to Marshal de Bellefonds, to 
 whom she communicates her enthusiastic impres- 
 sions in an undertone. The marshal rises between 
 the acts and goes to tell the King how pleased he is. 
 " I am near a ladj^ " he adds, " who is very worthy 
 of having seen Esther." 
 
 1 Madame de Sevignfi, Letter of February 7, 1689. 
 
152. THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 At the close of the performance Louis XIV. 
 addresses a few words to several of the spectators. 
 He stops in front of Madame de S^vign^ and speaks 
 kindly to her. 
 
 The aiarquise, quite proud of such an honor, has 
 mentioned this conversation in one of her lettei-s: 
 "The King said to me, 'Madame, I am sure you 
 have been pleased. Racine has a great deal of 
 genius.' Without showing surprise I answer, ' Sire, 
 he has a great deal ; but, truly, these j'oung people 
 have a great deal also ; the\" enter into the subject 
 as if they had never done anj^thing else.' ' Ah ! as 
 for that, it is true.' — And then His Majesty moved 
 away, leaving me the object of envy." 
 
 Is not that last word characteristic? The most 
 superior woman in the kingdom is beside herself 
 with joy because the King has spoken with her. 
 What a prestige had this incompara.ble monarch, 
 the least mark of attention from whom made the 
 whole court envious ! 
 
 The success of Esther had been too great. Criti- 
 cism, motived either by pietj^ or jealousj-, soon began 
 to attack these representations which had been so 
 brilliant. The genius of the poet and the talent of 
 the actresses had to be recognized of course, whether 
 willingly or unwillingly. The criticism was aimed 
 at other points. It was said that this blending of 
 the cloister and the theatre was not a good thing, 
 that the self-love, and perhaps even the coquettish 
 instincts of the young girls, would be over-excited 
 
THE MAliqUISE BE CAYLUS 153 
 
 by such divertisements. Bourdaloue and Bossuet 
 had been present at the representations as if to mark 
 their approval in that manner. But Madame de. 
 Maintenon's new director, Godez-Desmaretz, Bishop 
 of Chartres, decided against these ostentatious exhi- 
 bitions of the pupils of Saint-Cyr. Hence they were 
 put an end to, and Athalie, which had been called 
 for after the success of Esther, and already learned 
 by the young ladies of Saint-Cyr, was given, in 1690, 
 without display; without scenes, decorations, or cos- 
 tumes, in the blue class-room, with only the King, 
 Madame de Maintenon, and some dozen othei-s as 
 spectators. 
 
 . The representations of Esther were not all that 
 was considered too worldly. The young woman 
 who had been so much admired in it, Madame de 
 Caylus, did not remain long in favor at court. Her 
 Avit and gaiety, the freedom of her manners and 
 speech, were too excessive not to entail disgrace. 
 This witty and charming Marquise, who was not 
 yet twenty, was devout at her prayers. Like the 
 majority of exceptionally intelligent women, like 
 the Longuevilles, the Montespans, the S^vign^s, she 
 was divided between God and the world. But, un- 
 fortunately, the world got much the larger share. 
 With Madame de Caylus pleasures took precedence 
 over prayers. Her mobile, caustic, somewhat super- 
 ficial character did not incline to the austerities 
 of a profound devotion. 
 
 There was the stuff for a great actress in her 
 
154 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 rather than a vocation to religion, and when she 
 saw the court assuming the manners of the cloister 
 she found herself a trifle out of place. Married to 
 a man of no merit, who was always with his regi- 
 ment, on campaigns or at the frontier, she easily 
 consoled herself for his absence, and contracted a 
 liaison with the Duke de Villeroy, which made a 
 scandal. Fond of gossip, if not of calumny, not 
 afraid to provoke enmity for the sake of a witty 
 speech, accustomed to the society and the mischiev- 
 ous pranks of the Duchess de Bourbon, who, with 
 less wit, had all the satiric tendencies of her mother, 
 Madame de Montespan, Madame de Caylus was 
 inclined to scoff at everything. That was a sort 
 of pastime which Louis XIV. knew not how to 
 pardon. This audacious 3^oung person had been 
 imprudent enough to say, in speaking of the court: 
 " This place is so dull that it is like an exile to live 
 here." 
 
 The King took her at her word, and forbade her 
 to appear again in the place she found so tiresome. 
 She seemed to him affected and coquettish. He 
 thought her too keen, too acute, too ready to use 
 that weapon of ridicule which is so deadly when 
 wielded by the little hand of a pretty woman. He 
 was even of the opinion that this futile education 
 did not greatly redound to the credit of Madame 
 de Maintenon, who on her part had no interest in 
 keeping near the King a young woman who might 
 injure Saint-Cyr. Hence the disgrace of Madame 
 
THE MARQUISE BE CAYLUS 155 
 
 de Caylus was of long duration. She remained away 
 from the court for thirteen years as a sort of pen- 
 ance, and only obtained forgiveness through good 
 behavior, submission, and piety. But the pardon 
 was complete. 
 
 She reappeared at Versailles, February 10, 1707, 
 at the King's supper, and received a cordial welcome. 
 She was only thirty-three, had been a widow for 
 about two years, and did not intend to maiTy again. 
 Beautiful as an angel and more charming than ever, 
 she entirely regained the favor of Madame de Main- 
 tenon, whose assiduous companion she became, and 
 remained at the palace until the death of Louis XIV. 
 After that she returned to Paris, where she occupied 
 a small house contiguous to the Luxembourg gardens. 
 There she gave suppers to great nobles and men of 
 learning, and her salon was an intellectual centre, 
 where the traditions of the seventeenth century were 
 perpetuated into the fii-st years of the eighteenth. 
 There she died in 1729, aged only fifty-six. 
 
 Some months earlier she had written, under the 
 modest title of Souvenirs, the brief and witty memoirs 
 which will make her name immortal. Her friends, 
 enchanted by her lively wit, had long entreated her 
 to write out, not for the public, but for them, the 
 Anecdotes which she related so well. In the end she 
 acquiesced, and committed to paper certain incidents, 
 certain portraits. What a treasure are these Souve- 
 nirs, so fluently written, so unpretentious, with neither 
 dates nor chronological order, but upon which all his- 
 
156 THE WOMEN OF VEliSAILLES 
 
 torians have drawn for more than a century!^ How 
 much is contained in this little book, which teaches 
 more in a few lines than interminable works in many 
 volumes! How feminine it is, and how French! 
 One readily understands Voltaire's .liking for these 
 charmiag Souvenirs. Who ever applied better than 
 Madame de Caylus the famous precept : " Go lightly, 
 mortals ; don't bear on too hard " ? 
 
 She belonged to that race of spontaneous writers 
 who produce artistic works without knowing it, just 
 as M. Jourdain wrote prose, and who do not even 
 suspect that they possess that chief attribute of style : 
 naturalness. What pure, what ready, wit! What 
 good humor, what unconstraint, what delightful ease ! 
 What a charming series of portraits, each more life- 
 like, more animated, still better than all the others ! 
 These little miniatures due to the brush of a woman 
 of the world are better worth studying than many a 
 picture or fresco. 
 
 1 The Sovvenirs de Madame de Oaylus, which were never com- 
 pleted, remained in manuscript during her life and long after her 
 death. They were first printed at Amsterdam, in 1770, with a 
 preface and notes attributed to Voltaire. 
 
X 
 
 MADAME DE MAINTENON AND THE GENTLEWOMEN 
 OF SAINT-CYE 
 
 THE figure of Madame de Maintenon is framed 
 in the house of Saint-Cyr hke that of Mademoi- 
 selle de La ValliSre in the Carmelite convent of 
 rue Saint-Jacques. We see the spouse of Louis XIV. 
 in her true light when she is surrounded by the 
 nuns and the pupils of an asylum where the idea of 
 religion is blended with that of nobility, and which 
 makes room for both earth and heaven, for the world 
 and for God. Saint-Cyr is the veritable offspring 
 of this wife who was not a mother ; it is here that a 
 heart far less barren, less egotistic than is believed, 
 expends what remains to her of emotional strength 
 and tenderness. 
 
 In this pious abode Madame de Maintenon experi- 
 ences the charm of compassion, edification, melan- 
 choly. From this point she contemplates, through 
 the mists of the past, her own eventful and astonish- 
 ing career. Here she listens with emotion to the 
 remote echo of the stormy floods which beat against 
 her cradle, troubled her youth, and which even now 
 
 157 
 
158 THE WOMEN OF VESSAILLES 
 
 often disturb her age. When she sees so many 
 dowerless young girls, she recalls the time when she 
 was poor and forsaken in spite of her illustrious 
 birth. She reflects on what intelligence, ability, and 
 courage the grand-daughter of Theodore Agrippa 
 d'Aubign^ needed in order to struggle against pov- 
 ert3^ She remembei-s the snares laid for her by the 
 spirit of evil, the illusions of the girl and the young 
 woman, from which her lofty intelligence and good 
 sense preserved her; she summarizes the lessons 
 suggested by her experience. In this chapel whose 
 silence is undisturbed by the worldly murmur of 
 courtiers, more occupied with the King than with 
 God, she reflects on all the intrigues, vanities, and 
 deceptions of the court. In this calm abode, where 
 monastic gravity is softened by the graces of child- 
 hood and youth, she reflects on the morning of life 
 and its evening, on the cradle and the grave. For 
 Madame de Maintenon there is a sort of living 
 antithesis between Versailles and Saint-Cyr: Ver- 
 sailles is agitation, Saint-Cyr repose. Versailles is 
 the world with its torments, follies, and ambitions ; 
 Saint-Cyr is the vestibule of heaven. \ Hence, how 
 greatly she prefers her beloved convent to the marble 
 court, the apartments of the King, the Gallery of 
 Mirrors, the splendors of the finest palace of the 
 universe ! 
 
 " Long live Saint-Cyr ! " she exclaims ; " long live 
 Saint-Cyr ! In spite of its defects one is better off 
 there than in an}' other place in the world. . . . 
 
MAfiAME DE MAINTENON 159 
 
 When Saint-Cyr is in question, I am alwaj^s de- 
 lighted." She is quieted and consoled when she 
 enters her dear asylum. " When I see the door close 
 after me on entering this solitude whence I never 
 depart without pain, I am full of joy." And when 
 she returns to Versailles, she feels a contraction of the 
 heart, a kind of anguish. 
 
 "I experience," she says again, "a sentiment of 
 horror at the sight of Versailles ; what is called the 
 world is there ; it is its centre ; there all the passions 
 are in action : interest, ambition, envy, and pleasure." 
 
 Madame de Maintenon's preference for Saint-Cyr, 
 which is her work, her creation, the very symbol of 
 her thought, is, moreover, very easily explained. It 
 is there, in fact, that her character, with its love of 
 domination, her high intelligence, her talent for writ- 
 ing and speaking, her aptitude for government, are 
 manifested. It must be owned that it is not religion 
 alone which makes her prefer the convent to the 
 palace. At Versailles she is constrained, incom- 
 moded, she obeys ; the rays of the royal sun, though 
 paler than they were, have still a prestige and a 
 brilliancy which intimidate her."^ At Saint-Cyr she 
 is free, she commands and govern|^ Like Caesar, 
 who said he would prefer to be the chief in a village 
 than the second in Rome, Madame de Maintenon 
 finds it pleasanter to be the superior of nuns than 
 to be the companion of a king. At Versailles she 
 possibly regrets the crown and the ermine mautle 
 which are lacking to her. She has no need of them 
 
160 THE WOilEX OF VEBSAILLES 
 
 at Saiiit-Cyr, for there her sovereignty is uncontested. 
 Her lightest words are accepted as oracles. Her 
 letters, read with respectful emotion in presence of 
 the whole community, are univei-sally admired. The 
 inmates or the pupils to whom they are addi-essed 
 boast of them as titles of glory. Madame de Main te- 
 non is almost the queen of France. She is absolutely 
 queen of Saint-Cyr. 
 
 The educational house of Saint-Cj-r, which was 
 opened August 2, 1686, contained two hundi-ed and 
 fifty young girls of noble birth who had no fortunes. 
 During thirty yeai-s this religious establishment was 
 Madame de ]\Iaint€non's principal occupation. She 
 went there ever}"- other day at least, arriving some- 
 times by six o'clock in the morning, going from class 
 to class, combing and dressing the little girls, edifj-- 
 ing and instructing the larger ones, and preferring 
 her r81e as teacher to all the amusements and splen- 
 dors of A'ersailles. Nothing that related to Saint- 
 C3-r seemed to her troublesome or disagreeable. 
 "Our ladies," said she, "are children who will not 
 be able for a long while to rule others; I offer 
 myself to serve them : I shall have no difficulty in 
 being their steward, their woman of business, and 
 Avith all my heart their servant, providing that my 
 cares put them in a condition to dispense with me." 
 
 The ladies of Saint Louis, as the inmates of the 
 establishment of Saint-Cyr were called, had an hour's 
 recreation in the middle of the da}-, which they 
 usually spent around a large table, conversing freely 
 
MAVAilE DE ilAlNTENON 161 
 
 while employed in needlework. Madame de Main- 
 tenon loved to come to these recreations. She 
 brought her work, and indulged in those familiar 
 talks of hers, at once so Avitty and so edifying, whose 
 instructive charm was so well appreciated by the 
 community. 
 
 In September, 1686, the King, after recovering from 
 an illness, went to visit Saint-Cj-r. Tlie ladies chanted 
 the Te Deum, the Domine salvuin fae regem, and 
 Lulli's hymn: Grand Dieu, Saitvez le roi, Vengez le 
 roi, the air of which has been borrowed from France 
 by the English for their God save the King. Louis 
 XIV. was pleased with these fresh faces, these hearts 
 filled with grateful emotion. When he returned to 
 his carriage, he said kindly to Madame de Maintenon : 
 " I thank j^ou, Madame, for all the pleasure you have 
 given me." 
 
 In 1689 he said to the ladies of Saint Louis: "I 
 am not eloquent enough to exhort you veiy well ; 
 but I hope that by dint of repeating to you the 
 motives of this foundation, I shall convince and per- 
 suade you to be always faithful to it. I will spare 
 neither my visits nor my words, little calculated as I 
 tliink them to produce this beautiful result." 
 
 "What should give pleasure to Your Majesty," 
 replied Madame de Maintenon, " is that most of the 
 young persons who will leave here will live and die 
 in innocence, and that a number of them will conse- 
 crate their whole lives to God." 
 
 "Ah!" said the King, "if I could only give as 
 
162 THE WOMEN OF VEESAILLES 
 
 many such to God as I have torn from Him by my 
 bad example ! " 
 
 For Louis XIV. Saint-Cyr was a consolation and 
 an expiation, a patriotic and religious work, a homage 
 to God and to France. "What pleases me in the 
 ladies of Saint-Cyr," said he, " is that they love the 
 State although they hate the world : they are good 
 sisters and good Frenchwomen." 
 
 In order to gain the blessing of heaven on his 
 arms he recommended himself to the angels of Saint- 
 Cyr at the beginning of every campaign, thinking 
 that their praj^ers must be powerful in paradise. On 
 returning from the siege of Mons, in April, 1691, he 
 repaired to the holy asylum where his soul found 
 repose from the emotions of politics and war. One 
 of the young girls reproached him for ha\'ing exposed 
 himself too much during the siege. " I did nothing 
 but what I ought," he returned. — "But the welfare 
 of the State," said she, " depends on the presei-vation 
 of your person." — " Places like mine," replied the 
 King, " never remain empty : some one else would 
 fill it better than I." 
 
 As to ]\Iadame de Maintenon, her devotion to 
 Saint-Cyr amounted to enthusiasm. " Sanctify your 
 house," said she to the ladies of Saint Louis, "and 
 through j-our house the whole kingdom. I would 
 give my blood to be able to communicate the educa- 
 tion of Saint-Cyr to all religious houses which bring 
 up young girls. In comparison with Saint-Cyr everj'- 
 thing else is foreign to me. and my nearest relatives 
 
MADAME DE MAWTENON 163 
 
 are less dear to me than the least one of the good 
 daughters of the community." 
 
 She is like the queen bee. Not content with 
 prayer, she labors. Her pen and her needle are alike 
 active. While chatting over her embroidery, she 
 gives veritable sermons which would not be unwor- 
 thy of great preachers. She delineates in excellent 
 style, not merely the portraits of nuns, but those of 
 mothers of families. "I know some," she says, " who 
 are esteemed, respected, and admired by everybody ; 
 their husbands are so charmed with them that they 
 say with admiration, 'I find everything in my wife. 
 She serves me as steward, manager, and governess 
 for my children.' " 
 
 Speaking to the novices, she exclaims : " Consider 
 that there is no one on earth so happy as a good 
 sister, nor any one so unhappy and despicable as 
 a bad one. To be silent, to suffer, not to make 
 others suffer, to love God with a heart filled with all 
 He desires that we should love, to endure the imper- 
 fections of others but not our own, to be neither 
 pleased nor discouraged with ourselves, to rely on 
 nothing but the cross, and to yield nothing to self- 
 love under whatever pretext of innocent consolation, 
 — that is the kingdom of God which commences here 
 below. You will have no happiness save in yielding 
 yourselves unreservedly to God and in bearing the 
 yoke of religion with a simple courage which will 
 make it light and easy." 
 
 These young girls whose hearts are so innocent. 
 
164 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 wliose voices so fresh and pure, these melodious and 
 affecting chants, this poetry of prayer, this perfume 
 of incense, are all entrancing to Madame de Mainte- 
 non. " Pray without ceasing," she says to the ladies 
 of Saint Louis. " Praj'' "while you are walking, writ- 
 ing, spinning, M'^orking. . . . Some time ago I saw 
 our demoiselles folding the linen with an activity 
 which left them no leisure to think or to feel dull. 
 They were silent for a moment, and then they began 
 to sing hymns. I admired the innocence of their 
 life and j-our happiness in averting so many sins by 
 restraining so great a number of young persons at so 
 dangerous an age." 
 
 In growing old, Madame de Maintenon has become 
 austere. " Flee from men," she says, " as from your 
 mortal enemies. Never be alone with them. Take 
 no pleasure in hearing that you are pretty, amiable, 
 or have a fine voice. The world is a malignant 
 deceiver which seldom means what it says ; and the 
 majoritj'- of men who say such things as these to girls 
 do it, hoping to find some means of ruining them." 
 
 Satiated and disillusioned by earthly vanities, she 
 wishes to inspire others with her disgust for human 
 grandeurs. She says to the pupils of Saint-Cyr, 
 with the accent of conviction: "Princes and prin- 
 cesses are seldom contented anywhere, and are tired 
 of everjiihing. They never find jjleasures, because 
 they are alwaj^s seeking them ; the}^ go from palace 
 to palace, to Meudon, to Marly, to Rambouillet, to 
 Fontainebleau, with the intention of diverting them- 
 
MADAME DE MAINTENON 165 
 
 selves. These are admirable places which it would 
 enchant you to see ; but they are dull there because 
 one grows accustomed to everything, and in the long 
 run, the most beautiful things become indifferent, 
 and cease to give pleasure. Besides, it is not such 
 things as these which can make us happy. Our 
 happiness can come only from within." 
 
 When she speaks to these young gentlewomen of 
 marriage, it is invariably with a soi-t of sad repug- 
 nance. M. Lavall^e has made a very judicious reflec- 
 tion on this subject. " This," he says, " doubtless 
 arose from the two extraordinary marriages she had 
 made. If at twenty she had married a young man 
 whom she loved and by whom she had had children, 
 it is probable that she would have thought and 
 spoken otherwise." 
 
 As one of the ladies of Saint-Cyr has said, Madame 
 de Maintenon's discourses were "lively, simple, natu- 
 ral, intelligent, insinuating, and persuasive." She 
 analj'zed hei-self with the same impartialit}'^ with 
 which she judged the qualities and the defects of her 
 neighbor. Her talks were like a perpetual examina- 
 tion of conscience, a continuous meditation, a demon- 
 stration of the inanity and nothingness of human 
 grandeurs by a woman who knew them the most 
 thoroughly. 
 
 Austere and admirable instructions! But were all 
 the young girls in a condition to understand them ? 
 We fancy that more than one of them is only half 
 convinced. Perhaps there are some who say that. 
 
166 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 after all, Madame de Maintenon was not always so 
 scornful of the world ; that she loved it well enough 
 to prefer Scarron to a convent, and that she, more 
 than any other woman, has been flattered by distinc- 
 tions and eulogies ; that in her youth she was proud 
 enough of her successes in the brilliant salons of the 
 hStel d'Albret or the h6tel de Richelieu. Among 
 the gentlewomen of Saint-Cyr there are doubtless, at 
 the side of real saints, some young girls of ardent 
 imaginations whom the dread of storms does not dis- 
 gust with the ocean, and who, in despite of Madame de 
 INIaintenon's sage counsels, dream of trusting them- 
 selves to its waves in a bark decked with festoons 
 and flowei-s. We are seldom impressed by the expe- 
 rience of others. It is our own disappointments, our 
 own sufferings, that interest us. Madame de Mainte- 
 non is well aware of this, and yet it does not deter 
 her from her pious exhortations. "Why cannot I 
 unveil my heart to all sisters," she ci-ies, "so that 
 they might feel the whole worth of their vocation ! 
 What would I not give to make them see as fully as 
 I do the pleasures by which we seek to shorten the 
 dream of life ! " In recapitulating her entire career, 
 this chosen woman, whose mind is so observing, so 
 practical, and judicious, arrives at conclusions which 
 are all on the side of virtue, religion, and God ; and 
 the sacred asylum where she has already designated 
 her place of burial inspires her with none but sound 
 thoughts and salutary reflections. 
 
XI 
 
 THE DUCHESS OF ORLEANS 
 (jTAe Princess Palatine) 
 
 ONE of the causes which made Madame de Main- 
 tenon prefer Saint-Cyr to Versailles, was that 
 she believed herself to be loved at Saint-Cyr, while 
 at Versailles she felt the shafts of malevolence and 
 hatred pierce her through an apparent deference and 
 obsequious protestations of devotion and respect. 
 Certain persons who saw her continually and mani- 
 fested the greatest regard for her, detested her cor- 
 dially, and her profound knowledge of the human 
 heart made her always aware of it. Chief among 
 these secret antipathies existing in a latent condition 
 asrainst Madame de Maintenon, must be reckoned 
 the violent and relentless enmity of the Princess 
 Palatine, the second wife of the Duke of Orleans. 
 
 The accusations brought against the wife of Louis 
 XIV. by this implacable German woman are so 
 exaggerated and unlikely that on the whole they 
 redound to the credit of her at whom they were 
 aimed. The Amsterdam libels, the Protestant pam- 
 phlets, never invented such enormities. They are a 
 
 167 
 
168 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 torrent of insults, an orgy of hatred, the slang of Bil- 
 lingsgate in the finest palace of the world. They are 
 calumnies which stop at nothing. If one were to 
 believe the Princess Palatine, " this nast}- old thing, 
 this wicked devil, this filthy, shrivelled-up old Main- 
 tenon" would be a go-between, a procuress, a poisoner, 
 a Locusta. 
 
 The woman who gave herself up to such furious 
 diatribes in her correspondence is assuredh'^ one of 
 the most singular figures in the feminine gallerj- of 
 Vei-sailles. Her physique, her mind, her st3'le, her 
 character, all bear a stamp that is unique. Resem- 
 bling no one else aud contrasting strongly with all 
 who surround her, she serves as a kind of set-off to 
 the fine and delicate beauties of her time. To our 
 mind, no woman has shown herself more full}'' in her 
 letters than the Princess Palatine. She is all there 
 with her defects aud her qualities, her curious mixture 
 of austere morals and cynical language, the haughty 
 ways of a great lady and the expressions of a woman 
 of the people., her pretended disdain for human 
 grandeurs, and her fierce passion for the prerogatives 
 of her rank. 
 
 This is the Princess whose portrait has been so 
 truthfuUj- painted by Saint-Simon: frank and up- 
 right, good and beneficent, grand in all her manners, 
 and little to the last degree in all that concerns what 
 she thinks her due. A woman of masculine bearing, 
 not coquettish, not desirous to please, honest in her 
 morals but shameless in her speech, somewhat rigid 
 
rUE DUCHESS OF OBLEANS 1(59 
 
 and martial in her character and tastes, loving dogs, 
 horses, and the chase, hard to herself, her own doctor 
 in case she is a trifle indisposed, able to walk two 
 full leagues. It is not poetical, sentimental, dreamy 
 Germany which her very original type represents so 
 exactly, but Germany under its rustic, almost savage 
 aspects, its energy and rudeness, its antiquated preju- 
 dices, its amalgam of simplicity and arrogance, of 
 credulity and pride. 
 
 The letters of the Princess Palatine lose much of 
 their savor when translated into French. It is only 
 in German that they have that smack of terror, that 
 impulsiveness, that tone now cynical, now burlesque, 
 which is their chief merit. Exaggerated and passion- 
 ate as they are, they are worth consulting, even after 
 the Memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon. Doubtless, 
 Madame has none of the genius of this French 
 Tacitus. But there is more than one analogy in 
 their styles and their destinies. They are both of 
 them essentially doubtful witnesses, for each was 
 biassed and could not judge impartially in cases which 
 nearly concerned their spites and prejudices. But 
 neither of them even sought, to hide his or her par- 
 tiality. 
 
 Hence nothing is easier than to find the truth 
 which underlies their falsehoods. If she has not the 
 genius of Saint-Simon, Madame has his wrath and 
 indignation and his hatreds. Like Mm, she is obliged 
 to receive her enemies well, to put continual con- 
 straint on herself, to live with the bastards whom she 
 
170 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 execrates, to salute the morganatic queen whom she 
 has a horror of. She is an honest woman as he is an 
 honest man. She loves right, justice, and truth as he 
 does. Like him, she writes in secret and consoles 
 herself for a perpetual constraint by exaggerating 
 the liberty of style. Like him, she wreaks her ven- 
 geance by means of pen and ink. It is from her 
 curious letters that we shall try to describe her 
 character. 
 
 Daughter of the Elector Palatine Charles-Louis 
 and of the Princess Charlotte of Hesse-Cassel, the 
 second wife of the Duke of Orleans was born at the 
 castle of Heidelberg. As a child she preferred guns 
 to dolls, and thus disjjlaj-ed already the masculine 
 aspects of her character. She was nineteen j'^eai-s 
 old when her marriage with the brother of Louis 
 XIV. was decided on. 
 
 She set out for France in 1671. Three bishops 
 were sent to the frontier to instruct her in the 
 Catholic religion, which was henceforth to be her 
 own. The three prelates began their work at Metz 
 and terminated it on their arrival at Versailles. The 
 Princess, who possibly regretted her Protestantism 
 somewhat, said she had ncA'er found her instructors 
 in perfect accord -with each other, and that she had 
 taken a little of tlieir doctrines from all three. 
 
 The new Duchess of Orleans was the opposite in 
 all respects of her over whom Bossuet had preached 
 so touching a funeral sermon. The court which had 
 admired the very tj^pe of elegance and beautj^^ in the 
 
THE DUCHESS OF ORLEANS 171 
 
 first Madame, found in the second that of rudeness 
 and ugliness. The one was as coquettish as the 
 other was lacking in the wish to please. The Prin- 
 cess Palatine took .a sort of delight in exaggerating 
 what she thought of her own physique. " I have 
 big hanging cheeks and a large face," she wrote; 
 " moreover, my figure is very small, short, and thick ; 
 sum total, I am an ugly little creature. If I had not 
 a good heart, no one could put up with me anywhere, 
 To know whether my eyes display intelligence it 
 would be necessary to examine them with a micro- 
 scope or with glasses ; otherwise it would be difficult 
 to judge. Probably no such villanous hands as 
 mine could be found anywhere on earth. The King 
 remarked as much to me and made me laugh heartily ; 
 for never having been able to flatter myself con- 
 scientiously on having anything pretty about me, I 
 have adopted the plan of being the first to laugh at 
 my ugliness, and it has succeeded very well." 
 
 If the Princess Palatine did not dazzle the court, 
 the court on the other hand did not dazzle her. 
 Versailles and its splendors left her unmoved. "I 
 like better," she wrote, " to see trees and fields than 
 the finest palaces ; I like a kitchen garden better than 
 gardens adorned with statues and fountains ; a 
 streamlet pleases me more than sumptuous cascades ; 
 in a word, all that is natural is infinitely more to 
 mj' taste than works of art and magnificence ; they 
 please only at the first glance, and as soon as one is 
 accustomed to them they create fatigue, and one 
 
\ 
 172 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 cares about them no longer." What lyiiidame loved 
 and regretted was her German Rhine, the hills where 
 as a child she had seen the sun rise, and had eaten 
 bread and cherries. 
 
 The j-outhful nobility of France, in spite of its 
 elegance, luxurj', and animation, had no attraction for 
 her. " All the 3'oung people in geuenil," said she, 
 " are horribly debauched and addicted to every vice, 
 not excepting lying and deceit. They consider it a 
 shame to pique themselves on being men of honor. 
 They do nothing but drini, wallow in debauchery, 
 and talk obscenely. You can easily jur'.ge from this 
 what great pleasure honest people must enjoy here ; 
 but I am afraid that if I carry my details concerning 
 the court any farther, I shall cause you the same dis- 
 gust that I oft€u experience mj^self, and that this 
 disgust may end by becoming a contagious disease." 
 Mada7ne's husband was not a consolation to her, 
 because, criticising him with legitimate severity, she 
 did not profess more than a moderate esteem and 
 affection for him. She never forgave him for sur- 
 rounding himself with men accused of having 
 assassinated his first wife, the beautiful and poetic 
 Henrietta of England, and, showing the greatest 
 contempt for the Chevalier de Lorraine, she did not 
 feel in safety herself. She suffered from the charac- 
 ter of her husband, feeble, timid, governed by favor- 
 ites, and often misled by them : " annoying and in- 
 capable of keeping any secret, suspicious, mistrust- 
 ful, sowing discords in his court for the sake of 
 
THE DUCHESS OF ORLEANS 173 
 
 coiifusion to find out something, and often also to 
 amaze himself." 
 
 For the Princess Palatine religion was an insuffi- 
 cient solace for the annoyances and vexations of 
 which she was incessantly the victim. Bom in the 
 Protestant religion, she did not well comprehend 
 the mystic and sacred joys of Catholic worship. 
 Although she was not a free thinker, she made occa- 
 sional reflections and waggeries which seem to fore- 
 bode the philosophers of the following century. She 
 remained a good, practical Christian, but she did not 
 consider all priests to be in the odor of sanctity. She 
 had a horror of mixing religion ^vith politics, and 
 the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which was ad- 
 mired .by the clergy, shocked all her sentiments and 
 instincts. " I must confess," she wrote, " that when 
 I hear the eulogies that are given the great man 
 from the pulpit for having persecuted the reformed, 
 it always annoys me. I cannot endure to hear 
 people praise what is bad." "It is inconceivable," 
 she wi'ote again, "how simple the great man is in 
 matters of religion, because he is not so in other 
 things. That comes from his never having studied 
 religious things, never having read the Bible, and 
 honestly believing what is told him on this subject." 
 
 The grandeur of Bossuet's ideas, the majesty of a 
 policy derived from the Scriptures, had few attrac- 
 tions for Madame. "I cannot endure," Avrote she, 
 "kings who imagine they please God by praying. 
 It was not for that He placed them on the throne. 
 
174 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 To do good, exercise right and justice, restrain the 
 clergy and make them keep to their prayers without 
 meddling in other things, — that is what ought to 
 be the true devotion of kings. Let a ting say his 
 prayers morning and night, that is suflScient ; for the 
 rest, he ought to think of making his subjects as 
 happy as he can."^ Whatever bore the slightest 
 resemblance to religious persecution aroused an ener- 
 getic protest in the Princess Palatine. She found 
 it deplorable that no one could make Louis XIV. 
 understand that "religion was instituted rather to 
 preserve union among men than to make them tor- 
 ment and persecute each other." " King James," she 
 added, " said that our Lord Jesus Christ had certainly 
 been seen beating men to drive them from the Tem- 
 ple, but He was nowhere found maltreating them to 
 make them enter it."^ 
 
 The theological discussions which occupied so 
 much space at court, did not awaken the slightest 
 interest in the Princess. On this head she writes: 
 "All they tell us about the other world is incom- 
 prehensible. It seems to me impossible to compre- 
 hend what God does with us, and that we ought 
 to confine ourselves to admiring His omnipotence 
 without desiring to argue about His goodness and 
 justice." The beautiful and toucliing ceremonies 
 of Catholicism, the long sermons, the protracted 
 offices, did not greatly please ^Madame. " I tliink," 
 
 » Letter of March 23, 1006. .: Letter of July 18, 1700. 
 
TUB nUCHESS OF ORLEANS 175 
 
 she writes, "that Monsieur is a devotee, and that 
 he resembles Henry III. in every way. If this is 
 the road to heaven, I shall certainly never enter it, 
 seeing that I find it impossible to hear a high mass. 
 I get through with my devotions very expeditiously, 
 for I have a chaplain who hurries through his 
 mass in a quarter of an hour, which just suits me." 
 In plain chant she detested what she described 
 as an eternal naming of the vowels; and, referring 
 to it, she said : " Very often, if I dared, I would 
 run out of the church, so insupportable is this to 
 me. ... I like Doctor Luther for having composed 
 some fine hymns, and I am pei'suaded that it has 
 given many people the notion of becoming Luther- 
 ans, for those hymns have something' gay about 
 them." 
 
 Madame, who was very observant, analyzed and 
 described the various kinds of piety exhibited by the 
 courtiers. " In matters of devotion, I see that every 
 one follows his inclination; those who like to babble 
 want to pray a good deal; those who are generous 
 by nature always give alms ; those who are choleric 
 and easily annoyed are constantlj"- in transports and 
 want to kill everybody ; those, on the other hand, 
 who are gay, think they can serve God very well 
 by rejoicing in all things and being annoyed by 
 nothing. In short, devotion is, for those addicted 
 to it, a touchstone which discovers their natural 
 inclinations. For my part, I think the worst devo- 
 tees are the ambitious ones who simulate devotion 
 
176 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 in order to rule, and who claim to render a great 
 service to God by subjecting everything to their 
 power. The most supportable are those who, hav- 
 ing been very amorous, when they once take God 
 for their object, think of nothing but speaking to 
 Him affectionately, and leave everybody else at 
 peace." ^ 
 
 What shocked Madame was not religion, which 
 she respected, but the hypocrites who used it as a 
 mask. Her indignation was not directed against the 
 faith, but against the rising flood of scepticism, and 
 we credit her with sincere grief when she wrote in 
 1699 : " The faith is so extinct in this country that 
 one hardly finds a single young man who does not 
 "wish to be an atheist; but what is stranger still is 
 that the same individual who turns atheist at Paris 
 plaj's the devotee at court. It is claimed also that 
 all the suicides Avhich have been so frequent lately 
 are caused by atheism." 
 
 With such an opinion of the courtiers, it is easy to 
 understand how badly oif the Princess Palatine must 
 have found herself among them. German to the end 
 of her finger-nails, she suffered when obliged "to live 
 beside the enemies of her country, and the conflagra- 
 tions of the Palatinate seemed to her infernal flames. 
 This court which plaj'^ed and danced while the pal- 
 aces and cabins of Germany were burning, became to 
 her an object of horror. The unhappy people who 
 
 1 Letter of July 7, 1695. 
 
THE DUCUMSS OF ORLEANS 111 
 
 were expelled from their homes, robbed, despoiled, 
 maltreated; the ruins of Heidelberg, Manheim, An- 
 derdach, Baden, Rastadt, Spire, Worms, were con- 
 stantly in her mind. Pursued as by phantoms, she 
 was a prey to patriotic despair and anguish, and felt 
 herself a prisoner in the splendid palace of Versailles. 
 There is something touching in her plaints : " Were 
 it to save my life it is impossible for me not to regret 
 being, so to say, the pretext for the ruin of my coun- 
 try. I cannot look on coolly while they destroy at 
 a single blow in that poor Manheim all that cost 
 the late Prince Elector, my father, so much toil and 
 trouble. Yes, when I think of all that has been ruined 
 there, it fills me with such horror that every night as 
 soon as I begin to fall asleep I seem to be at Heidel- 
 berg or Manheim beholding the ravages that have 
 been committed. Then I start up wide awake, and 
 it takes me more than two hours to go to sleep again. 
 I fancy how it all was in my time and to what con- 
 dition it has been reduced to-day ; I consider also in 
 what condition I am myself, and I cannot avoid weep- 
 ing bitter tears." ^ 
 
 The Princess found few with whom she sympathized 
 in this large and brilliant court. She admired neither 
 the men, the women, nor the things that figured there. 
 Everything displeased and annoyed her. The figure 
 of the King, whom she somewhat ironically called 
 the great man, was the only one that seemed to her 
 
 1 Letter of March 20, 1689. 
 
178 TSE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 majestic, and even on that sun she discovered many- 
 spots. Her family afforded her no satisfaction. She 
 had the sorriest opinion of her husband, Avho was 
 incessantly occupied with futilities, masquerades, and 
 cynical intrigues. One of her letters, written in 
 1696, contains this curious passage : " Monsieur says 
 openly, and he had not concealed it from either his 
 daughter or me, that as he is beginning to grow old 
 he has no time to lose, that he will do everything and 
 spare nothing to amuse himself up to the last, that 
 those who survive him will know how to spend their 
 time after their own fashion, but tliat he loves him- 
 self better than me or his children, and that in con- 
 sequence he intends, so long as he lives, to attend to 
 no one but himself, and he acts as he talks." 
 
 Madame was not more happy in her son, the future 
 regent, than in her husband. The judgment she 
 passed on this son, who wilfully spoiled the fine 
 qualities he had been endowed with by nature, justi- 
 fies that of Louis XIV. on this boaster of vices, "fan- 
 faron de vices." " Although his inclinations are in 
 reality serious," she Avrites, "and he does not take 
 kindly to debauchery, he yields to it solely to imitate 
 others, and that is what annoys me most of all. If 
 the pleasure were in his nature, I should not have 
 much to say against it; but that he should do vio- 
 lence to himself in order to take to vice and talk 
 twaddle, while at the same time he hides everything 
 that is good in him — this is what I cannot endure 
 without pain." 
 
TEE DUCHESS OF OSLEANS 179 
 
 The Princess Palatine had a horror of illegitimate 
 births, and her pride was outraged by the rank occu- 
 jjied at court by the daughters of Louis XIV. and 
 Madame de Montespan, whom she detested, to use 
 her own expressions, as being "the bastards of a 
 double adultery, the children of the worst and most 
 abandoned woman that the earth can bear." Hence, 
 when her son consented to marry one of these bas- 
 tards, she was so enraged as to give him, in the 
 gallery of Versailles, that vigorous and resounding 
 slap in the face, which re-echoes so plainly in Saint- 
 Simon's Memoirs. She wrote in 1700 : " My son has 
 caused me much grief in addition to his marriage. 
 . . . What I find worst in his conduct is that I am 
 the only one who cannot have his friendship, for with 
 that exception he is good to everybody. And yet I 
 have only lost his friendship by always advising him 
 in his own interest. At present I have taken my 
 stand ; I say nothing more to him, and speak to him 
 as I would to the first comer of indifferent things ; 
 but it is a very painful thing not to be able to open 
 one's heart to those one loves." 
 
 Inwardly tormented, exasperated by her husband's 
 favorites, saddened as a wife, a mother, and a German, 
 Madame cared little for the splendors of Versailles 
 and Saint-Cloud, where her existence was a blending 
 of luxury and poverty. "Certainly," said she, "I 
 would attach great value to grandeur if one could 
 have all that should accompany it, plenty of gold, 
 for instance, in order to be magnificent, and the 
 
180 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 power to assist the good and punish the wicked; but 
 to have only the name of grandeur without the money, 
 to be reduced to the strictest necessaries, to live 
 under perpetual constraint without its being possible 
 to have any society, this seems to me, in truth, per- 
 fectly insipid, and I care nothing whatever about it. 
 I should prize more a condition in which one could 
 amuse one's self with good friends without the troubles 
 of grandeur, and do with one's property whatever one 
 pleased." ^ 
 
 How did the Princess Palatine continue to divert 
 herself from so many worries and cares ? By hunting 
 and writing. The chase, and still more the epistolary 
 st3ie, — these were her two passions, her two manias. 
 From 1671, the year of her marriage, to 1722, the year 
 • of her death, she never stopped writing lettei-s to the 
 members of her German famil}'. On ]\Iondays she 
 wrote to Savoy, on Wednesdays to Modena, Thurs- 
 days and Sundays to Hanover. But this rage for 
 scribbling was fatal to her notwithstanding. Her 
 correspondence, opened at the post-office, was sent to 
 Madame de Maintenon, who showed the imprudent 
 Princess a letter full of the most outrageous insults. 
 " One can fancy," says Saint-Simon, " whether at this 
 aspect and this reading Madame did not tliink of 
 dying on the spot. She began to ciy, and Madame 
 de Maintenon to represent modestly to her the 
 enormity of every part of this letter, and in a foreign 
 
 1 Letter of August 21, 1695. 
 
THE DUCHESS OF OULEANS 181 
 
 countiy, too. The best excuse for Madame was to 
 own Tip what she could not deny, pardons, repent- 
 ances, prayers, promises. . . ." 
 
 Madame de Maintenon coldly enjoj-^ed her triumph 
 for some time, letting the Princess choke over her 
 woi'ds, weep, and try to take her hands. It was a 
 terrible humiliation for so arrogant and proud a Ger- 
 man. Nothing more is needed to explain the hatred 
 of the Princess Palatine for her to whom in her rage 
 she applied the old German proverb : " Where the 
 devil cannot go himself he sends an old woman." 
 
 Madame quieted down when she became a widow 
 in 1701. " No convent," said she the day after Mon- 
 sieur died ; " let no one talk to me about a convent ! " 
 Happy to remain at court, in spite of the ill things 
 she had said about it, she softened towards Madame 
 de Maintenon sufficiently to write in 1712: "Al- 
 though the old woman is our most cruel enemy, still 
 I wish her a long life, for everything would go ten 
 times worse than it does if the King were to die now. 
 He has loved this woman so much that he certainly 
 would not survive her ; therefore I hope she may live 
 for many years." 
 
 Madame ended her days like a good Christian, and 
 Massillon, in a beautiful funeral oration, rendered 
 due homage to the courage she had displayed in her 
 last sufferings. To those who surrounded her death- 
 bed she had said with a calmness worthy of Louis 
 XIV. : " We shall meet again in heaven." 
 
 To sum up, Madame the Duchess of Oileans is a 
 
182 THE WOMEN OF VEBSAILLES 
 
 very strange type, but she demands attention whether 
 or no. In her, uprightness and good sense, justice 
 and humanity, coexist with great caprices. In her 
 letters, amidst a mass of insignificant details, more 
 or less inexact, anecdotes, commonplaces, and worldly 
 gossip, there are thoughts worthy of a moralist and 
 judgments that bear the stamp of wisdom. It is true 
 she preached morality in cynical language; but if 
 she speaks of debauchery, it is only to stigmatize it 
 and depict its shamefulness. She has at least the 
 merit of seeing vice as it is, of looking it in the face, 
 of detesting it mth a warlike, aggressive, irreconcil- 
 able hatred, of stigmatizing it in Rabelaisian accents, 
 whose triviality renders them more striking than fine 
 homilies. For that matter, are not crudities of lan- 
 guage and audacities of expression less dangerous 
 than certain refinements of half-mystical, half-sen- 
 sual poesj- which, by confounding the alcove with 
 the oratory, envelop voluptuousness in a cloud of 
 incense ? 
 
XII 
 
 MADAME 0E MAINTENON AS A POLITICAL WOMAN 
 
 TO write history with the aid of pamphlets, to 
 accept as verities all the inventions of malevo- 
 lence or hatred, to say with Beaumarchais : " Calum- 
 niate, calumniate, some trace of it will always 
 remain," to belittle what is great, to misinterpret 
 what is noble, to tarnish what is brilliant, — such are 
 the tactics of the sworn enemies of our traditions 
 and our glories, such is the pleasure of the iconoclasts 
 who would like to efface from our annals all gran- 
 diose or majestic figures. The revolutionary school 
 whose disciples they are has already done much 
 harm. It has sapped the foundations of the edifice ; 
 it has aided to destroy that respect which is indis- 
 pensable to well-organized societies ; it has converted 
 books into libels, criticisms into invectives, portraits 
 into caricatures ; it has conspired with that essen- 
 tially false literature known as the historical novel, 
 to travestj"^ persons and things and spread abroad a 
 mass of exaggerations and fables which confuse facts 
 and ideas and reverse the conceptions of good sense 
 and justice. One of the men whom this school holds 
 
 183 
 
184 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 most in horror is Louis XIV., because he was the 
 representative or, better, the Uving symbol of the 
 principle of authority. It is tired of hearing him 
 called the Great, like that Athenian who was weary 
 of hearing Aristides called the Just. It has fancied 
 it would extinguish the roj-al sun by bi'eathing on it. 
 An old potentate kept in leading strings by a bigoted 
 and intriguing old woman, — such is the image it 
 would delineate, the characteristics it wishes to hand 
 down to posterity as those of him who to his last 
 hour, his latest breath, remained what he had been 
 throughout his life — the very type of royalty, the 
 sovereign by excellence. To dishonor Louis XIV. 
 in the woman whom he chose among all others as 
 the companion of his maturity and his old age, — 
 such has. been and still is the thing aimed at by 
 ■^Titers of this school. They have based their judg- 
 ments on those of the Duchess of Orleans, the Prin- 
 cess Palatine whose portrait we have just essayed to 
 trace, and on those of another equally objectionable 
 witness, the Duke de Saint-Simon. It ought not to 
 be forgotten that this hot-headed duke and peer, who 
 often talked like Philinte if he always thought like 
 Alceste, was at least frank enough to say of himself : 
 " The stoic is a fine and noble chimera. I do not 
 pique myself, therefore, on impartiality ; I should do 
 so in vain." It irritated him to be of no account in 
 a government where many a man of middling abili- 
 ties had secured the sovereign's favor. To be con- 
 demned to the idle existence of a courtier, to live in 
 
MADAME DE MAINTENON 185 
 
 ante-chambers, on staircases, in the courts and gar- 
 dens of Versailles and other royal residences, vexed 
 and displeased his vanity. He laid the blame of this 
 on Louis XIV. at first, and afterwards on the woman 
 whom he considered as the arbiter of all appoint- 
 ments. But it was only in his Memoirs, written 
 clandestinely and kept under lock and key, that he 
 dared give expression to his wrath. He was all 
 respect and docility in presence of the King. After 
 bestirring himself a good deal concerning a certain 
 collection which had been a subject of litigation be- 
 tween the princesses and duchesses, he said humbly 
 to the King that to please him he would have passed 
 around the plate like a village church-warden. He 
 added that Louis XIV. was, " as king and as bene- 
 factor of all dukes, despotically master of their dig- 
 nities, to abase or to elevate them, to dispose of them 
 as a thing belonging to him and absolutely in his 
 power." He was not more haughty in the presence 
 of her whom he characterizes in his Memoirs as a 
 "notorious Creole, the begging -widow of a crippled 
 poet." He even tried to gain her over to the inter- 
 ests of his ambition, and to obtain through her means 
 a captaincy of guards. Furious at not being called 
 to the greatest positions of State, he pleased himself 
 with the posthumous revenge of describing Madame 
 de Main tenon in the most odious colors. Relying 
 on his imagination in default of other proofs, he 
 makes of her a sort of ancient courtesan, living by 
 debauchery in her youth and by intrigue in riper 
 
186 THE WOMEN OF VEBSAILLES 
 
 years. What he says of her is a tissue of inaccura- 
 cies. He assigns her birth to America, while it is 
 certain that she was born at Niort. He will scarcely 
 admit that her father was a gentleman, while his 
 nobility is absolutely incontestable. He accuses her 
 of having been supported by Villars, father of the 
 marshal, by the three Villarceaux, and by several 
 othei-s, while it is positive that she never received a 
 faithuig. Obliged to own that on Scarron's death 
 she was "reduced to the charity of her parish of 
 SaintEustache," he does not perceive that such an 
 assertion concerning a woman whose beauty was 
 celebrated throughout Paris proves in an undeniable 
 fashion the virtue of that woman. He reproaches 
 her with having been led astray by the counsels 
 of Ninon de Lenclos, whereas Ninon herself says: 
 " ^Madame de Maintenon was virtuous in her youth 
 through weak-mindedness. I wanted to cure her of 
 it, but she feared God too much." 
 
 Every day increases the fame of Saint-Simon con- 
 sidered as a writer. One must admire a style which 
 recalls by turns the boldness of Bossuet, the brill- 
 iancy of La Bruyere, and the ease and freedom of 
 Madame de Si^vign^. But, on the other hand, the 
 more one studies the court of Louis XIY., the more 
 fully one recognizes that the famous memoirs are 
 full of inaccuracies. In his remarkable critical study 
 of Saint-Simon's work, the learned ]VL Ch^rueP 
 
 ' Saint-Simon consicUre comme historien de Louis XIV. by M. 
 Chgruel. 
 
MADAME BE MAINTENON 187 
 
 has already refuted in an invincible manner a great 
 number of his errors, and M. Souli6, curator of the 
 Museum of Versailles, is constantly discovering new 
 ones in the course of his patient and indefatiga- 
 ble researches. M. Ch^ruel has abundant reason to 
 say : " Saint-Simon's observation is subtle, sagacious, 
 penetrating when it is a question of sounding the 
 recesses of the hearts of courtiers; but it lacks 
 breadth and grandeur. The court bounds his hori- 
 zon. All that lies beyond it is vague and indetermi- 
 nate for him. While granting him the perspicacity 
 of an observer one must' deny him the impartiality 
 of a judge." To listen to him, Madame de Mainte- 
 non is the sole mistress of France, the omnipotent 
 sultana, the pantocrate, as the Princess Palatine calls 
 her in her curious jargon. He describes with many 
 details " her incredible success, the entire confidence, 
 the rare dependence, the almightiness, the almost 
 universal public adoration, the ministers, the gen- 
 erals of the army, the royal family at her feet, every 
 boon and every advantage through her, everything 
 rejected without her; men, affairs, things, appoint- 
 ments, justice, favors, religion, everything witliout 
 exception in her hands, and the King and the State 
 her victims." Needless to say that the revolutionary 
 school has accepted this exaggerated assertion liter- 
 ally. To believe it, Louis XIV. is nothing but a 
 manikin of which Madame de Maintenon pulls the 
 strings, a sort of crowned Geronte who lets himself 
 be tricked like a child by a Jesuit and an old woman. 
 
188 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 It is thus they seek to tarnish the aureole with which 
 posterity has surrounded the most majestic of all 
 instances of old age. 
 
 Let them say what they will, Louis XIV. always 
 remained master, and it was he who traced the great 
 political lines of his reigii. Madame de Maintenon 
 may have advised him, but it was he who gave the 
 final decision. We say willingly, with M. EmUe 
 Chasles : " This intelligent woman, far from being 
 too much listened to, was not enough so. There was 
 in her a veritable love for the public welfare, a true 
 sorrow in the midst of our misfortunes. To-day it 
 is necessary to retrench much fi-om the grandeur of 
 her power and add a great deal to that of her soul." 
 
 It is well worthy of remark that the woman who 
 is now accused of a mischievous meddling in every- 
 thing, was reproached by the most eminent men of 
 her time of standing too much aside. F^nelon wrote 
 to her : " They say you take too little .part in affairs. 
 Your mind is more capable of it than you think. 
 You are perhaps a little too distrustful of yourself, 
 or rather you are too much afraid to enter into dis- 
 cussions contraiy to the inclination you have for a 
 tranquil and meditative life." That Madame de 
 Maintenon may have influenced certain appointments 
 does not appear doubtful, but that she alone, of her 
 own motion, controlled the ministei^s, is a pure in- 
 vention. We believe her to have been sincere when 
 she wrote to Madame des Ursins : " In whatever way 
 matters turn, I conjure you, madame, to regard me as 
 
MADAME BE MAINTENON 189 
 
 a person incapable of affairs, who heard them talked 
 of too late to be skilful in them, and who hates them 
 more than she ignores them. . . . My interference 
 in them is not desired, and I do not desire to inter- 
 fere. They are not concealed from me ; but I know 
 nothing consecutively, and am often badly informed." 
 
 Heading or working at her tapestry, while the King 
 was working with one or another of his ministei's, 
 Madame de Maintenon never timidly hazarded a 
 word except formally when requested. Her attitude 
 toward Louis XIV. was that of respect, humility, 
 and modesty. True, the King said to her : " They 
 call the popes Your Holiness, and kings Your Maj- 
 esty ; you, Madame, should be called Your Solidity." 
 But this praise did not turn the head of so prudent 
 and reasonable a woman. 
 
 To sum up, what is the chief accusation brought 
 against Louis XIV. ? His wars, his passion for lux- 
 ury, his religious fanaticism. How can this triple 
 accusation weigh upon Madame de Maintenon ? Far 
 from urging him to war, she always desired peace 
 ardently. " I long after peace," she wrote in 1684 ; 
 " I shall never give the King any counsels prejudicial 
 to his glory; but if he would believe me, he would 
 be less dazzled with this ^clat of victory, and would 
 think more seriously of his salvation, but it is not 
 my business to govern the State ; I ask God daily to 
 inspire and direct the master and make Mm know 
 the truth." Unfavorable to her as he is, M. Michelet 
 nevertheless owns that she profoundly regretted the 
 
190 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 war of the succession in Spain. He sa3"s that " the 
 only ones who retained good sense, old Maintenon 
 and the sickly Beauvilliers saw with terror that they 
 were plunging into the frightful enterprise which was 
 going to swallow up everything. . . . Just as she 
 allowed a written decision for the revocation of the 
 Edict of Nantes to be extorted from her, so she 
 yielded, she submitted for the succession." ^ 
 
 She was no fonder of luxury than of war. Living 
 with extreme simplicity herself, she sought to deter 
 Louis XIV. from magnificent constructions and 
 ostentatious displays of pride. According to Made- 
 moiselle d'Aumale, the confidant of her good works, 
 she reproached herself on account of her modest 
 personal expenses. She never bought a new goAvn 
 until it was absolutely needed, and then said : " I am 
 taking that away from the poor. My position has 
 many unpleasant sides, but it procures me the pleas- 
 ure of giving. And yet as it prevents me from lack- 
 ing anything, and as I can never encroach upon mj- 
 necessaries, all mj- alms are a sort of luxury, good 
 and permissible, it is true, but devoid of merit." 
 
 Madame de Maintenon not only counted for noth- 
 ing in the luxury of Louis XIV., she not merelv 
 never ceased recalling him to ideas truly Christian, 
 but she incessantly pleaded the cause of the people 
 whose wretchedness she pitied while she admired 
 their resignation. Never allowing herself to be 
 
 1 Michelet, Louis XIV. et 1e due de Boiiroogne. 
 
MADAME DE MAINTENON 191 
 
 elated by the incense burned at her feet as Avell as at 
 those of Louis XIV., she had neither those bursts of 
 pride, that thirst for riches, nor that eagerness for 
 domination which one finds in the lives of nearly all 
 favorites. She was indifferent to jewels, rich stuffs, 
 and costly furniture. Even in her youth and amidst 
 the infatuation excited by her beauty, her mind had 
 been her chief adornment, and she had never been 
 dazzled by exterior display. No prodigality is con- 
 nected with her name. 
 
 The chief complaint formulated against Madame 
 de Maintenon by certain historians is the revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes. They load her with anath- 
 emas as if she alone were responsible for that fatal 
 measure.- Forgetting that it was during his passion 
 for Mademoiselle de Fontanges that Louis XIV. 
 began to take rigorous legislative proceedings against 
 the Protestants, they attribute the persecution to the 
 hj'pocritical zeal of a narrow devotion inspired by 
 Madame de Maintenon alone. On the contrary, the 
 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, which we are very 
 far from approving, was, one may say, forced on the 
 King by public opinion. As has been remarked by 
 M. Th^ophile Lavall^e, those of the reformed church 
 Xjreserved toward the government the attitude of 
 children in disgrace, and towards the Catholics that 
 of disdainful enemies; they persisted in their isola- 
 tion ; they continued their correspondence with their 
 friends in England and Holland.^ "France," has 
 
 1 M. Lavall(Je, Histoire de France. 
 
192 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 said M. Michelet, "found a Holland in her own 
 bosom which was rejoicing at the success of the 
 other one." ^ 
 
 To recall the dissidents to unity was the fixed 
 idea of Louis XIV. This, as was said at the time, 
 would be the meritorious work and proper character- 
 istic of his reign. The assembly of the clergy, the 
 parliament of Toulouse, the Catholics of the south of 
 France, had urgently solicited the revocation. When^ 
 the decree apx^eared there was an explosion of en- 
 thusiasm. Whatever Saint-Simon may say, the court 
 of Rome testified an extreme joy. Innocent XI. 
 hastened to address a brief to Louis XIV. thanking 
 him in the name of the Church. He caused the 
 cannon of Castle Saint Angelo to be fired, and held 
 a papal chapel at which the Te Deum was chanted. 
 The Duke d'Estr^es, French ambassador to the Holj'- 
 See, wrote to the King : " His Holiness said to me 
 that what Charlemagne had done was nothing in 
 comparison to what has just been accomplished by 
 Your Majesty, that there was nothing so great, and 
 that no example of a similar action could be found." 
 Chancellor Letellier, intoning the canticle of Simeon, 
 died saying that he had nothing left to wish for after 
 this final act of his long ministry. Bossuet rose to 
 lyrical transports : " Delay not to publish this miracle 
 of our own days. Pass on the stor3- to future ages. 
 Take up your sacred pens, ye who compose the 
 
 'M. Michelet, Pn'cis sur Vllistoirf moderne. 
 

 MADAME DE MAINTENON. 
 
MADAME BE MAINTENON 193 
 
 annals of the Church. . . . Touched by so many 
 marvels, let our hearts dilate over the piety of 
 Louis ; lift even to heaven our acclamations, and say 
 to this new Constantine, this new Theodosius, this 
 new Charlemagne, what the six hundred and thirty 
 Fathers said of old in the Councils of Chalcedon : 
 ' You have consolidated the faith, you have extermi- 
 nated the heretics.' " ^ Saint-Simon, who blames the 
 revocation with so much eloquence, avows that Louis 
 XIV. was convinced of having performed a holy 
 action. " The monarch had never thought himself so 
 great in the sight of men, nor so far advanced in the 
 sight of God in the reparation of the sins and scan- 
 dals of his life. He heard nothing but eulogies." 
 The laity did not applaud him less than the clergy. 
 Madame de S^vign^ wrote, October 8, 1685: "Never 
 has any king done nor ever will do so memorable a 
 thing." RoUin, La Fontaine, La Bruydre, displayed 
 as much enthusiasm as F^nelon, Massillon and 
 Fl^chier. These lines by Madame Deshoulidres 
 reflect the general impression : — 
 
 "Ah ! pour sauver ton people et pour venger la foi, 
 Ce que tu viens de faire est au-dessus de I'hoinme. 
 
 De quelques grand noms qu'on te nomme, 
 On t'abaisse ; il n'est plus d'assez grand noms pour toi." ^ 
 
 'Bossuet, Oraison funebre de MiclieX Letellier. 
 
 2 Ah ! to save thy people and to avenge the faith, 
 What thou has just done is above the power of man. 
 
 By whatever great names they name thee, 
 Thou art abased ; no name henceforth is great enough for thee. 
 
194 THE WOMEN OF VEBSAILLES 
 
 Doubtless Madame de Maintenon allowed herself 
 to be carried ii\Ya,y by tlie unanimous sentiment of 
 the Catholic world. But it was assuredly not she 
 who took the initiative. Voltaire recognizes this 
 when he sa3'^s : " One sees by her letters that she did 
 not urge the revocation of Nantes, but that she did 
 not oppose it." 
 
 In a letter of September 4, 1678, she writes con- 
 cerning abjurations which were insincere : " I am 
 indignant at such conversions; the state of those 
 who abjure without being truly Catholics is infa- 
 mous." We read in the J}fotes des Dames de Saint- 
 Cyr : Madame de Mamtenon, while desiring with 
 all her heart the reunion of the Huguenots to the 
 Church, would have desired that it might rather be 
 by the way of persuasion and gentleness than bj'^ 
 severity; and she told us that the King, who was 
 very zealous, would have liked to see her more eager 
 than she seemed, and that he said to her on this 
 account : " I fear, Madame, lest the consideration you 
 wish shown to the Huguenots may be the result of 
 some remaining bias toward j^our former religion." 
 
 F^nelon himself, who is represented as the apostle 
 of tolerance, approved the principle of the revocation 
 of the Edict of Nantes. " Though no sovereign," 
 said he, "may require interior belief in religious 
 matters from his subjects, he may prevent the public 
 exercise, or the profession of opinions, or ceremonies, 
 which disturb the peace of tlie commonwealth, by the 
 diversity and multiplicity of sects." Such was also 
 
MADAME DE MAINTENON 195 
 
 the opinion of Madame de Maintenon. But Protes- 
 tant writera themselves have recognized that she 
 blamed the employment of force. It is the historian 
 of the French refugees in Brandenburg who says: 
 " Let us do her justice. She never counselled the 
 violent means that were used ; she abhorred persecu- 
 tions, and those that were practised were concealed 
 from her." 
 
 Madame de Maintenon was essentially moderate, 
 both in religion and in politics. Her counsels counted 
 for something in the declaration of December 13, 
 1698, which, while maintaining the revocation of the 
 Edict of Nantes, established a toleration which lasted 
 until the end of the reign. Let us be on our guard, 
 moreover, against sharing the gross error of those 
 who behold ser\atude in Catholicism and liberty in 
 Protestantism. Luther recommended the extermina- 
 tion of Anabaptists. Calvin executed Michael Ser- 
 vetus, Jacques Brunet, and Valentin Gentiles for 
 heresy. The inhumanities of Louis XIV. toward 
 Protestants did not equal those of WUliam of Orange 
 against Catholics. The English laws were of Draco- 
 nian severity; any Catholic priest residing in Eng- 
 land, who had not after three days embraced the 
 Anglican cult, was liable to the penalty of death. 
 And nowada3^s they want to persuade us that in the 
 strife between Louis XIV. and William, it was the 
 Protestant prince who represented the principle of 
 religious toleration ! 
 
 To sum up, whether the revocation of the Edict of 
 
196 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 Nantes or any other act of the great reign is in ques- 
 tion, Madame de Maintenon did not play the odious 
 part which has been attributed to her by calumny. 
 We do not believe she ever outstepped the limits of 
 that legitimate influence which a devoted and intelli- ■ 
 gent woman usually exercises over her husband. If 
 she was often mistaken, at least she was mistaken in 
 good faith. The real Madame de Maintenon is not 
 the mischievous, malicious, crafty, and vindictive 
 bigot imagined by certain writers ; she is a pious and 
 reasonable woman, animated by the noblest intentions, 
 loving France sincerely, sympathizing deeply with 
 the sufferings of the people, detesting war, respecting 
 right and justice, austere in her tastes, moderate in 
 her opinions, irreproachable in her conduct. 
 
 Speaking of the accord which existed between her 
 and the group of truly religious great nobles, M. 
 Michelet has said : " Let us regard this little group 
 as a convent in the midst of the court, a convent con- 
 spiring for the amelioration of the King. In general, 
 it is the converted court. What is fine, very fine in 
 this party, what constitutes its honor-able bond, is the 
 edifying reconciliation of mortal enemies. The 
 Duchess de B^thune-Charost, daughter of Fouquet, 
 the man whom Colbert imprisoned for twenty yeai-s, 
 became the friend, almost the sister of the three 
 daughters of her father's pei-secutor." Such were 
 the sentiments wliich Madame de Maintenon knew 
 how to inspire. Ever}- morning and night she said 
 from the depths of her soul this prayer which she had 
 
MADAME DE MAINTENON 197 
 
 composed : " Lord, grant me to gladden the King, to 
 console him, to encourage him, to sadden him also 
 when it must be for Thy glory. Cause me to hide 
 from him nothing which he ought to know through 
 me, and which no one else would have the courage 
 to tell him." 
 
 No ; there was nothing hypocritical in such piety, 
 and the companion of Louis XIV. was sincere when 
 she said to Madame de Glapion : " I should like to 
 die before the King ; I would go to God ; 1 would cast 
 myself at the foot of His throne ; I would offer Him 
 the desires of a soul that He would have purified ; I 
 would pray Him to grant the King greater lights, 
 more love for his people, more knowledge of the 
 state of the provinces, more aversion for the perfidy 
 of the courtiers, more horror of the ways in which 
 his authority is abused; and God would hear my 
 prayers." 
 
XIII 
 
 MADAME DE MAINTENOX'S LETTERS 
 
 MADAME DE MAINTENON is one of those 
 characters who require to be patiently and 
 conscientiously studied by an observer who wishes to 
 render an impartial judgment. At first, Louis XIV. 
 did not like the woman destined to become the most 
 serious and lasting affection of his life. " The King 
 did not like me," she writes herself, " and long held 
 me in aversion ; he was afraid of me as a wit." 
 
 How was it that Louis XIV. passed from repug- 
 nance to sj'mpathy, from distrust to confidence, from 
 prejudice to admiration ? It was by getting a nearer 
 view of moral qualities which at first he saw only 
 from a distance. The same thing has happened to a 
 majority of the critics who, having to speak of 
 iNIadame de jNIaintenon, have not been contented with 
 superficial views, but have carefully analj-zed the life 
 and character of this celebrated woman. What has 
 occurred to one of her principal defenders, M. Th^o- 
 phile Lavall^e, affords a proof of the foregoing 
 observation. When he brought out his Eistoire des 
 Franpais, this writer judged Madame de Maintenon 
 
 198 
 
MADAME DE MAINTENON'S LETTERS 199 
 
 very severely. He accused her "of the most com- 
 plete aridity of heart, of a spirit of narrow devotion 
 and mean intrigue." He reproached her with hav- 
 ing suggested fatal enterprises and wretched appoint- 
 ments to Louis XIV. " She belittled him," he says, 
 " she forced mediocre and servile people on him, she 
 had, in fine, the greatest share in the errors and dis- 
 asters of the end of the reign." 
 
 Some years later, M. Lavall^e wrote his fine ffis- 
 toire de la maison royals de Saint-Qyr. In this work 
 he says : " Madame de Maintenon gave Louis XIV. 
 none but salutary and disinterested counsels, useful 
 to the State and to the alleviation of the people." 
 What had happened between the publication of these 
 two books? The author had studied. Devoting a 
 patient research to a work of prevailing interest, he 
 had succeeded in collecting the letters and writings 
 of Madame de Maintenon. Thanks to communica- 
 tions from the Dukes of Noailles, Mouchy, Camba- 
 c^rds, from MM. Feuillet de Conches, Montmerqu^, 
 de Clievry, Honor^ Bonhomme, he had been able to 
 increase the treasures of the archives of Saint^Cyr. 
 
 Madame de Maintenon is one of the historical per- 
 sonages who have Avritten most. Her Letters, if she 
 had not destroyed a great number of them, would 
 almost form a library. The archives of Saint-Cyr 
 alone contain forty volumes of them. And yet the 
 most curious of the Letters have doubtless not been 
 preserved. Always prudent, Madame de Maintenon 
 burned her correspondence with Louis XIV., her hus- 
 
200 TUE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 band; with Madame de Moiitcbe^ieuil, her most 
 intimate friend ; with the Bishop of Chartres, her 
 director. The letters of her youth are rare. Nobody 
 jet divined the future which Pro^idence was resei-v- 
 ing for her. M. Lavall^e's collection, necessarily 
 incomplete, is nevertheless an historical monument 
 of very great value. Two volumes of Letters and 
 familiar discourses on the education of girls, two 
 others of historical and edifjing Letters addressed 
 to the ladies of Saint-Cyr, four volumes of general 
 correspondence, one of convei'sations and maxims, 
 another of miscellaneous ^vxitings, and a final one 
 which includes the Souvenirs of Madame de Cajlus, 
 the Memoii-s of the ladies of Saint-Cyi-, and those of 
 Mademoiselle d'Aumale, form the en-semhle of a pub- 
 lication that has fully illustrated a figm-e eminently 
 curious to study. 
 
 The collection of Labeaumelle, Voltaire's enemy, 
 contains, along with manj^ authentic letters, a great 
 quantity of apocryphal ones. There are changes, 
 interpolations, additions, and suppressions. Fabri- 
 cated bits have been inserted containing clap-trap 
 phi-ases, piquant reflections, maxims in the style of 
 the eighteenth century. M. Lavall^e has found the 
 means whereby to distinguish the wheat from the 
 tares. Passing Labeaumelle's collection through 
 the sieve of a sagacious criticism, he has succeeded 
 in verifj-ing the text of the true letters and proving 
 the apocryphal character of those wliich are false. 
 Like the connoisseurs in autographs, he suspected 
 
MADAME DE MAINTENON'S LETTERS 201 
 
 the striking letters. Falsifiers are almost always 
 imprudent. They force the note; and when they 
 set about inventing a document, they want their 
 invention to produce a profound impression. 
 
 The correspondence of celebrated persons is gener- 
 ally much more simple, far less studied than the pre- 
 tended autographs attributed to them. One needs 
 to be always on his guard against letters containing 
 either finished portraits, profound judgments, or his- 
 torical predictions. They are often signs of falsifica- 
 tion ; and the more striking they seem, the more 
 carefully should their origin be examined. This is 
 one of the rules whose strict application would pre- 
 vent many mistakes. The majority of historical docu- 
 ments resemble certain inheritances. They should 
 not be accepted unless on condition of not becoming 
 liable to debts in excess of the assets. 
 
 Madame de Maintenon's letters deserve the trouble 
 that has been taken to establish their dates and 
 authenticity with exactness. Baron Walckenaer, the 
 biographer of Madame de S^vign^, assigns to them 
 the highest rank without hesitation. "Madame de 
 Maintenon," he says, "is a more finished model of 
 epistolary style than Madame de S^vign^. The latter 
 seldom writes except when she feels the need of con- 
 versing with her daughter or other persons whom she 
 loves, in order to say everything, to tell the whole 
 story. INIadame de Maintenon, on the contrary, has 
 always a distinct end in view in writing. The 
 cleverness, proportion, elegance, and justice of her 
 
202 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 thoughts, the subtlety of her reflections, enable her to 
 attain pleasantly the goal she aims at. Her progress 
 is straight and unfalteruig, she follows the road with- 
 out striking against the bushes, without deviating to 
 right or left." i 
 
 Such was also the opinion of the fii-st Napoleon. 
 He greatly preferred the lettei-s of Madame de Main- 
 tenon to those of Madame de Sevign^, which were, 
 according to him, "snow eggs, with which one could 
 surfeit himself without overloading his stomach." In 
 citing Napoleon's preference, M. D^sir^ Nisard accepts 
 it with some reservations. " When Madame de Main- 
 tenon's letters are fuU of matter," saj-s the eminent 
 critic, " one shares the opinion of the great Emperor. 
 They possess, to the highest degree, a certain name- 
 less quality of discretion, simplicity, efficacity. They 
 do not dazzle by means of feminine versatilitj"- ; and 
 the naturalness of them pleases all the more because 
 it proceeds rather from the reason which disdains 
 mere prettiness without desiring to dispense with 
 real graces, than from the ydt which plays with noth- 
 ings. But when matter is lacking, these letters are 
 short, dry, constrained."^ 
 
 If Madame de Maintenon had had literary pre- 
 occupations, if she had imagined that she was writ- 
 ing for posterity, she would have produced letters 
 still more remarkable. There is neither stiidied re- 
 
 1 "Walckenaer, Memoires sur Madame de Sevigne, sa vie et ses 
 e'crits. 
 
 - M. D6sire Nisard, Histoire de la lUterature fran^aise. 
 
MADAME DE MAINTENON'S LETTERS 203 
 
 finement nor pretension in her correspondence. She 
 writes to edify, to convert, or to console far more 
 than to please. Her notes to the ladies and young 
 girls of Saint-Cyr do not outstep this pious limit. 
 Often Madame de Maintenon does not take the pen 
 herself, but while spinning or knitting she dictates to 
 the young girls who act as her secretaries, to Made- 
 moiselle de Loubert, Mademoiselle de Saint^Etienne, 
 Mademoiselle d'Osmond, or Mademoiselle d'Aumale. 
 But in the least of these innumerable notes are 
 always found those qualities of style, sobriety, pro- 
 portion, conciseness, perfect harmony between the 
 thought and its expression, which have been admired 
 by the best judges. 
 
 The two women of the seventeenth century whose 
 letters are most celebrated, Madame de S^vignd and 
 Madame de Maintenon, felt for each other both sym- 
 pathy and esteem : " We take supper every evening 
 with Madame Scarron," wrote Madame de S6vign6 
 in 1672; "her disposition is amiable and marvel- 
 lously upright." One can fancy what conversation 
 might be between these choice women, both so supe- 
 rior, so well-instructed, so witty, complementing each 
 other by their very diversities. 
 
 Madame de S^vign^, a strong and richly endowed 
 nature, a young and beautiful widow, virtuous but 
 with a free and dauntless humor, a dazzling C^lim^ne, 
 sister to Moliere as Sainte-Beuve calls her, a woman 
 whose character, speech, and writing are alike in- 
 tense, justifies what was said to her by her friend 
 
204 TEE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 Madame de La Fayette: "You seem born for pleas- 
 ures, and they seem to have been made for j'ou. 
 Your presence augments entertainments, and enter- 
 tainments augment your beauty when they form 
 your surroundings. In a word, joy is the true con- 
 dition of your soul, and chagrin is more contrary 
 to you than to any one else." Her image, s]3arkling 
 like her wit, appears to us in the midst of those 
 fetes which her pen brings to life again like the 
 wand of a magiciaii. " What shall I tell you ? mag- 
 nificences, illuminations, all France, worn out coats 
 and gold brocade ones, jewels, braziers of fire and 
 of flowers, heaps of carriages, cries in the streets, 
 lighted torches, carriages backing and people run 
 over, in fine, a whirl, dissipation, questions without 
 answei'S, compliments without knowing what one 
 says, civilities without knowing to whom one is 
 speaking, feet tangled in trains." 
 
 Madame de S(^vign4, whose letters passed from 
 hand to hand in drawing-rooms and ch§.teaus, wrote 
 for the galleries somewhat. She saj-s herself : " My 
 style is so negligent that it needs a naturally M'orldly 
 mind to put up with it."i But that does not pre- 
 vent her from understanding the worth of it. When 
 she lets her pen "trot with the bridle hanging 
 loose," when she pleases herself by giving her 
 daughter " the top of all the panniers, that is to say, 
 the freshness of her wit, her head, her ej^es, her pen, 
 
 1 Letter of December 23, 1671. 
 
MADAMJE BE MAINTENON'S LETTERS 205 
 
 her inkstand," and " the rest goes as it can," she 
 very well knows that society dotes on this style in 
 which all the graces and marvels of the great cen- 
 tury are reflected as in a looking-glass. Her letters 
 are the model of chroniques, to employ an expression 
 used in existing journalism. In the nineteenth cen- 
 tnry, as in the seventeenth, it is a woman who carries 
 off the palm for this species of literature which 
 demands so much wit. Madame Emile de Girardin 
 has been the S^vign^ of our epoch. 
 
 Madame de Maintenon could not or would not 
 aspire to this wholly worldly glory. Far from aim- 
 ing at effect, she voluntarily diminishes that which 
 she produces. Like a true devotee who tones down 
 the brilliancy of her glances, she moderates her style 
 and tempers her wit. She sacrifices brilliant quali- 
 ties to solid ones ; too much imagination, too much 
 fervor, alarm her. Saint-CjT must not resemble the 
 hStel d'Albret or the hStel de Richelieu ; one must 
 not speak to nuns as one woiild to blue-stockings. 
 
 Enjoyment, Gallic animation, good-tempered gaiety, 
 fall to the lot of jSIadame de S^vigne ; what marks 
 Madame de Maintenon is experience, reason, pro- 
 fundity. The one laughs from ear to ear ; the other 
 barely smiles. The one has illusions about every- 
 thing, admirations which boi-der on naivete, ecstasies 
 when in presence of the royal sun ; the other never 
 allows herself to be fascinated either by the King or 
 the court, by men, women, or things. She has seen 
 human grandeurs too close at hand not to understand 
 
206 TB.E WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 their nothingness, and her conclusions bear the im- 
 print of a profound sadness. Madame de S6vign^ 
 also has attacks of melancholy at times. But the 
 cloud passes quickly, and she is again in broad sun- 
 shine. Gaiety, frank, communicative, radiant gaiety, 
 is the basis of the character of this woman, more 
 witty, seductive, amusing, than any other. Madame 
 de S^vign^ shines by imagination ; Madame de Main- 
 tenon by judgment. The one permits herself to be 
 dazzled, inebriated; the other always preserves her 
 indifference. The one exaggerates the splendors of 
 the court; the other sees them as they are. The 
 one is more of a woman ; the other, more of a saint. 
 
 To those who still feel an antipathy to Madame de 
 Maintenon, we venture to offer a word of counsel: 
 it is, to read before judging. The letters of this ca- 
 lumniated woman are an autobiography which shows 
 us every fold of her heart, and are not less interest- 
 ing from the psychological than from the historical 
 point of view. More reflection than ^-ivacity, more 
 wisdom than passion, more gra-\-ity than charm, more 
 authority than grace, more soliditj- than brilliancy, 
 — such are the characteristics of a correspondence 
 which might justify the expression : The stj^e is the 
 woman. 
 
XIV 
 
 THE OLD AGE OF MADAME DE MONTESPAN 
 
 IT is through their pride that those are punished 
 who have sinned oy pride, and haughty natures 
 are nearly always those whom Providence condemns 
 to cruel humiliations. Of all the favorites of Louis 
 XIV., Madame de Montespan had been the most 
 aiTogant and despotic ; she was also the most humili- 
 ated.^ Unable to accustom herself to her deposition, 
 she remained more than ten years at court, although 
 she had become burdensome to the King and to her- 
 self. " People said she was like one of those unhappy 
 souls who come back to expiate their faults in the 
 places where they committed them." ^ There was a 
 remnant of irony and wrath in the semi-conversion 
 of this haughty Mortemart. Going to see Madame 
 de Maintenon one day, she met there the cur4 and 
 the gray sisters of Versailles, who had come to attend 
 a charitable meeting. "Do you know, Madame," 
 
 1 Madame de Montespan et Louis XIV., historical study by 
 M. Pierre Clement. 1 vol. Didier. 
 
 2 Souvenirs of Madame de Caylus. 
 
 207 
 
208 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 said she, accosting her, "that your ante-chamber is 
 wonderfully adorned for your prayers ? " 
 
 The King continued to see the mother of the legit- 
 imated children. Every day, after Mass, he went to 
 spend a few minutes with her, but, as it were, from 
 duty, not pleasure. In 1686, at Marly, she said to 
 him in a moment of exasperation : " I have a favor to 
 ask you. Leave to me the care of entertaining the 
 people of the second carriage and of diverting the 
 ante-chamber." Between Louis XIV. and his former 
 mistress there was neither unreserve, confidence, love, 
 nor friendship. What remained after their liaison 
 was not even a souvenir, not even respect, but only 
 remorse.- Devoured by ambition and by scruples, 
 dragged hither and thither by her passions as if by so 
 many wild horses, Madame de Montespan was for 
 many long years the prey of that daily, hourly 
 struggle which is one of the most painful psycholog- 
 ical agonies that can be imagined. 
 
 Massillon, the Racine of the Christian pulpit, the 
 moralist preacher, so skilful in sounding the depths 
 of the female heart, has described better than anyone 
 else those fitful repentances which entail all the bit- 
 terness of penitence without giving any of its conso- 
 lations : " These hearts which the world has alwaj-s 
 occupied, and which wish to consecrate to God the 
 remains of a wholly mundane existence, what a 
 buckler of brass do they not oppose to grace ? . . . 
 They may seek for the kingdom of God and the 
 hidden treasure of the Gospel, but it is like the 
 
OLD AGE OF MADAME DE MONTESPAN 209 
 
 wretched slaves condemned to seek for gold through 
 hard rocks in toilsome mines ; ... it seems as if in 
 virtue they were playing another's part; although 
 they are seeking salvation in good faith, there appeai-s 
 in them a nameless constraint and strangeness which 
 make one think they are merely pretending." 
 
 Madame de Montespan wanted to leave the court, 
 but she had not the courage. She could say to her- 
 self, like Saint Augustine in his Confessions : " These 
 trifles of trifles, these vanities of vanities, draw me 
 by my garment of flesh, and whisper in my ear : ' And 
 are you sending us away ? What, after this moment 
 shall we be no longer with you? . . . for ever?' 
 This interior struggle was but a duel between myself 
 and me." 
 
 The progress that goes on between the first symp- 
 toms of repentance and the most complete and 
 absolute penitence is an interesting one to study. 
 The former favorite ended by comprehending the 
 truth of Massillon's words: "What comparison is 
 there between the frightful remorse of conscience, 
 that hidden worm which gnaws us incessantly, that 
 sadness of crime which undermines and brings us 
 down, that weight of iniquity which overwhelms us, 
 that interior sword which pierces us, and the lonely 
 sorrow of penitence which worketh salvation? My 
 God ! can one complain of Thee when one has known 
 the world? And the thorns of the Cross, are they 
 not flowers when compared to those that beset the 
 paths of iniquity ? " 
 
210 THE WOMMN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 There is an undercurrent of morality in public 
 opinion which makes the crowd contemplate Avith a 
 sort of pleasure the decay and ruin of certain for- 
 tunes. Madame de Montespan no longer met friendly 
 glances in the court which had latety been filled with 
 her flatterers. Thus it is that vice nearly always 
 finds its chastisement here below. Short as it is, life 
 is long enough for the vengeance of God to be accom- 
 plished, even on the earth. 
 
 After long clinging to the wrecks of her fortune 
 and her beauty, like a shipv\i-ecked sailor to the frag- 
 ments of his vessel, she who had formerly been 
 called the mistress " thundering and triumphant," at 
 last resigned herself to retirement. On March 15, 
 1691, she caused Bossuet to inform the King that 
 she had chosen her course of action, and would this 
 time abandon Versailles forever. Thus the prelate 
 who had essayed sixteen j^ears before to wrest her 
 from the clasp of guilty passions was the same to 
 whom she now had recourse to break the last link of 
 the chain. And yet she still had hesitations and 
 regrets. A month after this pious resolution, Dan- 
 geau wrote: "Madame de Montespan has been at 
 Clagny for several days, and has gone back to Paris. 
 She says she has not absolutely given up the court, 
 that she will see the King sometimes, and that in 
 fact they have been somewhat hasty in unfurnishing 
 her apartment." But the favorite had been taken at 
 her word. Her quarters in the chateau of Versailles 
 were thenceforward occupied by the Duke du Maine. 
 
OLD AGE OF MADAME DE MONTESPAN 211 
 
 She was never again to see the theatre of her sorry 
 triumphs. For the King her departure was a 
 deliverance. 
 
 Madame de Montespan lived by turns at the abbey 
 of Fontevrault, where her sister was abbess ; at the 
 waters of Bourbon, where she went every summer ; at 
 the chateau of Oiron, which she had purchased ; and 
 at the convent of St. Joseph, situated in Paris on the 
 site now occupied by the Ministry of War. In this 
 convent she received the most notable personages of 
 the court. The only armchair in her salon was her 
 own. " All France went there," says Saint^Simon ; 
 " she spoke to each one like a queen, and as to visits, 
 she paid none, not even to Monsieur, nor Madame, 
 nor the grand Mademoiselle, nor to the hStel Condd." 
 There was a superbly furnished chamber at the 
 ch§,teau of Oiron, and though the King never went 
 there, it was called the King's chamber. 
 
 From time to time the fallen favorite dreamed still 
 of that sceptre of the left hand which she had once 
 wielded with such an audacity of pride. She was by 
 turns ashamed and proud of being the mother of 
 legitimated children. But by slow degrees, serious 
 thoughts displaced those of vanity and spite. The 
 world was vanquished by heaven. Scandal gave 
 way to edification. The penitent arrived not only at 
 remorse but at macerations, fasts, and hair-cloths. 
 This woman, once so fastidious, so elegant, limited 
 herself to the coarsest underlinen, and wore a belt 
 and garters studded with iron points. She came at 
 
212 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 last to give all she had to the poor. For several 
 hours a day she busied herself in making coarse 
 clotMng for them. 
 
 Close by her chS.teau of Oiron she founded a hos- 
 pital of which she was rather the servant than the 
 superior. She nursed the sick herself, and dressed 
 their sores. As M. Pierre Clement has said so well 
 in the fine study he has devoted to her, the scandal 
 had been great, the defiance of moralit}-, law, and 
 the prescriptions of religion insolent and prolonged; 
 but when they proceed from so haughty a nature, 
 repentance and humility have redoubled value. By 
 her confessor's orders she resigned herself to the act 
 which cost her most; she wrote a most humbly 
 worded letter to her husband, asking his pardon and 
 offering either to return to him if he would deign to 
 receive hei-, or to go to any residence which he might 
 choose to assign for her. M. de Montespan did not 
 even answer. 
 
 According to Saint-Simon, the former favorite was 
 so tormented by the terrors of death in her latest 
 years that she hired several women whose only occu- 
 pation was to watch with her at night. " She slept 
 with her curtains open, plenty of candles in her 
 chamber, and her watchers around her, whom, every 
 time she woke, she wanted to find chatting, playing 
 cards, or eating, so as to be sure they were not 
 drowsy." I have difficulty in believing such an 
 assertion to be exact. Madame de Montespan was 
 too proud for such pusillanimity. Fear did not 
 
OLD AGE OF MADAME DE MONTESPAN 213 
 
 enter her soul. It is certain that she died with as 
 much dignity as courage, even by Saint-Simon's own 
 avowal. 
 
 In May, 1707, when she started for the baths of 
 Bourbon she was not ill, and yet she had a presenti- 
 ment that her end was approaching. Under its 
 influence she had paid all the pensions she was in the 
 habit of giving for two years in advance, and doubled 
 her customary alms. Hardly had she arrived at 
 Bourbon when she took to her bed, never again to 
 leave it. Face to face with death, she neither defied 
 nor feared it. " Father," she said to the Capuchin 
 who was assisting her at the last moments, " exhort 
 me as an ignorant person, as simply as you can." 
 After summoning all her domestics around her, she 
 asked pardon for the scandal she had given, and 
 thanked God for permitting her to die in a place 
 where she was distant from the children of her sin. 
 
 When her soul had departed, her body once so 
 beautiful, so flattered, became "the apprenticeship 
 of the surgeon of a steward from I don't know 
 where, who happened to be at Bourbon, and who 
 wanted to open it without knowing how to begin." ^ 
 There was a dispute between the priests and canons 
 when the coffin was taken to the church, where it 
 was to remain until it could be sent to Poitiers and 
 placed in a family tomb. The death of a woman 
 who for more than thirty years, from 1660 to 1691, 
 
 1 Saint-Simon, Notes sur le Journal de Dangeau. 
 
214 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 had played so great a part at court, caused no im- 
 pression there. Louis XIV. had long considered his 
 former mistress as dead to him. Dangeau contented 
 himself with writing in his journal: "Saturday, 
 May 28, 1707, at Marly: Before the King went out 
 hunting it was learned that Madame de Montespan 
 died yesterday at Bourbon, at three o'clock in the 
 morning. The King, after chasing a stag, prome- 
 naded in the gardens until night." 
 
 The Duke du Maine, the Count de Toulouse, and 
 the Duchesses of Bourbon and Chartres were for- 
 mally prohibited to wear mourning for their mother. 
 D'Autin, her only legitimate child, put on black 
 garments. But he was too good a courtier to be sad 
 when the King was not so. He received liis sover- 
 eign at Petit^Bourg a few days afterward, and in 
 one single night had an alley of chestnut trees, 
 which was not to the master's taste, removed. As to 
 Madame de Montespan, no one mentioned her name 
 again. Such is the world. It is not worth the 
 trouble of loving it. 
 
XV 
 
 THE DAUGHTERS OF LOTJIS XIV. 
 
 THE princesses was the title by which the three 
 legitimated daughtera of Louis XIV., one by 
 Mademoiselle de La Valli^re and the other two by 
 Madame de Montespan, were kno\vn at court. The 
 first of them, born in 1666, married Prince Louis 
 Armand de Conti. The second, born in 1673, 
 married the Duke de Bourbon. The third, born in 
 1677, married the Duke de Chartres -w^ho became 
 Duke of Orleans and regent of France. The Prin- 
 cess of Conti was more beautiful than Mademoiselle 
 de La Vallidre. The Duchesses of Bourbon and 
 Chartres had the wit and pride of Madame de 
 Montespan. The three princesses, who were as 
 proud of their birth as if thej' had been legitimate 
 daughters, had a great place in the heart of Louis 
 XIV. The court surrounded them with homage; 
 and although they did not play an important political 
 r61e, yet they must figure in the gallery of the women 
 of Versailles. 
 
 The birth of the future Princess of Conti was 
 veiled in mystery. Mademoiselle de La Valliere 
 
 215 
 
216 THE WOMEK OF VERSAILLES 
 
 had concealed her pregnane}'. The very night 
 before her delivery she made her appearance in the 
 royal apartment in presence of the whole court, in a 
 splendid ball dress, and with uncovered head. A 
 year later her daughter was legitimated by letters 
 patent which are a sign of the times. Concerning 
 his favorite, Louis XIV. said, in naming her Duchess: 
 " Although her modesty has frequently opposed our 
 desire to raise her sooner to a rank proportionate to 
 our esteem and her good qualities, yet the affection 
 we have for her, and justice, do not permit us to 
 defer any longer our acknowledgment of merits so 
 well known to tis, nor longer to refuse to nature the 
 effects of our tenderness for Marie Anne, our natural 
 daughter." The child was called Mademoiselle de 
 Blois. 
 
 In 1674, the year when the Duchess de La Valli^re 
 retired to a Carmelite convent, Madame de Sevign^ 
 wrote : " Mademoiselle de Blois is a masterpiece ; 
 the King and every one else is enchanted with her. 
 She is a prodigy of attractiveness and grace. She 
 has charmed the court by her beauty from her earli- 
 est infancy. People pretend that the Emperor of 
 Morocco fell madly in love with her at sight of her 
 portrait." She was fifteen years old when, in Jan- 
 uary, 1680, she married Louis Armand de Bourbon, 
 Prince de Conti, nephew of the great Cond6, who, 
 like all his family, testified the most lively joy on 
 occasion of this marriage. 
 
 The young married couple seemed delighted witli 
 
TBE DAUGUTEliS OF LOUIS XIV. 217 
 
 each other. " Their love Ls like a romance," wrote 
 Madame de S^vigne, "and the King is amused by 
 their inclination." The courtiers went to the Car- 
 melite convent^ pf the rue Saint-Jacques to pay 
 their compliments to the former Duchess de La Val- 
 lidre, now Sister Louise of Mercy, who "perfectly 
 conciliated her style and her black veil, her maternal 
 tenderness with that of a spouse of Jesus Christ." ^ 
 In this mystic asylum where, according to Bossuet's 
 expression, one is straitened on aU sides so as to 
 respire no longer except towards heaven, the pious 
 Carmelite, showing herself for the last time, seemed 
 the very image of repentance and sanctity. 
 
 Madame de S^vign6 thus describes to her daughter 
 the emotion produced by such an angel: "To my 
 eyes she still possessed all the charms we saw of old. 
 Her eyes and her glances are the same; austerity, 
 poor nourishment, and curtailed sleep have neither 
 hollowed nor weakened them. That strange habit 
 detracts nothing from her grace or good appearance. 
 She said many kind things to me, and spoke of you 
 so well and appropriately, all she said being so per- 
 fectly suitable to her that I tliink nothing could be 
 better. . . . Truly, that habit and that retreat are 
 a great dignity for her." ^ 
 
 ' The Carmelite convent, situated opposite tlie Val-de-Grace, 
 extended from tlie rue Saiut^Jacques to tlie me d'Enfer. It had 
 two entrances, one on the rue Saint-Jacques and one on tlie rue 
 d'Enfer, the latter still existing at No. 67. 
 
 2 Madame de S6vign6, Letter of December 29, 1679. 
 
 3 Madame de S6vign6, Letter of January 5, 1680. 
 
218 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 While the saintly Carmelite was expiating in the 
 cloister the birth of the Princess de Conti, the young 
 Princess was dazzling the court by her beauty, grace, 
 and spirit. Like nearly all remarkably beautiful 
 women, she was coquettish. Her husband managed 
 her badly. He surrounded her with the most fash- 
 ionable young people at the court, which naturally 
 gave occasion for scandal. In 1685 she had the 
 small-pox, and the Prince de Conti, having shut him- 
 self up with her, took the disease and died of it 
 suddenly. "What a death was that of the Prince 
 de Conti! After having escaped all the infinite 
 perils of the war in Hungary, he has just died here 
 of a malady which he scarcely had. He is the son of 
 a saintly man and a saintly woman, and in conse- 
 quence of wrongly directed thoughts, he has played 
 the fool and debauchee, and died without confes- 
 sion." 1 
 
 A widow at twenty and easily consolable, the 
 young Princess continued to be the ornament of 
 Versailles. Monseigneur, as the Dauphin was styled, 
 was continually in her apartments ; Versailles became 
 rejuvenated in this little haunt of pleasure. There 
 was nothing but " promenades, rendezvous, love let- 
 ter's, serenades, and all that was found delightful in 
 the good old times." ^ It was there that Monseign- 
 eur became acquainted with Mademoiselle Choin, 
 
 ^ Madame de Sfivigng, Letter of November 24, 1685. 
 ^ Madame de SSvignfe, Letter to Bussy. 
 
TBE DAVGHTERS OF LOUIS XIV. 219 
 
 who was maid of honor to the Princess. According 
 to Madame de Caylus, this young lady's mind was 
 not calculated to shine anywhere except in an ante- 
 chamber, and was capable of nothing better than 
 describing what she had seen. "And yet," she 
 adds in her Souvenirs, "this same Mademoiselle 
 Choin carried off from the most beautiful princess in 
 the world the heart of M. Clermont, at that time an 
 oflBcer of the guards. Monseigneur had a particu- 
 larly good opinion of him, and liad introduced him 
 to the Countess de Conti, whom he made such love to 
 that he inspired her with a rather lively inclination." 
 
 The King, haying been informed of this intrigue 
 by means of letters intercepted at the postoffice, sent 
 for his daughter, and showed her not only those she 
 had written to Clermont, but those which the latter 
 had addressed to Mademoiselle Choin. 
 
 " The Princess thought she would die," says Saint- 
 Simon. " She threw herself at the King's feet, bathed 
 them with her tears, and could hardly articulate. 
 There was nothing but sobs, pardons, despairs, rages, 
 and entreaties for justice and vengeance ; she was 
 speedily heard." Clermont and Mademoiselle Choin 
 had to leave the court and resign their appointments. 
 But Mademoiselle Choin remained the favorite of 
 Monseigneur.^ This happened in 1694. 
 
 The Princess de Conti resumed her accustomed 
 
 ' Mademoiselle Choin presided at Meudon over the little court 
 of Monseigneur, who always remained faithful to her. It is even 
 claimed that he secretly married her. 
 
220 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 dissipations and amusements : pleasui-e parties, balls, 
 hunts, cards, collations at the Trianon or the Mena- 
 gerie, night promenades in the gardens. ^Meanwhile, 
 Sister Louise of Mercy was redoubling her austeri- 
 ties. " Her natural delicacy had suffered infinitely 
 from the real severity of her corporal and spiritual 
 penitence as well as from that of a very sensitive 
 heart which she concealed as well as she could. . . . 
 She died with every mark of great sanctity in the 
 midst of nuns to whom her gentleness and her vir- 
 tues had given delight." ^ The Princess de Conti, 
 notified too late, only reached the Carmelite convent 
 of the rue Saint-Jacques in time to see her mother 
 breathe her last.^ At fijst she seemed very much 
 afflicted ; but Saint-Simon says she was quickly con- 
 soled. The whole court paid her visits of condolence. 
 The children of Madame de Montespan, who had 
 lost their mother three years before, were greatly 
 mortified by these public visits, seeing that in a par- 
 allel case they had not dared to receive any such. 
 " They were still more so," adds Saint-Simon, " when 
 they saw Madame, the Princess de Conti, contraiy to 
 all custom, drape her apartment in moiu-ning for a 
 simple nun, although she was her mothei-, — they 
 who had none, and who for that reason had not 
 dared even to wear the least sign of mourning on 
 the death of Madame de Montespan. Between the 
 
 1 Memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Sinion. 
 
 - Mademoiselle de La Vallifere died in June, 1710, after six rears 
 in the cloister. 
 
THE DAUGHTERS OF LOUIS XIV. 221 
 
 situation of the Princess de Conti and that of the 
 two other legitimated daughters of Louis XIV. there 
 existed this difference: the first was designated in 
 her letters of legitimation as the daughter of ilade- 
 moiselle de La Vallidre, while in those of the other 
 two their mother's name was not mentioned. This 
 is why Saint-Simon, distinguishing between the 
 simple and the double adultery, says that the Prin- 
 cess de Conti had a named and recognized mother, 
 while the Duchesses of Bourbon and of Chartres had 
 not. 
 
 The Duchess of Bourbon, Avho was at first called 
 Mademoiselle de Nantes, had been legitimated in the 
 year of her birth by letters patent in wliich Louis 
 XIV. without naming the mother, had contented 
 himself by alleging " the tenderness which nature 
 gave him for his children, and many other reasons 
 which considerably increased these sentiments in 
 him." The young Princess was still a little girl 
 when she married, in 1685, the Duke de Bourbon, 
 grandson of the great Cond^. 
 
 " It was a ridiculous thing," says the Marquis de 
 Souches, " to see these two marionettes marry; for the 
 Duke de Bourbon was excessively small. It was 
 feared he would remain a dwarf, and they were 
 obliged to -wait until July before Mademoiselle de 
 Nantes would be twelve yeai-s old." 
 
 Madame de Caylus says that the great Cond^ and 
 his son neglected no means of testifying their joy, as 
 they had omitted nothing to bring about this mar- 
 
222 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 riage. As she grew up, the Duchess became very 
 pretty. Saint-Simon praises "her figure formed by 
 the tenderest loves, and her mind made to enjoy 
 them to her liking, but without being dominated by 
 them." But he represents her at the same time as 
 egoistic, deceitful, and satirical. " She was," he says, 
 " the siren of the poets, she had all their charms and 
 all their perils." She loved pleasure, luxurj^ and ex- 
 travagance. Thanks to Madame de Maintenon, she 
 obtained in 1700 the payment of her debts by the King, 
 who kept her secret from her father-in-law and her 
 husband. If Saint-Simon and Madame de Cajdus are 
 to be believed, her conduct was not exemplary. She 
 may have been the mistress of the second Prince de 
 Conti,^ he who had been elected King of Poland in 
 1697, after having fought valiantly at Fleurus, Stein- 
 kerque, Nerwinde, and in Hungary, but who was 
 unable to take possession of his crown. 
 
 " The Prince de Conti," saj-s Madame de Cajdus, 
 "opened his eyes to the charms of Madame the Duch- 
 ess by dint of being told not to look at her; he loved 
 her passionately, and if, on her part, she loved any- 
 thing, it was certainly him, whatever may have hap- 
 pened since. . . . This affair was conducted with 
 such admirable prudence that they never gave any 
 one any hold over them." According to Saint-Simon, 
 the Prince de Conti was "perfectly happy with 
 
 1 Francois Louis de Bourbon, Prince de Conti. Born in 1664, 
 he had married in 1688 the sister of the Duke de Bourhon, grand- 
 daughter of the great Coudfi. 
 
THE DAUGHTERS OF LOUIS XIV. 223 
 
 ]\Iadame the Duchess, although M. the Duke was 
 very singular and strangely jealous." 
 
 The Duke died on Shrove Tuesday in the year 
 1709. " Madame ■ the Duchess, though surrounded 
 by finery, masquerading habits, and a crowd of 
 invited guests, lost none of her presence of mind. 
 With her tearful ways she extorted from the King, 
 though against his will and tardily enough, an 
 income of 30,000 livres. Then her tears dried up, 
 and her good humor returned. She received every- 
 body in state. She was on her bed, in a widow's 
 gown, bordered and lined with ermine."^ The 
 Prince de Conti died almost at the same time as the 
 Duke. " Madame the Duchess," says Saint-Simon, 
 " was the only one to whom he had not been incon- 
 stant. He would have paid her the homage of his 
 grandeur, and she Avould have shone by his lustre. 
 What disheartening memories, with no consolation 
 but Lass^ junior ! ^ For want of a better she became 
 inordinately attached to him, and the attachment has 
 lasted for thirty years. . . . She was not made for 
 tears. She wanted to forget her troubles, and to do 
 so, plunged first into amusements and then into pleas- 
 ures, even to the most extreme indelicacies, consid- 
 ering her age and condition. She -tried to drown 
 her vexations in them, and she succeeded." Saint- 
 
 1 Memoirs of Saint-Simon. 
 
 2 Lass6 Tvas a brigadier of infantry. According to Saint-Simon 
 "he became openly the master of Madame the Duchess, and the 
 director of her affairs." 
 
22-t THE WOMES OF VERSAILLES 
 
 Simon's exaggerations are to be suspected, however ; 
 he is always malevolent, and often unjust. 
 
 The suspicions of the ruthless Duke and peer con- 
 stantly hover oyer the private lives of two of the 
 daughters of Louis XIV. But he spares the third 
 one, at all events, and though he accuses her of an 
 almost Satanic pride, he insinuates nothing against 
 the purity of her morals. This Princess was at fii-st 
 styled Mademoiselle de Blois (the same name as the 
 daughter of Mademoiselle de La Valli^re). She was 
 fourteen when she was married, in 1692, to the Duke 
 de Chartres, son of Monsieur, Duke of Orleans. 
 Saint-Simon lias described the exasperation of the 
 young Prince's mother, furious at seeing her son 
 espouse a bastard : " She strode up and down, hand- 
 kerchief in hand and weeping unrestrainedly, talkiiig 
 rather loud, gesticulating, and reminding one of Ceres 
 after the abduction of Proserpine. . . . People gen- 
 erally going to await the breaking up the council and 
 the King's JMass in the gallery ,i Madame went there ; 
 her son approached her, as he did every daj-, to kiss 
 her hand. At that moment Madame gave him so 
 resounding a slap that it could be heard several paces 
 off, and which, in presence of the whole court, cov- 
 ered the poor Prince with confusion, and filled the 
 very numerous spectators, of whom I was one, -R-itli 
 prodigious astonishment." 
 
 1 The Gallery of Mirrors wliich the Kiug passed through every 
 moruing on his way to the chapel after having presided at the 
 Ministerial Council. 
 
TUE DAVGIITERS OF LOUIS XW. 225 
 
 Let us note, in passing, that in a letter to tlie 
 Rhinegrave Louise, Madame says that a rumor is 
 in circulation that she had slapped her son in the 
 face, but that it is absolutely false. The marriage 
 was celebrated with great pomp. Louis XIV. was 
 gratified to find the great lords and ladies rivalling 
 each other in magnificence. There was a great ball 
 at Versailles where the Duke of Burgundy danced 
 for the first time, and it waS the King of England 
 who gave the bridegroom his shirt. A month later, 
 March 19, 1692, the Duke du Maine, the eldest of 
 the children of Louis XIV. by Madame de Mont- 
 espan, married Mademoiselle de Charolais, daughter 
 of the Prince and granddaughter of the great Cond6. 
 The legitimated thus found themselves established 
 in the court of Versailles which they could not have 
 left without sadness, for it was the most brilliant 
 and most envied abode in Europe. 
 
 Louis XIV. who had originally said concerning 
 the offspring of adultery : " These persons must never 
 marry," caused them to make magnificent marriages. 
 Curious thing, the Duchess of Chartres naivelj'^ 
 fancied that she had honored the King's nephew by 
 marrying him. Madame wrote on this head: "My 
 son's wife thinks she did him a great honor in mar- 
 rjdng him. She says he is only the nephew of the 
 King, M'hile she is his daughter. This is to forget 
 that one is also the son of his mother. Never would 
 she comprehend that." Duclos says that people 
 jocosely compared her to Minerva who, recogniz.ing 
 
226 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 no mother, prided herself on being the daughter of 
 Jupiter. Haughty as she was, this Princess was 
 timidity itself in presence of Louis XIV. "The 
 King could make her faint with a single severe look, 
 and Madame de Maintenon, too, perhaps; at all 
 events she trembled before her, and about the most 
 ordinary things, and in public she never replied to 
 them without stammering and looking frightened. 
 I say replied, for to address the King first was be- 
 j-ond her strength." i The Duchess de Chartres was 
 none the less a woman of great intelligence, "having 
 a natural eloquence, a justness of expression, and a 
 fluency and singularity in the choice of terms which 
 always surprised one, together with that manner 
 peculiar to Madame de Montespan and her sisters 
 and which was transmitted to none but those inti- 
 mate with her or to those whom she had brought 
 up." 2 In spite of all her intelligence, the Duchess 
 was unable either to gain the attachment of her hus- 
 band or to give a good education to her daughter, 
 who married in 1710 the Duke de Berry, third son of 
 the grand Dauphin. 
 
 Saint-Simon, whose tongue is always envenomed, 
 has ill-treated no woman in his ^Memoirs so much as 
 this poor Duchess de Berry who, a widow at seven- 
 teen, died at twenty-four. If one must believe the 
 spiteful Duke and peer, she was a bad wife, a bad 
 
 1 Memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon. 
 - Idem. 
 
THE BAUGUTEHS of ZOUIS XIV. 221 
 
 daughter, and a bad Christian ; she got drunk ; she 
 mocked at religion; and she wanted La Haye, her 
 husband's equerry, to elope \Yith her. "She was a 
 prodigy of art, pride, ingratitude, and folly, and also 
 of debauchery and stubbornness." The Duchess was 
 very wrong, without any doubt ; but we incline to 
 think that Saint-Simon exaggerates. Possibl}'^ she 
 was neither better nor worse than many women of 
 her time. It is certain, at any rate, that she grieved 
 her mother, already much tormented by the rivalries 
 and dissensions of the court. 
 
 The three daughters of Louis XIV. were not 
 always on good terms with each other. There was 
 a time when their quarrels multiplied to such a 
 degree that the King threatened, if they continued, 
 to intern all three of them in their country houses. 
 The menace was effectual, and thenceforward the}- 
 disputed on the sly. Louis XIV. loved his daugh- 
 ters greatly in spite of their defects. He was at 
 the same time a just king and an affectionate 
 father. He showed a real tenderness, a solici- 
 tude, and a devotion in his treatment of them which 
 never altered. When they were ill he was grieved 
 and troubled; he would rise several times in the 
 night to go and visit them. Madame de Caylus 
 relates that the Duchess of Bourbon having been 
 seized with small-pox at Fontainebleau, Louis XIV. 
 was absolutely determined to go to see her. The 
 Prince (the great Cond^) stood at the door to pre- 
 vent him from entering. There a great struggle 
 
228 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 took place between paternal love and the zeal of a 
 courtier, a struggle " very glorious for Madame the 
 Duchess." Louis XIV. was the stronger and went 
 in, in spite of the resistance of the great Cond^. 
 Thus behaved this King who can only be treated as 
 an egotist by those who know him badly or who do 
 not know him at all. 
 
XVI 
 
 THE DUCHESS OF BURGUNDY 
 
 THE court was all agog because a little girl of 
 eleven years had just arrived iu France. This 
 child was Marie-Ad^laide, the future Duchess of Bur- 
 gundy, daughter of Victor Amadeus II., Duke of 
 Savoy. On Sunday, November 4, 1696, the town of 
 Montargis was enfite. The bells were ringing with 
 all their might. Louis XIV., leaving Fontaine- 
 bleau in the morning, had come to meet the young 
 Princess destined to espouse his grandson, and all 
 eyes were bent on the first interview between her 
 and the Sun-King. He received her as she was 
 alighting from the carriage, and said to Dangeau: 
 "Will you allow me to fill your post for to- 
 day?" (Dangeau was chevalier of honor to the 
 Princess.) 
 
 The newcomer charmed the King from the first 
 moment b}' the distinction of her manners, her native 
 prettiness, her little responses full- of grace and 
 spirit. Louis XIV. embraced her in the carriage; 
 she kissed his hand several times while ascending the 
 staircase that led to the apartment she was to occupy. 
 
 229 ' 
 
230 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 When the King returned to his chamber, Dangeau 
 took the liberty of asking him whether he were con- 
 tented with the Princess. "I am too much soj I can 
 scarcely contain my joy." Then, turning toward 
 Monsieur he added: "How I wish that his poor 
 mother could be here a few moments to witness the 
 joy we are having." He wrote afterwards to Madame 
 de Maintenon: "She let me speak iii-st, and after- 
 wards she answered me very well, but with a little 
 embarrassment that would have pleased j'ou. I led 
 her to her chamber through the crowd, letting them 
 see her from time to time by bringing the torches 
 near her face. She stood this walk and the lights 
 with grace and modesty. She has the best grace 
 and the most beautiful shape that I ever saw, dressed 
 fit to be painted and her hair also, verj'^ bright and 
 beautiful e3^es with admirable black lashes, com- 
 plexion very smooth, white and red as one could 
 wish, and a great quantity of the finest fair hair 
 that one ever saw. . . . She has failed in noth- 
 ing, and has conducted herself as you might have 
 done." 
 
 Through her mother, Marie-Adelaide was the 
 granddaughter of that beautiful Henrietta of Eng- 
 land whose life and death Jiave been immortalized 
 by Bossuet in her funeral oration. She was about 
 to revive the charm of this greatly regretted princess, 
 and her presence at Versailles renewed the joy and 
 animation of happier days. She was installed, im- 
 mediately on her arrival, in the chamber formerly 
 
THE DUCHESS OF JiURGUNDT 231 
 
 occupied by the Queen and afterwards by the Bava- 
 rian dauphiness.^ 
 
 The King made her a present of the beautiful 
 menagerie of Versailles which is opposite the Tria- 
 non palace. Never was a grandfather more tenderly 
 aflfectionate towards his granddaughter. He took 
 pains to contrive amusements and recreations for her. 
 Madame (the Princess Palatine) wrote, November 8, 
 1696: "Every one is becoming a child again. The 
 Princess d'Harcourt and Madame de Pontchartrain 
 plaj-ed at blindman's buff day before yesterday with 
 the Princess and Monsieur the Dauphin; Monsieur, 
 the Princess de Conte, Madame de^ Ventadour, my 
 two other ladies and myself played it yesterday." 
 
 Naturally, Madame de Maintenon was charged 
 with finishing the education of the little Princess. 
 The first time she took her to Saint-Cyr she had her 
 received with great ceremony. The superior com- 
 plimented her; the communitj^ in long mantles, 
 awaited her at the door of the cloister ; all the pupils 
 were ranged in double lines through which she 
 passed on her way to the church ; little girls of her 
 own age recited a dialogue tinctured with delicate 
 praise. The Princess was delighted and asked to 
 come again. Afterwards Madame de Maintenon 
 took her regularly to Saint-Cyr two or three times a 
 week, to spend the entire day and follow the lessons 
 
 ^ Koom No. 115 of the Notice du Musee de Versailles, by Eudore 
 
 Soune. 
 
232 TME WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 of the red class. There was no more etiquette. 
 Marie-Adelaide wore the same uniform as the pupils, 
 and was called Mademoiselle de Lastic. " She was 
 good, affable, gracious to everybody, occupying her- 
 self with the different affairs of the ladies, and with 
 all the works and studies of the pupils ; subjecting 
 herself frankly to all the practices of the house, even 
 to silence ; running and playing with the reds in the 
 long alleys of the garden ; going with them to choir, 
 confession, and catechism. At other times she put 
 on the habit of the ladies, and did the honors of the 
 house to some illustrious visitor, notably the Queen 
 of England."! 
 
 Louis XIV., charmed with the Princess, decided 
 that she should be married the very day she was 
 twelve years old. December 7, 1797, she espoused 
 Louis of France, Duke of Burgundy, who was fifteen 
 and a half years old. The bridegroom wore a black 
 mantle embroidered with gold, and a white doublet 
 with diamond buttons; the mantle was lined with 
 rose satin. The bride had a robe and under petticoat 
 of cloth of silver, bordered with precious stones, and 
 she wore the crown diamonds.^ Cardinal de Coislin 
 gave the young couple the nuptial benediction in 
 the chapel of Versailles. After ]Mass there was a 
 grand banquet for the royal family in the room known 
 as the ante-chamber of the Queen's apartment.^ 
 
 1 Memoires des Dames de Saint-Cyr. 
 
 '^ Letter of the Princess Palatine, December 7, 1697, 
 
 ^ Room No. 117 of the Notice du Mztsee. 
 
THE DUCHESS OF BURGUNDY 233 
 
 In the evening the court assembled in the Salon of 
 Peace ^ to witness the fireworks set off at the end of 
 the Swiss lake, and then to take supper served, like 
 the banquet, in the ante-chamber of the Queen's apart- 
 ment. After supper they passed on into the sleep- 
 ing chamber of the Duchess,^ where there was a bed 
 of green velvet embroidered with gold and silver, 
 which was blessed by Cardinal de Coislin. A 
 moment later, the King sent all the men out of the 
 room. The Duke of Burgundy disrobed before the 
 ladies, and the Queen of England handed him his 
 shirt. As soon as the couple had been put to bed, 
 Louis XIV. summoned the ambassador of Savoy and 
 showed him that they were lying down. The am- 
 bassador immediately sent a gentleman to carry this 
 news to Victor Amadeus. 
 
 Nevertheless, this marriage, concluded amidst so 
 many splendors, was as yet merely for form's sake, 
 seeing that the pair were so extremely youthful. 
 The King would not permit his grandson to kiss 
 even the tip of the Duchess's finger until they should 
 actually come together. Hence the young Duke 
 arose again at the end of fifteen minutes, dressed 
 himself in the chamber and returned to his own room 
 through the hall of the guards. 
 
 There was a grand ball in the Gallery of Miri'ors, 
 December 11. . The pyramids of candles glittered even 
 
 1 Boom No. 114 of the Notice du Miisee. 
 
 2 Koom No. 115 of the Notice du Musee. 
 
234 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 more than the lustres and girandoles. Louis XIV. 
 had said he would be pleased to have the court display 
 great luxury, and himself, though for a long while 
 he had worn none but very simple costumes, had put 
 on a superb one. It was who should surpass the 
 others in richness and invention. There was hardly 
 silver and gold enough to be had. The King, who 
 had encouraged all these expenses, said notwith- 
 standing, that he could not understand how husbands 
 could be foolish enough to let themselres be ruined 
 by their wives' dresses. 
 
 Two days after the marriage the Duchess wanted 
 to show hei-self in state di-ess to her friends at Saint- 
 Cyr. She was all in white, and her robe was so 
 heavily embroidered with silver that she could hardly 
 bear the weight of it. The community received the 
 Princess in great pomp and conducted her to the 
 church, where hymns were chanted. 
 
 The separation of the young spouses lasted for two 
 years after the ceremony of their marriage, and, 
 according to Dangeau's journal, did not end until 
 toward the close of 1699. Until then the Duke 
 of Burgundy came to see the Duchess every day. 
 They were even allowed to chat together, but there 
 were always ladies in the room during their inter- 
 views. 
 
 The amiable Princess is now one of the most at- 
 tractive of women. Without her all would wither at 
 this court, which would resemble a magnificent con- 
 vent. The flowers would be less fair, the fields less 
 
THE DUCHESS OF BUBGUNDT 235 
 
 gay, the streams less clear. Thanks to her seduc- 
 tive charm everything revives, all lights up under the 
 rays of a venial sun. She loves Louis XIV. sin- 
 cerely. One cannot approach this exceptional man, 
 for whom the word prestige would have to be in- 
 vented if it did not exist, and who is as affectionate, 
 good, and affable as he is majestic and imposing. 
 The admiration professed for him by the young Prin- 
 cess is sincere. Grateful and flattered by the kind- 
 ness he shows her, she venerates him as the most 
 glorious representative of divine right, and while 
 she venerates she amuses him. She flings her arms 
 about his neck at any time, she sits down on his 
 knees, she diverts him by every sort of badinage, she 
 looks at his papers, she opens and reads his letters in 
 his presence. A continual succession of pleasure 
 parties and entertainments goes on. Followed by a 
 train of women of twentj', the Princess loves to sail 
 in a gondola on the grand canal of the Park of Ver- 
 sailles, and to remain there several hours of the night, 
 sometimes until sunrise. Hunts, collations, come- 
 dies, serenades, illuminations, sailing parties, fire- 
 works, every day a new diversion is organized. 
 
 The King wishes that the Duchess of Burgundy 
 should please herself in this court of which she is the 
 ornament and the hope. She must smooth out the 
 Avrinkles of the monarch, who is weary of fame and 
 pleasures. She must be the good genius, the en- 
 chantress of Versailles. The mirrors of the great 
 gallery must reflect her splendid toilets, her dazzling 
 
236 THE WOMEN OF VEUSAILLES 
 
 ornaments. She must appear in the gardens like an 
 Armida, in the forests like a nymph, on the water 
 like a siren. 
 
 In the hall of the Queen's guards ^ there may be 
 seen at present a full length portrait of the Princess. 
 She is standing, dressed in a robe of cloth of silver, 
 and holds in her left hand a bouquet of orange flowers. 
 A woman in Polish costume is holding up the train 
 of her lilied mantle. In front of her a cupid is hold- 
 ing a cushion on which flowers are lying. At the 
 back of the picture one sees a garden and a pedestal 
 on which is the signature of the painter: Santerre, 
 1709. What the artist has done so well with his 
 brush Saint-Simon has done still better with his pen. 
 The sarcastic Duke and peer becomes an enthusiastic 
 admirer, a poet, when he describes the charms of the 
 Princess : her eyes the most beautiful and speaking in 
 the world, her gallant, gracious, majestic pose of the 
 head, her expressive smile, her gait like that of a 
 goddess on the clouds. He admires her moral quali- 
 ties no less, even while iinding defects in her. It 
 pleases him to recognize that she is sweet, accessi- 
 ble, candid, though with due reserve, compassionate, 
 grieved to cause the least sadness, full of considera- 
 tion for all who come near her, gracious to those 
 about her, kind to her domestics, friendly to her 
 ladies, and the soul of the court which adores her ; 
 "all is lacking to every one in her absence, all is 
 
 1 Boom No. 118 of the Xotice du Musee. 
 
THE DUCHESS OF BURGUNDY 237 
 
 replenished by her presence, her extreme kindness 
 makes her infinitely depended on, and her manners 
 attach all hearts." 
 
 Nevertheless calumny does not spare her. People 
 accuse her in a whisper with certain inconsistencies 
 which malice bruits about and exaggerates. They 
 go so far as to pretend that two lovers, MM. de Mau- 
 levrier and de Nangis are extremely well treated 
 by her. They wish to discover serious faults in 
 what is nothing but the desire to please, nattiral to 
 all pretty women. Madame de Caylus says concern- 
 ing the passion attributed to the Duchess for M. de 
 Nangis : " I am convinced that this intrigue was car- 
 ried on by looks, or at most by letters. I am per- 
 suaded of this for two reasons, one that Madame the 
 Dauphiness was too well guarded, and the other that 
 Nangis was too much in love with another woman 
 who watched him closely, and who has said to me 
 that at the times when he was suspected of being 
 with Madame the Dauphiness she was very sure that 
 he was not, because he was with her. It was much 
 rather a gallantry than a passion." Surrounded by 
 a court of ^vitty, gossiping, and often light young 
 women, the Duchess of Burgundy must more than 
 once have been attacked by malevolent insinuations 
 and the little perfidies, which the jealousy inherent 
 in the feminine character allows itself against prin- 
 cesses as well as against private persons. The 
 Duchess understood it perfectly and was moved and 
 afflicted by it. 
 
238 TUJS WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 Other causes for sadness threw their shadows over 
 an existence apparently so fair and joyous. Victor 
 Amadeus had quarrelled with France, and the house 
 of Savoy was incurring the greatest dangers. The 
 Duchess of Burgundy was obliged to conceal her sen- 
 timents for her former country in the depths of her 
 heart, but the more necessary it was to hide them the 
 more vivacious they became. What a grief to know 
 that her pregnant mother, her infirm grandmother, 
 her sick brothers, and the Duke, her father, were 
 wandering on the Piedmont road, threatened -with 
 utter ruin. June 21, 1706, she wrote to her grand- 
 mother,^ the widow of Charles Emmanuel : " Judge 
 what is m}- anxiety about all that is happening to 
 you, loving you so tenderly, and having all the affec- 
 tion possible for my father, my mother, and my 
 brothers. I cannot see them in such an unfortunate 
 condition without having tears in mj ej-es. ... I 
 am in a sadness which no amusement can diminish, 
 and which will not depart, my dear grandmother, 
 until yotir sorrows do. . . . Send me news of all 
 that is dearest to me in the world." ^ 
 
 The Duchess of Burgundy suffered simultaneouslj'- 
 
 ^ Ifarie-Jeanne-Bairtiste, called Madame Eo3-ale, daughter of 
 Charles. Amadeus of Savoy and Elizaheth of Vendome, espoused 
 in 106-5 the Duke of Savoy, Charles Emmanuel II., father of Victor 
 Amadeus II. 
 
 - See the interesting correspondence of the Duchess of Bur- 
 gundy and her sister the Queen of Spain, wife of Philip V., pub- 
 lished, with a very good preface, by JIadame the Countess Delia 
 Eocca. 
 
THE DUCHESS OF BURGUNDY 239 
 
 from the disasters of both her countries, Savoy and 
 France. " Make us some saints to obtain peace for 
 us," said Madame de Maintenon to the inmates of 
 Saint-Cyr. The Duchess, as Labeaumelle remarks, 
 exhibited in the perilous circumstances of the coun- 
 try " the dignity of the first woman of the State, the 
 sentiments of a Roman matron for Rome, and the 
 agitations of a soul which desired the good with an 
 ardor beyond her age." 
 
 The hour of great sorrows had arrived. As M. 
 Capefigue has said so well : " The difficult time for 
 a powerful and fortunate King is old age. Though 
 the head remain firm, the arms grow feeble, gar- 
 lands wither, even laurels take a grayish tint. Peo- 
 ple respect you still, but they do not love you any 
 more; cocked hats vdth waving plumes bring out 
 the wrinkles of the face and the lines of the fore- 
 head; the gold-headed cane is no longer a sort of 
 sceptre, but a staff which sustains the feeble legs and 
 the stooping body." For the Duchess of Burgundy 
 the aging Louis XIV. preserved all his prestige. 
 She loved him sincerely. " The public," says Ma- 
 dame de Caylus, " has difiiculty in comprehending 
 that princes act simply and naturally, because they 
 do not see them near enough at hand to judge, and 
 because the marvellous that they are always seeking is 
 never found in simple conduct and orderly senti- 
 ments. Hence they vsdsh to believe that the Duchess 
 lesembled her father, and that at the age of eleven, 
 when she came to France, she was as crafty and 
 
240 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 politic as he was, and affected for the King and 
 Madame de Maintenon a tenderness she did not 
 possess. I, who have had the honor of seeing her 
 very near, judge otherwise. I have seen her weep- 
 ing in such good faith over the great age of these 
 two persons, who she thought must die before her, 
 that I cannot doubt her tenderness for the King." 
 
 Louis XIV., who knew the human heart, perceived 
 with his usual perspicacity that the Duchess of Bur- 
 gundy had a sincere affection for him. It was on 
 that account that he displayed an exceptional attach- 
 ment for her. Like a rose blooming in a cemetery, 
 the young and enchanting Princess charmed and con- 
 soled the sorrowful yeai-s of the great King. It was 
 the last smile of fortune, the last ray of sunlight. 
 But alas ! the fair rose was to bloom but a day, and 
 yet a little longer and all would be enshrouded in 
 gloom. 
 
 Since 1711, when Monseigneur died, the Duke of 
 Burgundy had been Dauphin, and Saint-Simon re- 
 ports that the Duchess said, in speaking of the ladies 
 who criticised her : " They will have to reckon Avith 
 me, and I will be their queen." " Alas ! " he adds, 
 "she believed it, the charming Princess, and who 
 would not have believed it with her?" And yet, 
 according to the Princess Palatine, she was convinced 
 that her end was near. Madame thus expresses her- 
 self : " A learned astrologer of Turin, ha-sdng drawn 
 the horoscope of JNIadame the Dauphiness, had pre- 
 dicted to her all that would happen to her, and that 
 
THE DUCHESS OF BUUGVNDT 241 
 
 she would die in her twenty-seventh year. She often 
 spoke of it. One day she said to her husband : ' See, 
 the time is coming when I must die. You cannot 
 remain without a wife on account of j-our rank and 
 your devotion. Tell me, I entreat you, whom you 
 Avill marry? ' He answered : ' I hope God will never 
 punish me enough to let me see you die ; and if this 
 misfortune must befall me, I shall never remarry, 
 for I should follow you to the grave in eight days. 
 . . .' Wliile the Daujphiness was still in good health, 
 fresh and gay, she often said : ' Well, I must rejoice, 
 because I cannot rejoice long, for I shall die this 
 year.' I thought it was a pleasantry ; but the thing 
 was only too real. When she fell ill she said she 
 would not recover." 
 
 The nearer the Dauphiness approached the fatal 
 time the better she grew. One might have thought 
 she wanted to deepen the grief that would be caused 
 by her premature death. The Princess Palatine, 
 ordinarily so malevolent, so sarcastic, avows it her- 
 self: "Ha-\dng," says she, "enough intelligence to 
 note her faults, the Dauphiness could not do other 
 than try to correct them ; this, in fact, is what she 
 did, and to such a point as to excite general astonish- 
 ment. She continued thus to the end." 
 
 Madame the Viscountess de Noailles ^ has said in 
 
 1 Lettres inedites de la Duehesse de Botirgogne, preceded by a 
 short notice of lier life by Madame tlie Viscountess de Xoailles. 
 A volume of fifty pages of wliicli only a small number of copies bas 
 been printed. 
 
242 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 the most toucliing way : " From time to time history 
 offers us attractive personages who move the reader 
 even to affection. . . . Providence frequently with- 
 draws them from the world in their youth, still 
 adorned with the charms which time removes, and the 
 hopes which it might have realized. The Duchess of 
 Burgundy was one of these graceful apparitions." 
 
 Attacked with a terrible malady which was, it 
 appears, the measles, but which was attributed to 
 poison, the Duchess was taken away in a few days 
 from the King of whom she was the consolation, the 
 husband w]ao idolized her, the court whose ornament 
 she was, and France of which she was the hope. She 
 died with equal dignity and courage in the most 
 religious sentiments. 
 
 It was in her bedroom at Versailles,^ on Friday, 
 February 12, 1712, between eight and nine in the 
 evening, that she breathed her last. Almost exactly 
 two years before, in the same room, she had brought 
 into the world the prince who was to be called Louis 
 XV.2 Her husband's grief was such that he could 
 not survive a wife so beloved. Six As\.ys afterward 
 he followed her to the tomb. " France," cries Saint- 
 Simon, "fell at last beneath this final chastisement. 
 God had shown her a prince whom she did not 
 deserve. The earth was not worthy of him ; he died 
 ripe already for a blissful eternity." The very day 
 
 1 Room No. 115 of the Notice du Miisee. 
 - Louis XV. was bom February 5, 1710. 
 
THE DUCHESS OF BURGUNDY 243 
 
 of the Duke of Burgundy's death Madame wrote: 
 "I am so overwhehiied that I cannot recover; I 
 scarcely know what I am saying. You who have a 
 good heart will certainly pity us, for the sadness that 
 prevails here cannot be described." 
 
 Saint-Simon pretends that the sorrow caused Louis 
 XIV. by the death of the Duchess of Burgundy " was 
 the only real one he ever had in his life." This is not 
 exact. The great King had profoundly regretted his 
 mother, and Madame (the Princess Palatine) thus 
 expresses herself concerning the grief that over- 
 whelmed him in the death of his only son, the grand 
 Dauphin: "I saw the King yesterday at eleven 
 o'clock ; he is a prey to such affliction that he would 
 soften a rock ; he does not fret, however, he speaks 
 to everyone with a resigned sadness, and gives his 
 orders with great firmness, but the tears come into 
 his eyes every moment, and he stifles his sobs." ^ 
 Such was the man whom superficial minds character- 
 ize as egoistic and insensitive. 
 
 On February 22, 1712, the bodies of the Duchess 
 and the Duke of Burgundy were borne from Ver- 
 sailles to Saint-Denis on a single bier. The Dau- 
 phin, their eldest son, died the following March 8. 
 He was five years and some montlis old. Thus the 
 father, the mother, and the eldest son disappeared 
 within twenty-foul- days. Three dauphins had died 
 in a single year. 
 
 1 Letter of April 16, 1711. 
 
244 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 These events, so horrible in themselves, were made 
 still more so by the widely prevalent false idea that 
 these premature deaths were the result of poison. 
 The Duke of Orleans was most perfidiously and 
 unjustly accused of being the author of these crimes, 
 and efforts were made to induce Louis XIV. to enter- 
 tain this abominable suspicion. With the Duchess 
 of Burgundy "were eclipsed joy, pleasures, amuse- 
 ments even, and every sort of favors. ... If the 
 couft existed after her, it was only to languish." ^ 
 
 And yet, under the weight of so many trials the 
 great soul of Louis XIV. was not enfeebled. 
 " Amidst the lugubrious debris of his august house, 
 Louis remains firm in the faith. God had breathed 
 upon his numerous posterity, and in an instant it was 
 effaced like characters written on the sand. Of all 
 the princes who had surrounded him, and who formed 
 as it were the rays and the glory of his crown, there 
 remained but one feeble spark even then on the point 
 of being extinguished. He adores Him who dis- 
 poses of crowns and sceptres, and perhaps he sees in 
 these domestic losses the mercy which is completing 
 the effacement from the book of the Lord's justice 
 the traces of his former guilty passions. "^ 
 
 All France was in despair. " This time of deso- 
 lation," says Voltaire, "left so profound an impres- 
 sion in heai-ts that, during the minority of Louis XV. 
 
 1 Memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon. 
 
 ^ Massillon, Orasioii fxinebre de Louis le Grand. 
 
THE DUCHESS OF BURGUNDY 245 
 
 I have seen many persons who could not speak of 
 these losses without shedding tears." ^ 
 
 M. Michelet, who cannot be accused of exaggerated 
 admiration for the. great century, is himself affected 
 while relating the death of the charming Duchess 
 of Burgundy. "The court," he says, "was literally 
 as if stunned by the blow. One still weeps, a hun- 
 dred and fifty years afterward, in reading the heart- 
 rending pages in wliich Saint-Simon records his 
 grief." 2 
 
 Duclos has claimed, without indicating the source 
 whence he obtained his information, that on the 
 death of the Duchess of Burgundy, Madame de 
 Maintenon and the King found in a casket that had 
 belonged to the Princess, papei-s which extorted from 
 the King the exclamation: "The little rogue be- 
 trayed us." From such a speech, so unlikely from 
 the mouth of Louis XIV., Duclos infers a corre- 
 spondence in which the daughter of Victor Amadeus 
 had surrendered State secrets to him. This we 
 believe to be one of those numerous hearsays, from 
 which history is too often written. The archives of 
 Turin have preserved no trace of tliis pretended 
 correspondence, which is neither true nor probable. 
 Assuredly the Duchess of Burgundy did not forget 
 her native land. But after bidding adieu to Savoy, 
 she had no longer any country but France. 
 
 1 Voltaire, Siecle de Louis XIV. 
 
 2 Michelet, Louis XIV. et le due de Bourgogne. 
 
246 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 Doubtless, Italy may count among the fairest 
 pearls of her casket those two intelligent and allur- 
 ing sisters who both died so prematurely and left 
 behind them so touching a remembrance : the Duch- 
 ess of Burgundy and her sister the Queen of Spain, 
 the valiant consort of Pliilip V. But the greater 
 part of the Duchess of Burgundy's destiny was ful- 
 filled in France, and her portrait must figure in the 
 chateau of Versailles. 
 
 How many times in 1871, when the Ministry of 
 Foreign Affairs was, so to say, encamped in the midst 
 of the Queen's apartments, did we evoke the souvenir 
 of the charming Princess in this chamber where she 
 slept from the time of her arrival at Versailles, and 
 where, sixteen years and a half later, she breathed 
 her last sigh ! It was there that at eleven years of 
 age, torn forever from her family, her friends, her 
 country, she found herself alone among the splen- 
 dors of a strange palace. 'Twas there the child 
 grew, became a young girl, and then a young woman, 
 increasing daily in graces and attractions. There, 
 in the silence of the night she thought she beheld 
 the brilliant phantoms of the world, the seductive 
 images against which, perhaps, her reason battled 
 with her heart. There she recalled, to aid her 
 in resisting the temptations of an ardent soul, the 
 austere instructions of Madame de Maintenon, who 
 had written to her : " Have a horror of sin. Vice is 
 full of evils and afflictions, even in this world. 
 There is no joy, no repose, no true delight, but in 
 
THE DUCHESS OF BURGUNDY 247 
 
 serving God." It was there that she beheld death 
 coining, and welcomed its approach with a noble and 
 religious courage. Poor Princess ! Even in presence 
 of her dead body- disputes over etiquette went on. 
 "Four bishops sitting in rochet and caraail at the 
 right side of the bed relieved each other like the 
 ladies, when notified by the agents of the clergy. 
 They claimed chairs with backs, kneeling cushions, 
 and a holy water sprinkler. The first two Avere 
 refused them; they had nothing but folding stools, 
 and no cushions. They made such an outcry that 
 they got the sprinkler." 
 
 Strictly speaking, history is nothing but a long 
 funeral sermon. The more closely it is studied, the 
 more it is seen to be full of tears. The view of a 
 palace is as fruitful in lessons as that of a cemetery, 
 and the chateau of Versailles, when one is surrounded 
 there by the illustrious shades that have occupied it, 
 suddenly assumes the aspect of an immense cata- 
 falque. The gildings are veiled with crape. One 
 fancies that the fountains are weeping, and the sun 
 of the great King is hidden behind a heavy cloud. 
 Death is in every chamber, it stands at every door to 
 make its dismal voice listened to, and to repeat the 
 great saying : Vanity, all is vanity. 
 
CONCLUSION 
 
 THE TOJIBS 
 
 IT is the most melancholy of all spectacles to re- 
 behold, in the trappings of sadness and death, 
 the places which were once the theatre of splendors 
 or of fStes. While listening to the prayers of the 
 dying succeed the flare of trumpets and joyous orches- 
 tral harmonies, one reflects painfull}- on the things of 
 earth, and comprehends the inanity of glory, riches, 
 aad pleasure. The courtiers of Louis XIV. had to 
 endure tliis impression when " this monarch of happi- 
 ness, of majesty, of apotheosis,'' as Saint-Simon saj^s, 
 was about to breathe his last. The incomparable 
 Gallery of Mirrors was no^v merely tha vestibule of 
 a death chamber. The triumphant paintings of 
 Lebrun seemed darkened. The place of transports 
 had changed its aspect; the modern Olympus was 
 vanishing before the great Christian idea, and this 
 King, " the terror of his neighbors, the astonishment 
 of the universe, the father of kings, grander than 
 all his ancestors, more magnificent than Solomon," ^ 
 
 1 Massillon, Oraison funebre de Louis le Grand. 
 248 
 
THE TOMBS 249 
 
 seemed to be saying with the Preacher: "I have sur- 
 passed in glory and in wisdom all those who have 
 preceded me in Jerusalem, and I have recognized 
 that even in this there was nothing but vanity and 
 affliction of spirit." 
 
 During the last illness of him who had been the 
 Sun-King, the court remained all day long in the 
 Gallery of Mirrors. No one stopped in the OEil-de- 
 Boeuf except the domestic servants and the physi- 
 cians. As to Madame de Maintenon, in spite of her 
 eighty years and her infirmities, she nursed the august 
 invalid with great devotion, and often remained beside 
 his bed for fourteen hours together. "The King 
 bade me adieu three times," she related afterwards to 
 the ladies of Saint^Cyr ; " the first time, he said he had 
 no regret but that of leaving me, but that we should 
 soon see each other again ; I begged him to think no 
 longer of anything but God. The second, he asked 
 me to pardon him for not having lived well enough 
 with me ; he added that he had not made me happy, 
 but that he had always loved and esteemed me 
 equally. He was weeping, and he asked if any one 
 Avere present. I told him no ; then he said : ' Even 
 though they should hear me crying with you, no one 
 would be surprised.' I went away so as not to do 
 him any harm. The third time he said to me: 
 ' What is going to become of you, for you have noth- 
 ing?' I answered him: 'I am a nonentity; do not 
 think of anything but God,' and I left him." 
 
 Louis XIV. deserved the name of Great uiitil his 
 
250 THE WOMEN OF VEBSAILLES 
 
 latest breath. He died still better than he had lived. 
 All that was elevated, majestic, grandiose in this 
 chosen soul is summed up in the final moment. His 
 death is that of a king, a hero, and a saint. Like the 
 first Christians, he made a sort of public confession ; 
 he said, August 26, 1715, to those vrho were admitted 
 to his presence : " Gentlemen, I ask your pardon for 
 the bad examples I have given you. I have to thank 
 you much for the way in which you have served me, 
 and the attachment and fidelity you have always 
 shown for me. ... I see that I am affected, and 
 that I am affecting you also ; I beg your pardon for 
 it. Adieu, gentlemen ; I rely upon your remember- 
 ing me sometimes." He gave his blessing the same 
 day to the little Dauphin, and addressed him in these 
 beautiful words : " My dear child, you are going to 
 be the greatest king of the world. Never forget your 
 obligations to God. Do not imitate me in wars ; try 
 always to preserve peace with your neighbors, and to 
 assist your people as much as you can, which I have 
 had the misfortune not to be able to do on account 
 of the necessities of the State. Alwaj^s follow wise 
 counsels, and remember well that it is to God you 
 owe all that you are. I give you Pdre LeteUier for 
 confessor; follow his advice, and always remember 
 the obligations which you owe to IMadame de Ven- 
 tadour." i 
 
 1 M.Lc'Eoi, in his work entitled CiiriosUeshistonqiies,has^TOYedi 
 that these were the exact terms employed bj- Louis XIV. in his 
 address to Louis XV. 
 
THE TOMBS 251 
 
 During the night of August 27-28, the dying 
 man was seen joining his hands at eveiy moment; 
 he said his customary prayers, and at the Confiteor he 
 smote his breast. . In the morning of the 28th he 
 saw in the mirror on his chimney piece two domes- 
 tics who were shedding tears. " Wliy are you weep- 
 ing?" he said to them; "did you think I was im- 
 mortal ? " An elixir intended to restore him to life 
 was handed him. " To life or to death ! " he an- 
 swered, taking the glass; "all that pleases God." 
 His confessor asked if he suffered much. " Eh ! 
 no," he replied, " that is what displeases me ; I would 
 like to suffer more in expiation of my sins." In 
 giving his orders, August 29, he happened to speak 
 of the Dauphin as the young king. And as he 
 observed the movement it caused in those around 
 him: "Eh! why?" he exclaimed, "that gives me 
 no pain." This is what made Massillon say : " This 
 monarch environed by such glory, and who saw 
 around him so many objects capable of arousing his 
 desires or his tenderness, cast not even one regretful 
 glance on life. How grand is man when he is so 
 through faith ! . . . Vanity has never had more than 
 the mask of grandeur; it is grace which is the realitj-." 
 During the daytime of August 29, the dying man 
 lost consciousness, and it was thought he had but a 
 few more hours to live. " You are no longer neces- 
 sary to him," said his confessor to Madame de Main- 
 tenon ; " you can go awa}'." Marshal de Villeroy 
 exhorted her not to remain any longer, and to go to 
 
252 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 Saint-Cyr, where she could rest after so much emo- 
 tion. He posted the King's guards along the road 
 and lent her his carriage. " Some popular commo- 
 tion may be feared," said he, "and possibly the road 
 may not be safe." ^Madame de Maintenon, enfeebled, 
 disturbed by age and sorrow, made the mistake of 
 listening to such pusillanimous counsels. Posterity 
 will always reproach her with a weakness unworthy 
 of this woman of intelligence and feeling. There 
 are positions which oblige. Madame de Maintenon 
 ought to have closed the eyes of the great King, 
 and prayed beside his corpse. The courtiers, who 
 prescribed the resolutions of egoism and fear, are 
 chiefly to be blamed. Ah ! how they are abandoned, 
 " the gods of flesh and blood, the gods of clay and 
 dust," when they are going down to the grave. A 
 few domestics alone lament them. The crowd is 
 indifferent, or it rejoices. The courtiers turn toward 
 the rising sun. Alas ! what a contrast between the 
 throne and the coffin ! The death of a man is 
 always a subject for philosophic reflections. What 
 is it then, when he who dies has caUed himself 
 Louis XIV. 
 
 August 30, the dj-iug man returned to conscious- 
 ness and asked for INIadame de Maintenon. She was 
 sent for to Saint-Cyr. She came back. The King 
 recognized her, said a few more words, and then 
 drowsed. In the evening she descended the marble 
 staircase which she was never to ascend again, and 
 went to Saint-Cyr to shut herself up forever. 
 
THE TOMBS 253 
 
 On Saturday, August 31, towards eleven o'clock 
 in the evening, the prayers for the dying were said 
 for Louis XIV. He recited them himself in a 
 louder voice than any of the spectators ; and seemed 
 still more majestic on his deathbed than on his 
 tlii'one. When the prayers were ended he recog- 
 nized Cardinal de Rohan and said to him : " These 
 are the last graces of the Church." Several times 
 he repeated: '■'■Nunc et in hora mortis. Now and at 
 the hour of our death." Then he said: "O God, 
 come unto mine aid ; O Lord, make haste to help me." 
 These were his last words. The agony was begin- 
 ning. It lasted all night, and on Sunday, Septem- 
 ber 1, 1715, at a quarter past eight in the morning, 
 Louis XIV., aged seventy-seven years lacking three 
 days, during sixty-two of which he had been king, 
 yielded his great soul to God. 
 
 One does not terminate the study of a memorable 
 epoch without a sentiment of regret. After having 
 lived for some time by the life of a celebrated per- 
 sonage, one suffers from his death, and is affected at 
 his tomb. When reading Saint-Simon, does not one 
 seem present at the death agony of Louis XIV., and 
 feel the tears welling into his eyes as if he were 
 mingling with the loyal servitors who are weeping 
 for the best of masters and the greatest of kings ? 
 
 As soon as the tidings of the death of Louis XIV. 
 reached Saint-Cyr, IMademoiselle d'Aumale entered 
 Madame de Maintenon's chamber. " Madame," said' 
 
254 TBE WOMEN OF VEBSAILLES 
 
 she, "the Avhole house is at prayer, in the choir." 
 Madame de Maintenon understood, she raised her 
 hands to heaven, weeping, and then repaired to the 
 church, where she was present at the office for the 
 dead. Then she dismissed her servants, and got rid 
 of her carriage, " unahle," as she said, " to reconcile 
 herself to feeding horses while so many young girls 
 were in need." She lived in her modest apartment in 
 profound peace. She submitted to the regulations 
 of the house as far as her age permitted, and never 
 went out except to go to the village to visit the 
 sick and the poor. When Peter the Great went to 
 Saint-Cyr, June 10, 1717, the illustrious octogenarian 
 was suffering. The Czar sat down beside the bed of 
 this woman whose name he had heard so often. He 
 asked her, through an interpreter, if she were ill. 
 She answered Yes. He wanted to know what her 
 malady was. " A great old age," she replied. 
 
 Madame de Maintenon died at Saint-Cyi-, August 
 15, 1719. For two days she remained exposed on 
 her bed " with an air so sweet and so devout, that 
 one would have said she was praj-ing to God." ^ She 
 was buried in the choir of the church. A modest 
 slab of marble indicates the spot" where her body 
 reposes. It was there the novices went to weep 
 and pray before dedicating themselves forever to 
 the Lord. 
 
 Now that we have quitted Versailles, let us go 
 
 1 Memoires des dames de Saint-Cyr. 
 
THE TOMBS 255 
 
 down into the crypts where lie these beautiful hero- 
 ines, these famous women whose gracious figures we 
 have endeavored to evoke. Mademoiselle de La 
 ValliSre rests at Paris in the Carmelite church of 
 the rue Saint-Jacques; Queen Marie Th^rese, the 
 two Duchesses of Orleans, the Bavarian dauphiness, 
 and the Duchess of Burgundy at Saint-Denis. There 
 they sleep their slumber, in those gloomy abodes 
 where, as Bossuet says, the ranks are so crowded, so 
 prompt is death to fill the places. There one should 
 go to meditate, there to draw the conclusions from 
 histories which have their lessons, there to listen 
 to the great Christian maxim: Menunto homo quia 
 pvlvis es, et in pulverim reverteris. 
 
 Bossuet says in speaking of the Pharaohs, that they 
 did not even possess their sepulchres. Such was also 
 the destiny of Louis XIV. This potentate who had 
 given laws to Europe, did not even possess his tomb. 
 The profaners of graves descended into the subterra- 
 nean abode of " annihilated princes," and in spite of 
 their rear-guard of eight centuries of kings, as Cha- 
 teaubriand says, the great shade of Louis XIV. could 
 not defend the majesty of sepulchres which all the 
 world had deemed inviolable. 
 
 During the session of July 21, 1794, Ban-^re read 
 to the Convention, in the name of the Committee of 
 Public Safety, a long report in which he demanded, 
 that in order to celebrate the anniversary of August 
 Tenth, the mausoleums of Saint-Denis should be 
 destroyed. " Under the monarchy," said he, " even 
 
256 THE WOMEN OF VEIiSAILLES 
 
 tombs had learned to flatter kings ; royal pomp and 
 pride could not be lessened on this theatre of death, 
 and the sceptre bearers who have caused so many 
 woes to France and to humanity seem still, even 
 in the grave, to jaride themselves on a vanished 
 grandeur. The powerful hand of the Republic 
 should pitilesslj' efface these mausoleums which 
 recall the frightful memory of kings." The Con- 
 vention carried by acclamation a decree conformable 
 to this report. Considering that " the country was 
 in danger and lacked cannons wherewith to defend 
 itself," it decided that "the tombs of the former 
 kings should be destroyed on the ensuing 10th of 
 August." It appointed commissioners empowered to 
 . go to Saint-Denis for the purpose of proceeding " to 
 the exhuming of the former kings and queens, 
 princes and princesses," and decreed the breaking of 
 the coffins in order to melt the lead, and send it to 
 the national foundries. 
 
 This odious decree was strictl}'- executed.^ Kings, 
 queens, princes, and princesses were torn from their 
 sepulchres. The lead was carried, iis fast as it was 
 found, to a cemeterj- in which a foundry had been 
 established, and the corpses were cast into the com- 
 mon grave. The vandalism of the revolutionists and 
 the atheists took delight in this spectacle. Assuredly, 
 as Chateaubriand Avrites, "God, in the effusion of 
 
 1 See the interesting work of M. George d'Heylli, Les Tomhes 
 royales de Saint-Denis. 
 
THE TOMBS 257 
 
 His wrath, had sworn by Himself to punish France. 
 Seek not on earth the causes of such events; they 
 are higher than that." 
 
 A few weeks later came the turn of Madame de 
 Maintenon's dead body. In January, 1794, while 
 the church of Saint-Cyr was being transformed into 
 hospital wards, the workmen perceived a slab of 
 black marble amidst the debris of the devastated 
 choir. It was the tomb of j\Iadame de Maintenon. 
 They broke it, opened the vault, and taking out the 
 body, dragged it into the court with dreadful yells 
 and threw it, stripped and mutilated, into a hole in 
 the cemetery. On that day the unrecognized spouse 
 of Louis XIV. was treated like a queen! 
 
 Thus then, these illustrious heroines of Versailles, 
 the good j\Iarie Th^rSse, the clever Maintenon, the 
 melancholj- Bavarian dauphiness, the haughty Prin- 
 cess Palatine, the alluring Duchess of Burgundy, 
 were dispossessed of their tombs. Listening to the 
 tale of such iconoclastic and sacrilegious rage, the 
 heart contracts and feels the anguish of an inexpres- 
 sible sadness. A sentiment of holy wrath against 
 such odious profanations and savage furies blends 
 with profound reflections on the nothingness of 
 human things, ilore eloquent, more terrible than 
 any funeral sermon, history assumes a sepulchral 
 tone and speaks more forcibl}" than the preachers of 
 the great century. The shades of these once flat- 
 tered women come before us one after another, and 
 as they pass each seems to say like F^nelon in his 
 
258 THE WOMEN OF VERSAILLES 
 
 book of prayers : " What does not one do to find a 
 false happiness? Wliat rebuffs, what thwartings 
 does not one endure for a phantom of worldly glory ? 
 What pains for wretched pleasures of which nothing 
 is left but remorse?" From the depths of the dust 
 of graves profound, the dazzled eye suddenly per- 
 ceives arising a pure, an incorruptible radiance which 
 places in their true light all things here below, and 
 one recalls the saying of Massillon before the coffin 
 of Louis XIV. : " God alone is great, my brethren." 
 
INDEX 
 
 Apartment days, at Versailles, 139- 
 141. 
 
 Arnauld, his words concerning wed- 
 ding of Louis XrV. and Madame 
 de Maintenon, 124. 
 
 Athalie, Racine's, performance of, 
 153. 
 
 Augustine, Saint. See Saint Augus- 
 tine. 
 
 Barrere, 255. 
 
 Bassompierre, words of, concerning 
 Cliateau of Versailles, 29, 30. 
 
 Bavarian Dauphiness, the, dates of 
 her birth and marriage, 41, 104 ; 
 her sad life, 104, 116 : her death, 
 104; her life at Munich, 105; 
 meets Bossuet, 105 ; accompanies 
 Bossuet to Versailles, 106 ; birth 
 of her son, 107, 108 ; occupies the 
 Queen's room. 111; her sadness, 
 112, 113, 115 ; deserted by all, 113 ; 
 painting of by Delutel, 114; her 
 words to the Princess Palatine, 
 115; foresaw her end, 115; her 
 burial place, 255 ; her tomb dese- 
 crated, 257. 
 
 Berry, Duchess of, tlie symbol of 
 her age, 26. 
 
 Blois, Mademoiselle de, 41. See 
 Conti, Princess de. 
 
 Blois, Mademoiselle, Duchess de 
 Chartres also called, 224. 
 
 Bossuet, denies absolution t<t Mad- 
 ame de Montespan, 74; his ex- 
 hortations to Louis XIV., 76, 78, 
 79 ; visits Madame de Montespan 
 
 for religious connsel, 77; criti- 
 cised for his conduct, 77, 78; 
 unable to prevent meeting of 
 Louis XIV. and Madame de 
 Montespan, 81; meets and con- 
 ducts the Bavarian Dauphiness 
 to Versailles, 105, 106; received 
 cordially by Louis XIV., 106 ; his 
 words on the revocation of the 
 Edict of Nantes, 192, 193, 210. 
 
 Bourbon, Duchess of, her birth and 
 marriage, 215, 221; her beanty, 
 222: her amour with the second 
 Prince de Conti, 222, 223; loses 
 her husband, 223, 
 
 Bourbon, Duke de, 215, 221, 223. 
 
 Bourdaloue, active in tlie conver- 
 sion of Louis XIV., 75; his ex- 
 hortations, 75, 76. 
 
 Burgundy, Duchess of, 10, 13, IS; 
 the symbol of her age, 26; her 
 arrival in France, 229; charms 
 Louis XIV., 229, 230 ; attentions 
 of Louis XIV. to, 231 ; her educa- 
 tion finished by Madame de Main- 
 tenon, 231, 232; ceremonies at 
 her marriage, 232-234; her at- 
 tractiveness, 234, 2-35; her affec- 
 tion and admiration for Louis 
 XIV., 235 ; her pleasures, 235 ; her 
 portrait, 236; Saint-Simon's ad- 
 miration for, 236 ; her numerous 
 charms, 236, 237; the victim of 
 calumny, 237; her anxiety on 
 behalf of her family, 238; her 
 sorrows, 238, 239; becomes the 
 Dauphiness, 240 ; convinced that 
 
 259 
 
260 
 
 INDEX 
 
 her end was near, 240, 241 ; her 
 death, 242; her burial, 243; re- 
 ported to have betrayed state 
 secrets, 243 ; a review of the ca- 
 reer of, 246, 247 ; her burial place, 
 255; her tomb desecrated, 257. 
 Burgundy, Duke of, 232-234, 240, 
 242. 
 
 Caylus, Marquise de, her words con- 
 cerning Marie Therese's timidity, 
 GO; concerning the King's bas- 
 tards, G3; concerning Madame 
 de Montespan, 69, 72, 73; con- 
 cerning Louis XIV., 72; her de- 
 scription of the interview between 
 Ixiuis XIV. and Madame de 
 Montespan, 81, 82; concerning 
 grief of Madame de Maintenon 
 and Madame de Montespan at 
 death of Marie Therese, 111 ; con- 
 cerning the Bavarian Dauphin- 
 ess, 113; educated by Madame 
 de Maintenon, 143, 145: her 
 cleverness, 144; her birth and 
 parentage 144 : conveyed to Saints 
 Germain, 144 : becomes a Catholic, 
 144; her hand sought in mar- 
 riage, 145, 146 ; her marriage, 146 ; 
 her grace and wit, 146 ; takes part 
 in presentation of Esther, 147- 
 149, 151; her love of pleasure, 
 153 ; contracts a liaison with the 
 Duke de Villeroy, 154; finds the 
 court dull, 154 : sent away from 
 the court, 154, 155 ; pardoned and 
 returns, 155 ; her Souvenirs, 155, 
 156. 
 
 Cliambre des Bassans, 136, 137. 
 
 Chartres, Duchess de, her birth and 
 marriage, 215, 224, 225; her 
 timidity before Lonis XIV., 226; 
 her intelligence, 226; ill-treated 
 by Saint-Simon, 226, 227. 
 
 Chartres, Duke de, 178, 179, 215, 
 224, 225. 
 
 Chasles, fimile, his words con- 
 cerning Madame de Maintenon, 
 18S. 
 
 Chateau of Versailles, the. See 
 Versailles. 
 
 Chateauroux, Duchess de, her brief 
 life, 24. 
 
 Choiu, Mademoiselle, 218, 219. 
 
 Choisy, Abb^ de, bis words con- 
 cerning Louis XIV. and Madame 
 de Maintenon, 120; his words 
 concerning Marquise de Caylus, 
 140. 
 
 Clagny, Chateau of, 80, 210. 
 
 Clermont, M., 219. 
 
 Colbert, 71. 
 
 Conde, Prince of, urges Louis XIV. 
 to legitimate his bastard chil- 
 dren, 63, 227. 
 
 Conti, Prince de, 215, 216, 218. 
 
 Conti, the second Prince de, 222, 
 223. 
 
 Conti, Princess de, her birth and 
 marriage, 41, 215 ; her legitima- 
 tion, 216; the words of Louis 
 XIV. concerning, 216 ; her grace 
 and attractiveness, 216, 218 ; her 
 marriage, 216; loses her hus- 
 band, 218; her intrigue with M. 
 Clermont, 219; her pleasures, 
 218, 220. 
 
 Dauphin, the, 113. 114, 218, 219, 
 
 240. 
 Dangeau, 210, 229, 230. 
 Desboulicres, Madame, Hues of, 
 
 193. 
 Diana of Poitiers, 121. 
 Dubarry, Madame, IS. 
 Duclos, his statement that the 
 
 Duchess of Burgundy betrayed 
 
 state secrets, 245. 
 
 Elisabeth, Madame, 18. 
 Esther, Racine's, performance of, 
 at Saint-Cyr, 14S-153. 
 
 Fdcheux, Le, performance of, at 
 
 Versailles, 31. 
 I'emmes Savantes, Les, performed 
 
 at Versailles, 33. 
 
INDEX 
 
 261 
 
 Fcnelon, his words to Madame de 
 Maintenon, 188; approves prin- 
 ciple of revocation of Edict of 
 Nantes, 194. 
 
 Fetes de V Amour et de Bacchus, 
 performed at Versailles, 32. 
 
 Fontanges, Mademoiselle de, 
 Louis XIV. 's passion for, 48, C4, 
 83,84. 
 
 Georges Dandin, performed at 
 Versailles, 32. 
 
 Girardin, Saint Marc, liis words 
 concerning Madame de Mainte- 
 non, 86. 
 
 Grand-Couvert, the hall of the, 8. 
 
 Gratry, Pere, quoted, 13. 
 
 Hausset, Madame du, her words of 
 sympathy for Madame de Pom- 
 padour, 24. 
 
 Henrietta of England, 230. 
 
 History, nothing but a long fu- 
 neral sermon, 247. 
 
 La Bessola, 113. 
 
 La Bruyere, quoted, 100. 
 
 La Fayette, Madame de, her words 
 concerning Louis XIV., 4<); her 
 words concerning the Bavarian 
 Dauphiuess, 114, 115. 
 
 La Fontaine, his dedication to 
 JIadame de Montespan of his 
 seventh book of fables, 70. 
 
 Lamartine, verses of, quoted, 12; 
 defines the sentiment of Louis 
 XIV. for Madame de Maintenon, 
 122. 
 
 Lamballe, Princess de, 19. 
 
 Lavallee, his work on Madame de 
 Maintenon, 87, 88, 199 ; his words 
 concerning alterations at Ver- 
 sailles, 132; concerning apart- 
 ment of Madame de JIaiutenon, 
 134, 135; concerning Madame de 
 Maintenou's instructions to the 
 ladies of Sain1>Cyr, 165; his 
 change of opinion concerning 
 Madame de Maintenon, 198, 199. 
 
 Lecuyer, Abbe, refuses absolution 
 to Madame de Montespan, 74. 
 
 Leczinska, Marie. Sec Marie Lec- 
 zinska. 
 
 Lenclos, Ninon de, 92, 122. 
 
 Letters of Madame de Maintenon, 
 199 et seq. ; of Madame de Se- 
 vigne, 201 et seq. 
 
 Louis XIV., his apartments at Ver- 
 sailles, 2 ; his words to the aged 
 Condd on the staircase at Ver- 
 sailles, 5; his statue, 6, 7; his 
 first visit to Versailles, 30; his 
 festivities at Versailles, 30 et 
 seq.; his attachment to Ver- 
 sailles, 30, 34; his apartments 
 at Versailles, 36, 37; intimate 
 relation between Louis XIV. and 
 Versailles, 39, 40; his strong 
 personality, 42; estimate of his 
 character, 43 et seq. ; his polite 
 and amiable disposition, 43 ; his 
 incessant work, 44 ; his worship 
 of glory and the ideal, 45; his 
 feeling towards women, 45, 46; 
 poetic quality of his amours, 46 ; 
 his words concerning Madame 
 de Maintenon's sensibility, 46; 
 his personal attractions, 47; his 
 tenderness, 46, 47 ; the beginning 
 of his repentance, 48; his pas- 
 sion for Mademoiselle de Fon- 
 tanges, 48, 64; his feeling for 
 the Duchess de la Valliere, 47- 
 50; his conversion and refor- 
 mation, 50, 51 ; his gravity as a 
 sovereign, 51, 52; his principle 
 of authority, 52, 53, 184; Napo- 
 leon's words of admiration for, 
 53; his sense of guilt towards 
 Marie Therese, 60; legitimating 
 his adulterous children, 61-63, 
 95 ; his repentance, 63, 64, 67, 83 ; 
 makes changes in the Queen's 
 household, 64; his return of 
 affection for the Queen, 65, CO; 
 his words concerning Montespan, 
 71; his religious disposition, 72; 
 resolves to break with Madame 
 
262 
 
 INDEX 
 
 de Montespan, 74; separates 
 from Madame de Montespan, 
 76, 77 ; his secret correspondeuce 
 "with Madame de Montespan, SO; 
 meets Madame de Montespan on 
 his return from liis army, 81, 82 ; 
 final conversion, 84, 85; recog- 
 nizes good qualities of Madame 
 de Maintenon, 95, 9G ; receives 
 Bavarian Dauphiness cordiall}% 
 lOG; his attention to the Bava- 
 rian Dauphiness at hirth of her 
 child, 107, 108; his heart inclined 
 more toward religion, 108; his 
 grief at death of his wife, 109- 
 111; his kindness, 110; enter- 
 tains the Bavarian Dauphiness, 
 112; his love for Madame de 
 Maintenon, 118; his complex 
 sentiment for Madame de Main- 
 tenon, 119, 120; the zenith of his 
 power, IIS; lofty nature of his 
 attachment to Madame de Main- 
 tenon, 122, 123; his marriage to 
 Madame de Maintenon, 123; his 
 daily life at Versailles, 137-142 ; 
 witnesses performance of Esther 
 at Saint-Cyr, 149 et seq.; his 
 praise of the performance, 152; 
 he dismisses Marquise de Caylus 
 from the court, 154 ; pardons her, 
 155; visits Saint-Cyr, IGl; finds 
 Saint-Cyr a consolation, 162; his 
 detractors among historians, 184 
 ei seq. ; sole master of his king- 
 dom, 188, 189; true relation he- 
 tween him and Madame de 
 Maintenon on state affairs, 188 
 et seq. ; his wars and love of 
 luxury, 189-191 ; forced to revoke 
 the Edict of Nantes, 191-193; 
 his first dislike for Madame de 
 Maintenon. 95, 198; his indiffer- 
 ence to Madame de Montespan, 
 208, 214; the daughters of, 215 
 et seq. ; his words concerning the 
 Prhicess de C<inti,216; threatens 
 to confine bis three daughters 
 in their country houses, 227 ; his 
 
 tenderness for liis children, 227; 
 visits Duchess of Bourbon dur- 
 ing her attack of small-pox, 227, 
 228 ; receives Marie-Adelaide, 
 229; his praise of Marie-Ade- 
 laide, 230; his attentions to 
 Marie-Adelaide, 231 ; his interest 
 in the Duchess of Burgundy, 235, 
 240 ; his grief at the death of his 
 sou, 243; his firmness under 
 trials, 244; his last hours, 248- 
 253; his farewell words to 
 Madame de Maintenon, 249; his 
 public confession, 250; his last 
 words to the Dauphin, 250; his 
 calmness, 251; his death, 253; 
 his tomb destroyed, 255, 256. 
 
 Louis XV., 9 ; his words at funeral 
 of Madame de Pompadour, 24; 
 the favorites of, 26 ; his birth, 242. 
 
 Louis XVL, 11, 12. 
 
 Maine, Duke du, 2io, 225. 
 
 Maintenon, Madame de, her char- 
 acter, 17, 86, et seq., 96-98; her 
 ennui, 22 ; the symbol of her age, 
 26 ; her position at Versailles in 
 1682, 42; her sensibility, 46; her 
 influence for good, 65, 83, SK>-98 ; 
 diverse opinions concerning her 
 character, 87, 88, tH>-98; her birth, 
 89; her childhood, 89, 90; her 
 marriage to Scarron, 91; her 
 salon, 92: loses her husband, 92; 
 admired and respected, 92, 93; 
 her simple, <;harming manners, 
 93; obtains renewal of her pen- 
 sion through Madame de Jlontes- 
 pan, 94 ; her charity, 94 ; becomes 
 governess at court, 94; takes 
 charge of the illegitimate chil- 
 dren of Louis XIV., 95; her 
 pension increased, 93; her disa- 
 greements with Madame de Mon- 
 tespan, 96, 99; purchases the 
 estate of JIaintenon, ^ ; accused 
 of hypocrisy, 96, 97 ; her opposi- 
 tion to the amours of Louis XIV. 
 and Madame de Jlontespan, 99; 
 
INDEX 
 
 263 
 
 her position at court assured be- 
 yond attack, 101, 102 ; her words 
 at the birth of son of Bavarian 
 Dauphiness, 108; her quarrels 
 vtith Madame de Montespan ap- 
 peased, 108, 109 ; her conduct at 
 death of Marie Tlidriise, 111 ; her 
 words concerning her good for- 
 tune, 117 ; her words at marriage 
 of Louis XIV. and Marie Therese, 
 117; the love of Louis XIV. for, 
 118 et seq.; did not love the King, 
 118; espoused by Louis XIV., 
 118; her beauty well preserved, 
 122 ; her marriage to Louis XIV., 
 123; her sadness, 124, 127; re- 
 tains her influence over Louis 
 Xrv., 12G; she regrets Scarron's 
 house, 127; her apartment neg- 
 lected by posterity, 128, 129 ; her 
 apartment almost unrecogniza- 
 ble, 132, 133 ; as it originally was, 
 133-135; her daily Ufe, 135; her 
 retinue, 135 ; educates Mademoi- 
 selle de Mur9ay-ViUette, Mar- 
 quise de Caylus, 143, 145 ; forbids 
 tragedy at Saint-Cyr, 147 ; urges 
 Racine to write moral poem for 
 Saint-Cyr, 147 ; her life at Saint- 
 Cyr, 157 et seq. ,- her devotion to 
 Saint-Cyr, 162, 163 ; her words of 
 counsel to the ladies of Saint-Cyr, 
 162-166 ; her distrust of the court 
 of Versailles, 167; attacked by 
 the Princess Palatine, 167, 168; 
 reproves the Princess Palatine 
 for her insults, 180, 181 ; her de- 
 tractors among historians, 184 
 et seq. ; her true attitude towards 
 the King in state affairs, 188, 
 189; her desire for peace, 189, 
 190; her distaste of luxury, 190, 
 191; her attitude towards the 
 revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 
 190, 191, 194-196; moderate iu 
 religion and politics, 195, 196; 
 a pious, sincere woman, 196, 197; 
 her daily prayer, 196, 197; her 
 noble devotion to the King, 197 ; 
 
 disliked at first by Louis XIV., 
 95, 198; a character not easily un- 
 derstood, 198; Lavallce's change 
 of opinion concerning, 198, 199; 
 her letters, 199-206; compared 
 with Madame de Sevigne, 201- 
 206; finishes the education of 
 Marie Adc'laide, 231, 232; at the 
 death-bed of Louis XIV., 249; 
 retires to Saint-Cyr, 252; her 
 last days, 254; her death, 254; 
 her burial place, 254; her tomb, 
 destroyed, 257. 
 
 Malade imaginaire, Le, performed 
 at Versailles, 33. 
 
 Manage ford, Le, performed at 
 Versailles, 31. 
 
 Marie Adelaide, afterwards Duch- 
 ess of Burgundy. See Burgundy, 
 Duchess of. 
 
 Marie Anne Victoire, Infanta of 
 Spain, 10. 
 
 Marie Antoinette, defended by her 
 body-guard, 8; her manner in 
 receiving, 9 ; main events of her 
 life at Versailles, 10-13 ; a sym- 
 bol of her age, 27. 
 
 iSIarie Leczinska, the amiable and 
 good, 9, 18; her death, 9, 10; her 
 virtue, 27. 
 
 Marie Therese, her apartments at 
 Versailles, 7 et seq., 37; her salon, 
 8 ; her bedchamber, 9 ; her death, 
 9 ; her character, 17, 54, 55 ; dates 
 of her birth and marriage, 41; 
 her parentage, 55; her personal 
 appearance, 56 ; her timid, retir- 
 ing disposition, 56, 57 ; her good 
 sense, 57 ; her devotion to Louis 
 XIV., 57, 60; her children, 58; 
 distressed by her husband's infi- 
 delities, 58; her relations with 
 Duchess de la Valliere, 58, 59; 
 not deceived by Sladame de Mon- 
 tespan, 60 ; her fear of Louis 
 XIV., 60, 61; Louis XIV.'s return 
 of affection for, 65, 66; her 
 charity, 65, 66; her words of 
 gratitude for Madame de Main- 
 
264 
 
 INDEX 
 
 tenon, 109; her death, 109, 111; 
 her hurial place, 255; her tomb 
 desecrated, 257. 
 
 Massillou, quoted, 5, 19, 23, 73, 115, 
 208, 209, 251. 
 
 Michelet, quoted, 190, 192, 245. 
 
 Mirrors, Gallery of, 3. 
 
 Molicre, performs at Versailles, 30- 
 32; quoted, 70. 
 
 Mouseigueur, The Dauphin kuown 
 as. See Dauphin, the. 
 
 Montespan, Marquis de, 68, 71, 212. 
 
 Moutespau, Marquise de, her char- 
 acter, 17, 25 ; supplanted by Ma- 
 dame de Maiutenon, 21 ; the syra- 
 hol of her age, 25 ; her position 
 at Versailles in 1GS2, 42; her 
 seuse of shame before the Queen, 
 59, 60; loses her infiueuee at 
 court, 67; her personal charms, 
 68; her birth and marriage, 08; 
 disinclined at first to gallantry, 
 69; the period of her favor, 69; 
 La Fontaine's flattery of , 70 ; the 
 children of, 71, 94, 95 ; her lustre, 
 72 ; her uneasiness of conscience, 
 72; her religious disposition, 72, 
 73; refused absolution by the 
 Abbe Le'cuyer, 74; retires from 
 the court, 77 ; returns to her cha- 
 teau of Clagny, 80; meets Louis 
 XIV. on his return from the 
 army, 81, 82; her influence wan- 
 ing, 82-84 ; appointed superin- 
 tendent of the household of the 
 Queen, 84; suspected of poisoning 
 the Duchess of Fontanges, 84; 
 obtains renewal of pension for 
 Madame de JIaintenon, 94; her 
 bad feeling for Madame de JIain- 
 tenon, 96, 99, 100; believes Ma- 
 dame de Maintenon is trying to 
 become the King's mistress, 99, 
 100 ; her downfall deserved, 100, 
 101; her quarrels with Madame 
 de Maintenon appeased, 108, 109 ; 
 her conduct at death of Marie 
 Therese, 111 ; her unhappy life at 
 court after her downfall, 207-210 ; 
 
 leaves Versailles, 210, 211 ; her 
 life of repentance and humility, 
 211, 212; her last years, 212, 213; 
 her death and burial, 213; for- 
 gotten, 214; her children forbid- 
 den to mourn her death, 214, 220; 
 Murray- Villette, Mademoiselle de, 
 afterwards Marquise de Caylus. 
 See Caylus, Marquise de. 
 
 Nantes, Edict of, 190, 191 ei seq. 
 
 Nantes, Mademoiselle de, 41 ; after- 
 wards Duchess of Bourbon. See 
 Bourbon, Duchess of. 
 
 Napoleon, the first, his admiration 
 for Louis XIV., 53; his prefer- 
 ence for the letters of Sladame 
 de Maiutenon, 202. 
 
 Nesle, De, the sisters, 18. 
 
 Nisard, De'sire, his opinion of 
 Ikladame de Mainteuon's letters, 
 202. 
 
 Noailles, Duke de, his work on 
 Madame de Maintenon, 87, 88. 
 
 Noailles, Viscountess de, her words 
 concerning the Duchess of Bur- 
 gundy, 241, 242. 
 
 Orleans, Duchess of. Princess Pala- 
 tine, her character, 17, 168 et 
 seq., 182 ; her words at the death 
 of the Queen of Spain, 21; date 
 of her birth and marriage, 41 ; 
 her homage to Louis XIV., 43; 
 her hatred of Madame de Main- 
 tenon, 167, 168, 181; her letters, 
 169, 180; compared with Saint- 
 Simon, 169, 170; her birth and 
 marriage, 170 ; sets out for 
 France, 170 ; her ugliness, 171 ; 
 her dislike lor Versailles, 171, 
 172, 177, 179, ISO; her lack of 
 affection for her husband, 172; 
 not iu sympathy with the Cath- 
 olic religion, 173; her protest 
 against religious persecution, 
 174 ; not interested iu theological 
 discussions, 174; her ideas of 
 various kinds of piety, 175, 176; 
 
INDEX 
 
 265 
 
 her unhappy life at Versailles, 
 176, 177 : her poor opinion of her 
 husband, 178; unhappy in her 
 son, 178, 179; her hatred of the 
 royal bastards, 179; slaps her 
 son's face for marrying one of 
 the King's illegitimate children, 
 179, 224, 225 ; her correspondence 
 opened, 180, 181; quiets down 
 as a widow, 181; dies a good 
 Christian, 181; her burial place, 
 255 ; her tomb desecrated, 257. 
 Orleans, Duke of, 244. 
 
 Palatine, Princess. See Orleans, 
 Duchess of. 
 
 Philip v., of Spain, 9. 
 
 Plaisirs de Vile enchantie, per- 
 formance of, at Versailles, 30. 
 
 Poitiers, Diana of, 121. 
 
 Pompadour, Madame de, her char- 
 acter, 18; her melancholy, 24; 
 neglected and forgotten, 24; 
 Louis XV. 's words at funeral 
 of, 24. 
 
 Pritice^se d'Elide, performed at 
 Versailles, 31. 
 
 Racine, quoted, 87 ; renounces the 
 theatre, 147, 148 ; composes 
 Esther, 148. 
 
 Rigault, Hippolyte, his words con- 
 cerning Mademoiselle de la Val- 
 liere and Madame de Maintenon, 
 86. 
 
 Saint Augustine, quoted, 23, 24, 209. 
 
 Saint-Cyr, the puj)ils of, 147-153; 
 performance of Esther at, 148- 
 153; Madame de Maintenon at, 
 157 et seq. ; compared to Ver- 
 sailles, 15S, 159; date of its open- 
 ing, 160; Louis XIV. visits, 161; 
 a consolation to Louis XIV., 
 162; Madame de Maintenou's 
 devotion to, 1()2, 163. 
 
 Saint-Denis, the mausoleiuns of, 
 destroyed, 255-257. 
 
 Saint-Germain, chateau of, 34. 
 
 Saint^Simon, his words concei'ning 
 Louis XIV., 43; concerning 
 Madame de Maintenon, 122; 
 concerning marriage of Louis 
 XIV. and Madame de Mainte- 
 non, 124; concerning the Mar- 
 quise de Caylos, 146; an objec- 
 tiouable historical witness, 184^ 
 188 ; his words concerning revo- 
 cation of Edict of Nantes, 193; 
 his ill-treatment of the Duchess 
 of Chartres, 226, 227; his admi- 
 ration for the Duchess of Bur- 
 gundy, 236. 
 
 Scarron, 91, 92. 
 
 Scudery, Mademoiselle de, 92. 
 
 Sevigne, Madame de, her words 
 concerning life and death, 20; 
 her words concerning Madame 
 de Montespan, 21, 72, 80, 82, 83; 
 concerning Madame de Mainte- 
 non, 101; concerning revocation 
 of Edict of Nantes, 193; com- 
 pared with Madame de Mainte- 
 non, 201-206; her rich natural 
 endowments, 203, 204; her let- 
 ters, 201-206; her words con- 
 cerning the Princess de Conti, 
 216; concerning Duchess de la 
 Vallicre, 217. 
 
 Splnola, 107. 
 
 Tartiiffe, performance of, at Ver- 
 sailles, 31. 
 
 Tombs, the royal, desecration of, 
 255-258. 
 
 VaUifere, Duchess de la, portrait 
 of, by Mignard, 19; her clois- 
 ter life, 49, 50, 217; Marie The- 
 rese's relations with, 58, 59 ; her 
 death, 220; her burial place, 
 255. 
 
 Versailles, during the Commune, 
 1 et seq. ; haunted by memories, 
 12-14 ; women of, 12-27 ; the pass- 
 ing away of the glory of, 20 ; the 
 chateau of, 29 et seq.; festivi- 
 ties at chateau of, 30 et seq. ; 
 
266 
 
 INDEX 
 
 iiataral disadvantages of, 34, 35; 
 Louis XIV. 's fondness for, 30, 34 ; 
 the enlargements at, 30-38; the 
 King's apartments at, 36, 37 ; the 
 Queen's apartments at, 37 ; de- 
 scription of the palace, 38, 39; 
 much altered by posterity, 129 
 ct seq. ; the grand apartment in. 
 
 139 ; compared to Saint-Cyr, 158, 
 
 159. 
 Vlctoire, Marie Anne Christine. 
 
 See Bavarian Dauphiness. 
 Voltaire, quoted, 194, 244. 
 
 Women of Versailles, general re- 
 view of, 12-27. 
 
 Norinooti ^irss : 
 
 J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Sinitti. 
 Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
FAMOUS WOMEN OF THE 
 FRENCH COURT 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, PUBLISHERS 
 
 FORMER series of M. Imbert de Saint- Amand's historical 
 works have depicted the great French historical epochs 
 of modern times. The stirring events of the Revolution, of the 
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 " Marie Antoinette and the End of the Old Regime " was the 
 beginning of the extinction of the feminine influence that flour- 
 ished vigorously in afiairs of state from Marguerite of Angouleme 
 to Madame Dubarry. It is the history of this influence that the 
 author has graphically written in the four volumes now announced 
 — '• Women of the Valois Court," " The Court of Louis XIV.," 
 and "The Court of Louis XV.," and "The Last Years of Louis 
 XV." 
 
FAMOUS WOMEN OF THE FRENCH COURT 
 
 The first volume is devoted to Marguerite of Angouleme and 
 Catherine de' Medici and their contemporaries at the French 
 court during the days of the last of the Valois — the most ro- 
 mantic period of royalty probably in all history. The two principal 
 figures are depicted \vith striking vividness, — the half Catholic, 
 half Protestant sister of Francis I., the grandmother of Henry 
 IV., the author of the famous " Heptameron," and one of the most 
 admirable historical figures of any epoch; and the diplomatic, 
 ambitious, unscrupulous but extremely human Catherine, univer- 
 sally held responsible for the awfiil Massacre of Saint Bartholo- 
 mew. But the subordinate though scarcely less famous women 
 who adorned the Valois Court — Diane de Poitiers, the Duchess 
 d'Etampes, Marguerite of Valois, Marie Stuart, and others — 
 are described with an equally brilliant and illuminating touch. 
 
 The volumes on the women of the great Bourbon epoch, 
 the epoch of Louis XIV. and Louis XV., when the Bourbon 
 star was in the zenith, contain a great deal of intimate history 
 as well as setting in relief the interesting personalities of the 
 famous La Vallifere and Montespan and that perennial historical 
 enigma, Madame de Maintenon, in the volume devoted to the 
 court of the " Sun King," and those of Madame de Pompadour, 
 Madame Dubarry, Queen Marie Leczinski, and other celebrities 
 who made Versailles what it was during the long and varied 
 reign of Louis XV. Tlie study of Madame de Maintenon is a 
 real contribution to liistor)', and the pictures of the clever and 
 dazzling beauties who controlled so long the destinies not only 
 of France but measurably of Europe itself from the accession of 
 "le Grand Monarque" to the first tlireatenings of the Revolution 
 " deluge " are extremely lifelike and skilfully executed. The his- 
 torical chronicle of the time is by no means lost sight of by the 
 author, but in this series even more than in his works heretofore 
 published in English he appears not only as an interesting and 
 impartial historian, but as a brilliant historical portraitist. 
 
 FOUR NEW VOLUMES. 
 
 WOMEN OF THE VALOIS AND VERSAILLES COURTS. 
 
 Eaclfwith Portraits, %x.^^. Price per set, ttt box, cloth, %=,.oo', half calf, Jio-oo. 
 WOMEN OF THE VALOIS COURT. 
 THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV. 
 
 THE COURT OF LOUIS XV. In fress. 
 
 THE LAST YEARS OF LOUIS XV. In press. 
 
FAMOUS WOMEN OF THE FRENCH COURT 
 
 VOLUMES PREVIOUSLY ISSUED. 
 
 THREE VOLUMES ON MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 Each with Portrait, $1.25. Price per set, in box, cloth, $3.75; half calf, $7-50. 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE AND THE END OF THE OLD REGIME, 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE AT THE TUILERIES. 
 MARIE ANTOINETTE AND THE DOWNFALL OF ROYALTY. 
 
 In this series is unfolded the tremendous panorama of political events in 
 which the unfortunate Queen had so inBuential a share, beginning with the days 
 immediately preceding the Revolution, whea court life at Versailles was so gay and 
 unsuspecting, continuing with the enforced journey of the royal family to Paris, and 
 the agitating months passed in the Tuileries, and concluding with the abolition of 
 royalty, the proclamation of the Republic, and the imprisonment of the royal family, 
 — the initial stage of their progress to the guillotine. 
 
 THREE VOLUMES ON THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE. 
 Each with Portrait, %\.^^. Price per set, in 6ox, cloth, $3.75; half calf, $7.50. 
 CITIZENESS BONAPARTE. 
 THE WIFE OF THE FIRST CONSUL. 
 THE COURT OF THE EMPRESS JOSEPHINE. 
 
 The romantic and eventful period beginning with Josephine's marriage, com- 
 prises the astonishing Italian campaign, the Egyptian expedition, the coup dUtat of 
 Brumaire, and is described in the first of the above volumes; while the second treats 
 of the brilliant society which issued from the chaos of the Revolution, and over 
 which Madame Bonaparte presided so charmingly; and the third, of the events 
 between the assumption of the imperial title by Napoleon and the end of 1807, 
 including, of course, the Austerlitz campaign. 
 
 FOUR VOLUMES ON THE EMPRESS MARIE LOUISE. 
 Each with Portrait, $1.25. Price per set, in box, cloth, $5.00; half calf, $10.00. 
 THE HAPPY DAYS OF MARIE LOUISE. 
 
 MARIE LOUISE AND THE DECADENCE OF THE EMPIRE. 
 MARIE LOUISE AND THE INVASION OF 1814. 
 MARIE LOUISE, THE RETURN FROM ELBA, AND THE HUNDRED DAYS. 
 
 The auspicious marriage of the Archduchess Marie Louise to the master of 
 Europe; the Russian invasion, with its disastrous conclusion a few years later; the 
 Dresden and Leipsic campaign; the invasion of France by the Allies, and the mar- 
 vellous military strategy of Napoleon in 1814, ending only with his defeat and exile 
 to Elba; his life in bis little principality; his romantic escape and dramatic return to 
 France; the preparations of the Hundred Days; Waterloo and the definitive restora- 
 tion of Louis XVIII. closing the era begun in 1789, with " The End of the Old 
 Regime," — are the subjects of the four volumes grouped around the personalitv of 
 Marie Louise. 
 
FAMOUS WOMEN OF THE FRENCH COURT 
 
 TWO VOLUMES ON THE DUCHESS OF ANGOUIEME. 
 
 Each vtith Portrait^ $1.25. Price per set, in hojc, cloth, $2.50; half calf, $5.00. 
 
 THE YOUTH OF THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME. 
 
 THE DUCHESS OF ANGOULEME AND THE TWO RESTORATIONS. 
 
 The period covered in this first of these volumes begins with the life of the 
 daughter of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette imprisoned in the Temple after the 
 execution of her parents, and ends with the accession of Louis XVI 1 1, after the abdica- 
 tion of Napoleon at Fontainebleau. The first Restoration, its illusions, the characters 
 of Louis XVIII,, of his brother, afterwards Charles X., of the Dnkes of Angouleme 
 and Berry, sons of the latter, the life of the Court, the feeling of the city. Napoleon's 
 sudden return from Elba, the Hundred Days from the Royalist side, the second 
 Restoration, and the vengeance taken by the new government on the Imperialists, 
 form the subject-matter of the second volume. 
 
 THREE VOLUMES ON THE DUCHESS OF BEHRY. 
 
 Each with Portrait, $1.25. Price per set, in box, cloth, $3.75: half calf, %-j.^q, 
 
 THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE COURT OF LOUIS XVIII. 
 THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE COURT OF CHARLES X. 
 THE DUCHESS OF BERRY AND THE REVOLUTION OF JULY, 1830. 
 
 The Princess Marie Caroline, of Naples, became, upon her marriage with the 
 Duke of Berry, the central figure of the French Court during the reigns of both 
 Louis XVin. and Charles X. The former of these was rendered eventful by the 
 assassination of her husband and the birth of her son, the Count of Chambord, and 
 the latter was from the first marked by those reactionary tendencies which resulted 
 in the dethronement and exile of the Bourbons. The dramatic Revolution which 
 brought about the July monarchy of Louis Philippe, has never been more vividly 
 and intelligently described than in the last volume devoted to the Duchess of Berry. 
 
 " In these translations of this interesting series of sketches, we liave 
 found an unexpected amount of pleasure and profit. The author cites 
 for tis passages from forgotten diaries, hitherto unearlhid letters, extracts 
 from public proceedings, and the like, and contrives to combine and 
 arrange his material so as to make a great many very viznd and pleas- 
 ing pictures. Nor is this all. The material he lays before us is of real 
 value, and much, if not most of it, must be unhnoivn save to the special 
 students of Oie period. We can, therefore, cordiclly commend these books 
 to the attention of our readers. They will find them attractive in their 
 arrangement, never dull, wit/i much variety of scene and incident, and 
 admirably translated." — The Nation, of December ig, i8go. 
 
DRIEF LIST of Books of Fiction Published 
 *-' by Charles Scribner's Sons, 743-745 
 Broadway, New York. 
 
 IVilliam Waldorf Astor. 
 
 Valentino: An Historical Romance. 12 mo, $1.00. Sfopza : A 
 Story of Milan. i2mo, $1.50. 
 
 "The story is full of clear-cut little tableaux of mediaeval Italian 
 manners, customs and observances. The movement throughout is 
 spirited, the reproduction of bygone times realistic. Mr. Astor has 
 vifritten a romance which will heighten the reputation lie made by 
 'Valentino.'"— TVif.Vi'a/ York Tribune. 
 
 Arlo Bates. 
 
 A Wheel of Fire. i2mo, paper, 50 cts. ; cloth, $1.00. 
 
 "The novel deals with character rather than incident, and is evolved 
 from one of the most terrible of moral problems with a subtlety not 
 unlike that of Hawthorne." — The Critic. 
 
 Hjalmar H. Boyesen. 
 
 Falconberg. Illustrated, i2mo, $1.50. Gunnar. Sq. i2mo, 
 paper, 50 cts.; cloth, Si. 25. Tales from Two Hemispheres. 
 Sq. i2mo, Si. 00. Ilka on the Hill Top, and Other Stories. 
 Sq. i2mo, Si.oo. Queen Titania. Sq. i2mo, $1.00. Social 
 Strugglers. i2mo, Si. 25. 
 
 " Mr. Boyesen's stories possess a sweetness, a tenderness and a 
 drollery that are fascinating, and yet they are no more attractive than they 
 are strong." — The Home Journal. 
 
 H. C. Bunner. 
 
 The Story of a New York House. Illustrated by A. B. Frost. 
 i2mo. Si. 25. The Midge. 1 2mo, paper, 50 cts. ; cloth, Si. 00. 
 Zadoc Pine, and Other Stories. i2mo, paper, 50 cts. ; cloth. 
 Si. 00. 
 
 "It is Mr. Bunner's delicacy of touch and appreciation of what is 
 literary art that give his writings distinctive quality. Everything Mr. 
 Bunner paints shows the happy appreciation of an author who has not 
 alone mental discernment, but tlie artistic appreciation. The author and 
 the artist both supplement one another in this excellent 'Story of a New 
 York House.'"— The Ne-u) York Times. ' 
 
2 SCRIBNER'S BRIEF LIST OF FICTION. 
 
 Frances Hodgson Burnett. 
 
 That Lass 0' Lowrie's. Illustrated. Paper, 5octs. ; doth, $i 25. 
 Haworth's. Illustrated. 121110, $1.25. Through One Admin- 
 istration. i2mo, $1.50. Louisiana. i2ino, $1.25. A Fair 
 Barbarian. i2mo, paper, 50cts. ; cloth, $1.25. Vagabondia: 
 A Love Story. 1 2mo, paper, 50 cts. ; doth. Si. 25. Surly Tim, 
 and Other Stories. 12010,51.25. Earlier Stories. First Series. 
 Earlier Stories.- Second Series. i2mo, each, paper, 50 cts.; 
 doth, $1.25. The Pretty Sister of Jose. Illustrated by C. S. 
 Reinhart. i2mo, $1.00. 
 
 Little Lord FaunUeroy. Sq. 8vo, $2.00. Sara Crewe. Sq. 
 8vo, $1.00. Little Saint Elizabeth, and Other Stories. i2mo, 
 $1.50. Illustrated by R. B. Birch. 
 
 " Mrs. Burnett discovers gracious secrets in rough and forbidding 
 natures — the sweetness that often underlies their bitterness — the soul of 
 goodness in things evil. She seems to have an intuitive perception of 
 character." — Richard Henry Stoddard. 
 
 William Allen Butler. 
 
 Domesticus. A Tale of the Imperial City. i2nio, $1.25. 
 
 " Under a veil made intentionally transparent, the author maintains a 
 running fire of good-natured hits at contemporary social follies." — Tlit 
 New York Journal 0/ Commerce. 
 
 George IV. Cable. 
 
 The Grandissimes. lamo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.25. Old 
 Creole Days. i2mo, doth, S1.25 ; also in two parts, paper, 
 each, 30 cts. Dr. Sevier. i2mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, §1.25. 
 Bonaventure. i2mo, paper, 50 cts,; Si. 25. 
 Tie set, 4 vols., %^.oo. 
 " There are few living American writers who can reproduce for us more 
 perfectly than Mr. Cable does, in his best moments, the speech, the 
 manners, the whole social atmosphere of a remote time and n peculiar 
 people. A delicious flavor of humor penetrates his stories." 
 
 — The New York Tribune. 
 
 Rebecca Harding Davis. 
 
 Silhouettes of American Life. i2mo, paper, 50 cts.; doth, $1.00. 
 
 " There are altogether thirteen stories in the volume, all written in that 
 direct, forcible style which is Mrs. Davis's distinctive merit as a producer 0/ 
 fiction." — Boston Beacon. 
 
SCRiBNER'S BRIEF LIST OF FICTION. 3 
 
 Richard Harding Davis. 
 
 Gallegher, and Other Stories. i2mo, paper, 50 cts. ; cloth, $1.00. 
 
 The ten stories comprising this volume attest the appearance of a new 
 and strong individuality in the field of American fiction. They are of a 
 wide range and deal with very varied types of metropolitan character and 
 situation ; but each proves that Mr. Davis knows his New York as well as 
 Dickens did his London. 
 
 Edward Eggleston. 
 
 Roxy. The Circuit Rider. Illustrated. Each, lamo, $1.50. 
 
 "Dr. Eggleston's fresh and vivid portraiture of a phase of life and 
 manners, hitherto almost unrepresented in literature ; its boldly contrasted 
 characters, and its unconventional, hearty, religious spirit, took hold of the 
 public imagination." — The Christian Union. 
 
 Erckmann-Cbatrian . 
 
 The Conscript. Illustrated. Waterloo. Illustrated. Sequel' to The 
 Conscript. Madame Therese. The Blockade of Phalsburg. 
 Illustrated. The Invasion of France in 1814. Illustrated. A 
 Miller's Story of the War. Illustrated. 
 
 The National Novels, each, %i.3j ; the sets, 6 vol., %7.so. 
 
 Friend Fritz. i2mo, paper, 50 cts. ; cloth, $1.2?. 
 
 Eugene Field. 
 
 A Little Book of Profitable Tales. i6mo, $1.25. 
 
 " This pretty little volume promises to perpetuate examples of a wit, 
 humor, and pathos quaint and rare in their kind." — New York Tribune. 
 
 Harold Frederic. 
 
 Seth's Brother's Wife. i2mo,$i.25. The Lawton Girl. i2mo, 
 S1.25 ; paper, 50 cts. In the Valley. Illustrated. i2mo, S1.50. 
 
 " It is almost reasonable to assert that there has not been since Cooper's 
 day a better American novel dealing with a purely historical theme than 
 ' In the ViWey.'"— Boston Beacon. 
 
 James Anthony Froude. 
 
 The Two Chiefs of Dunboy. An Irish Romance of the Last 
 Century. i2mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth. Si. 50. 
 
 " The narrative is full of vigor, spirit and dramatic power. It will 
 unquestionably be widely read, for it presents a vivid and life-like study of 
 character with romantic color, and adventurous incident for the back- 
 ground." — I'he A^ew York Tribune. 
 
4 SCRIBNER'S BRIEF LIST OF FICTION. 
 
 Robert Grant. 
 
 Face to Face. 1 2mo, paper, 5octs. ; cloth, $i .25. The Reflec 
 tions of a Married Man. i2mo, paper, 50 cts.; doth, Si.oo. 
 
 "In tlie ' Reflections,' Mr. Grant has given us a capital little book which 
 should easily strike up literary comradeship with ' The Reveries of a 
 Bachelor.' " — Boston Transcript. 
 
 Edward Everett Hale. 
 
 Philip Nolan's Friends. Illust'd. i2mo, paper, 50 els. ; cloth,Si.50. 
 
 " There is no question, we think, that this is Mr. Hale's completest and 
 best novel." — The Atlantic Monthly. 
 
 Marion Harland. 
 
 Judith. i2mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $i.oo. Handicapped. 
 
 12010,81.50. With the Best Intentions. 12010, cloth. Si. 00; 
 paper, '^o cts. 
 
 " Fiction has afforded r.o more charming glimpses of old Virginia life 
 than are found in this delightful story, with its quaint pictures, its admir- 
 ably drawn characters, its wit, and its frankness." 
 
 — The Brooklyn Daily Times. 
 
 Joel Chandler Harris. 
 
 Free Joe, and Other Georgian Sketches. i2mo, paper, 50 cts.; 
 cloth. Si. 00. 
 
 " The author's skill as a story writer has never been more felicitously 
 illustrated than in this volume." — The New York Sun. 
 
 Augustus Allen Hayes. 
 
 The Jesuit's Ring; i2mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.00. 
 " The conception of the story is excellent." — The Boston Traveller. 
 
 George A. Hibbard. 
 
 The Governor, and Other Stories. i2mo, cloth. Si. 00; paper, 
 50 cts. 
 
 "It is still often urged that, except in remote comers, there is nothing 
 in our American life which appeals to the artistic sense, but certainly tliese 
 stories are American to the core, and yet the artistic sense is strong in them 
 throughout. " — Critic. 
 
 E. T. W . Hoffmann. 
 
 Weird Tales. With Portrait. i2nio, 2 vols., $5.00. 
 
 "All those who are in search of a genuine literary sensation, or who 
 care for the marvelous and supernalurnl, will find these two volumes fas- 
 cinating reading." — The Christian Union. 
 
SCRIBNER'S BRIEF LIST OF FICTION. 
 
 Dr. J. G. Holland. 
 
 Sevenoaks. The Bay Path. Arthur Bonnicastle. Miss Gilbert's 
 Career. Nicholas Minturni Each, 121110, §1.25; the set, §6.25. 
 Sevenoaks and Arthur Bonnicastle. Each, paper, 50c. 
 
 "Dr. Holland will always find a congenial audience in tlie homes of 
 culture and refinement. He does not affect the play of the darker and 
 fiercer passions, but delights in the sweet images that cluster around the 
 domestic hearth. He cherishes a strong fellow-feeling with the pure and 
 tranquil life in the modest social circles of the American people, and lias 
 thus won his way to the companionship of many friendly hearts." 
 
 — The New York Tribune. 
 Thomas A. Janvier. 
 
 Color Studies, and a Mexican Campaign. i2mo, paper, 50 cts. ; 
 
 cloth, $1.00. 
 
 "Piquant, novel and ingenious, these little stories, with all their simplicity, 
 
 have excited a wide interest. The best of them, 'Jaune D'Antimoine,' is 
 
 a little wonder in its dramatic effect, its ingenious construction." — Critic. 
 
 Andrew Lang. 
 
 The Mark of Cain. lamo, paper, 25 cts. 
 " No one can deny that it is crammed as full of incident as it will hold, 
 or that the elaborate plot is worked out with most ingenious perspicuity." 
 
 — The Saturday Review. 
 
 George P. Lathrop. 
 
 Newport. i2mo, paper, 5octs.; cloth, $1.25. An Echo of Passion. 
 i2mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, Si.oo. In the Distance. i2mo, 
 paper, 50 cts.; doth, §1.00. 
 " His novels have the refinement of motive which characterize the 
 analytical school, but his manner is far more direct and dramatic." 
 
 — The Christian Union. 
 
 Brander Matthews. 
 
 The Secret of the Sea, and Other Stories. i2mo, paper, 50 cts. ; 
 
 cloth, Si.oo. The Last Meeting. i2mo, cloth, $1.00. 
 
 " Mr. Matthews is a man of wide observation and of much familiarity 
 
 with the world. His literary style is bright and crisp, with a peculiar 
 
 sparkle about it — wit and humor Judiciously mingled — which renders his 
 
 pages more than ordinarily interesting." — The Rochester Post-Express, 
 
 George Moore. 
 
 Vain Fortune. i2mo, $1.00, 
 " How a woman's previous ideas and actions will completely change 
 when the medium of a wild, intense love is interposed, was never more 
 skilfully sketched." — Boston Times. 
 
SCRIBNER'S BRIEF LIST OF FICTION. 
 
 Fit:{-James O'Brien. 
 
 The Diamond Lens, with Other Stories, lamo, paper, 50 cts. 
 
 "These stories are the only tilings in literature to be compared with 
 Poe's work, and if they do not equal if in workmanship, they certainly do 
 not yield to it in originality. " — The Philadelfhia Record. 
 
 Duffield Osborne. 
 
 The Spell of Ashtaroth. i2mo, $1.00. 
 
 "It has a simple but picturesque plot, and the story is told in a vi 'idly 
 dramatic way." — Chicago Times. 
 
 Bliss Perry. 
 
 The Broughton House. i2mo, S1.25. 
 
 " A wonderfully shrewd and vivid picture of life in one of our hill 
 towns in summer." — Hartford Post. 
 
 Thomas Nelson Page. 
 
 In Old Virginia. Marse Chan and Other Stories. i2mo, S1.25. 
 On Newfound River. lamo, $1.00. Elsket, and Other Stories. 
 ■i2mo,Si.oo. Marse Chan. Ills, by Smedley. Sq.i2mo. S'-JO. 
 
 "Mr. Page enjoys the distinction of having written the most exquisite 
 story of the war (' Marse Chan '), which has yet appeared. His stories 
 are beautiful and faithful pictures of a society now become a portion and 
 parcel of the irrevocable past." — Harper's Magazine. 
 
 George I. Putnam. 
 
 In Blue Uniform^ i2mo, $1.00. 
 
 The author of this love story, who is an ex-army officer, has given a 
 very natural picture of garrison life in the Far West, with strong character 
 studies, and a sufficient diversity of incident to give movement and cumu- 
 lative interest to the tale. 
 
 Saxe Holm's Stories. 
 
 First Series. Second Series. Each,i2mo, paper, 50c; cloth, $1.00. 
 " Saxe Holm's characters are strongly drawn, and she goes right to the 
 heart of human e.\perience, as one who knows the way. We heartily 
 commend them as vigorous, wholesome, and sufficiently exciting stories." 
 
 — The Advance. 
 
SCRIBNER'S BRIEF LIST OF FICTION. 7 
 
 Stories from Scribner. 
 
 Stories of New York. Illustrated. From Four to Six, by Annie 
 Eliot ; The Commonest Possible Story, by Bliss Perry; The End of 
 the Beginning, by George A. Hibbard ; A Puritan Ingenue, by 
 John S. Wood ; Mrs. Manstey's View, by Edith Wharton. 
 
 Stories of the Railway> Illustrated. As the Sparks Fly Upward, 
 by George A. Hibbard; How 1 Sent My Aunt to Baltimore, by 
 Charles S. Davison ; Run to Seed, by Thomas Nelson Page ; 
 Flandroe's Mogul, by A. C. Gordon. 
 In Press : Stories of the South. Stories of Italy. 
 
 Stories of the Sea: Stories of the Army. 
 
 Illustrated. Each, i6mo, paper, 50 cts.; doth, 75 cts.; half calf, $1.50. 
 
 The stories in these attractive little volumes are among the most 
 
 popular of those that have been published in " Scribner's Magazine. " They 
 
 are daintily bound, and fully and beautifully illustrated. 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. i2mo, paper, 
 
 25 cts.; cloth, $1.00. Kidnapped. i2mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, 
 
 ill., $1.25. The Merry Men, and Other Tales and Fables. 
 
 i2mo, paper, 35 cts.; cloth, $1.00. New Arabian Nights: 
 
 i2mo, paper, 30 cts.; cloth, $1.00. The Dynamiter. i2mo, 
 
 paper, 30 cts.; cloth, $1.00. The Black Arrow. 111. i2mo, 
 
 paper, 50 cts. ; cloth. Si. 00. The Wrong Box. i2mo, paper, 
 
 50 cts.; cloth, $1.00. The Master of Ballantrae. i2mo,paper, 
 
 50 cts.; cloth, ill., Si. 25. The Wrecker. i2mo, ill., Si. 25. 
 
 Island Nights' Entertainments. i2mo, ill., $1.25. 
 
 "Stevenson belongs to the romantic school of fiction writers. He is 
 
 original in style, charming,' fascinating, and delicious, with a marvelous 
 
 command of words, and with a manner ever delightful and magnetic." 
 
 — Boston Transcript. 
 
 Charles Warren Stoddard. 
 
 South Sea Idyls. i2mo, S1.50. 
 " Brimful of delicious descriptions of South Sea Island life. Neither 
 Loti nor Stevenson has expressed from tropical life the luscious, fruity 
 delicacy, or the rich wine-like bouquet of these sketches." — Independent. 
 
 T. R. Sullivan. 
 
 Day and Night Stories. First and Second Series. Each, i2mo, 
 
 cloth, Sioo; paper, 50 cts. Roses of Shadow. i2ino, $1.00. 
 
 " Mr. Sullivan's style is at once easy and refined, conveying most 
 
 happily that atmosphere of good breeding and polite society which is 
 
 indispensable to the novel of manners, but which so many of them 
 
 lamentably fail of." — Tie Nation. 
 
8 SCRIBNER'S BRIEF LIST OF FICTION, 
 
 Frederick J. Stimson (J. S. of Dale). 
 
 Guerndale. i2mo, paper, !iocts.; cloth, Si. 25. The Crime of 
 Henry Vane. i2mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.00. The Senti- 
 mental Calendar. 111. iimo, S'-oo. First Harvest. i2mo, 
 $1.25. The Residuary Legatee. i2mo, paper, 35 cts.; cloth, 
 $1.00. In the Three Zones, iimo, $1.00. 
 "No young novelist in this country seems better equipped than Mr. 
 Stimson is." — The Philadelphia Bulletin. 
 
 Frank R. Stockton. 
 
 Rudder Grange. i2mo, paper, 60 cts.; cloth, $1.25; illustrated by 
 A. B. Frost, Sq. i2mo, $2.00. The Late Mrs; Null. i2mo, 
 paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.25. The Lady, or The Tiger? and 
 Other Stories. i2mo, pzper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.25. The Christ- 
 mas Wreck, and Other Stories. i2nio, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, 
 $1.25. The Bee-Man of Orn, and Other Fanciful Tales. i2mo, 
 cloth. Si. 25. Amos Kilbright, with Other Stories. i2mo, 
 paper, 50 cts.; cloth, S'.25. The Rudder Grangers Abroad, 
 and Other Stories. i2mo, paper, 50 cts ; cloth. Si. 25. 
 "Of Mr. Stockton's stories what is there to say, but that they are an 
 unmixed blessing and delight? He is surely one of the most inventive of 
 talents, discovering not only a new kind in humor and fancy, but accumu- 
 lating an inexhaustible wealth of details in each fresh achievement, the 
 least of which would be riches from another hand." — W. D. Howells. 
 
 Stories by American Authors. 
 
 Cloth, 161110, JO cts. each; set, 10 vols., $J.oo / cabinet edition, 
 in sets only, %y.SO. 
 " The public ought to appreciate the value of this series, which is pre- 
 serving permanently in American literature short stories that have con- 
 tributed to its advancement." — The Boston Globe. 
 
 Octave Tbanet. 
 
 Expiation. Illustrated by A. B. Frost. i2mo, paper, :;o cts.; 
 cloth. Si -00. Stories of a Western Town. i2mo. Illustrated 
 by A. B. Frost. $1.25. 
 
 Octave Thanet has in this new book of Western stories a completely 
 fresh field, in which she has done her finest work. These stories portray 
 the types and conditions of life in the thriving, pushing towns of the great 
 Central Western States with knowledge, sympathy and a fine literary art. 
 
 John T. Wheelwright. 
 
 A Child of the Century, i2mo, paper, 50 cts.; cloth, Si. 00. 
 " A typical story of political and social life, free from cynicism of morbid 
 realism, and brimming over with fun." — The Chrutian at Work.