Search where you will in the record of Kings, you will find nowhere a figure more splendid and more impressive than that of the fourteenth Louis, who for more then seventy years ruled over France, and for more than fifty eclipsed in glory his fellow-sovereigns as the sun pales the stars. Nearly two centuries have gone since he closed his weary and disillusioned eyes on the world he had so long dominated; but to-day he shines in history in the galaxy of monarchs with a lustre almost as great as when he was hailed throughout the world as the "Sun-King," and in his pride exclaimed, "_I_ am the State."
Placed, like his successor, on the greatest throne in Europe, a child of five, fortune exhausted itself in lavishing gifts on him. The world was at his feet almost before he had learned to walk. He grew to manhood amid the adulation and flatteries of the greatest men and the fairest of women. And that he might lack no great gift, he was dowered with every physical perfection that should go to the making of a King.
There was no more goodly youth in France than Louis when he first practised the arts of love-making, in which he later became such an adept, on Mazarin's lovely niece, Marie Mancini. Tal , with a well-knit, supple figure, with dark, beautiful eyes illuminating a singularly handsome face, with a bearing of rare grace and distinction, this son of Anne of Austria was a lover whom few women could resist.
Such conquests came to him with fatal ease, and for thirty years at least, until satiety killed passion, there was no lack of beautiful women to minister to his pleasure and to console him for the lack of charms in the Spanish wife whom Mazarin thrust into his reluctant arms when he was little more than a boy, and when his heart was in Marie Mancini's keeping.
Among al the fair and frail women who succeeded one another in his affection three stand out from the rest with a prominence which his special favour assigned to each in turn. For ten early years it was Louise de la Baume-Leblanc (better known to fame as the Duchesse de Laval iere) who reigned as his uncrowned Queen, and who gave her life to his pleasure and to the care of the children she bore to him. But such constancy could not last for ever in a man so constitutionally inconstant as Louis. When the Marquise de Montespan, in al her radiant and sensuous loveliness, came on the scene, she drew the King to her arms as a flame lures the moth. Her voluptuous charms, her abounding vitality and witty tongue, made the more refined beauty and the gentleness of the Duchesse flavourless in comparison; and Louise, realising that her sun had set, retired to spend the rest of her life in the prayers and piety of a convent, leaving her brilliant rival in undisputed possession of the field.
For many years Madame de Montespan, the most consummate courtesan who ever enslaved a King, queened it over Louis in her magnificent apartments at Versailles and in the Tuileries. He was never weary of showering rich gifts and favours on her; and, in return, she became the mother of his children and ministered to his every whim, little dreaming of the day when she in turn was to be dethroned by an insignificant widow whom she regarded as the creature of her bounty, and who so often awaited her pleasure in her ante-room.
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When Francoise d'Aubigne was cradled, one November day in the year 1635, within the walls of a fortress-prison in Poitou, the prospect of a Queendom seemed as remote as a palace in the moon. She had good blood in her veins, it is true. Her ancestors had been noblemen of Normandy before the Conqueror ever thought of crossing the English Channel, and her grandfather, General Theodore d'Aubigne, had won distinction as a soldier on many a battlefield. It was to her father, profligate and spendthrift, who, after squandering his patrimony, had found himself lodged in jail, that Francoise owed the ignominy of her birthplace, for her mother had insisted on sharing the captivity of her ne'er-do-well husband.When at last Constant d'Aubigne found his prison doors opened, he shook the dust of France off his feet and took his wife and young children away to Martinique, where at least, he hoped, his record would not be known. On the voyage, we are told, the child was brought so near to death's door by an illness that her body was actual y on the point of being flung overboard when her mother detected signs of life, and rescued her from a watery grave. A little later, in Martinique, she had an equal y narrow escape from death as the result of a snakebite. A child thus twice miraculously preserved was evidently destined for better things than an early tomb, more than one declared; and so indeed it proved.
When the father ended his mis-spent days in the West Indian island, the widow took her poverty and her fledgelings back to France, where Francoise was placed under the charge of a Madame de Villette, to pick up such education as she could in exchange for such menial work as looking after Madame's poultry and scrubbing her floors. When her mother in turn died, the child (she was only fifteen at the time) was taken to Paris by an aunt, whose miserliness or poverty often sent her hungry to bed.
Such was Francoise's condition when she was taken one day to the house of Paul Scarron, the crippled poet, whose satires and burlesques kept Paris in a ripple of merriment, and to whom the child's poverty and friendless position made as powerful an appeal as her budding beauty and her modesty. It was a very tender heart that beat in the pain-racked, paralysed body of the "father of French burlesque"; and within a few days of first setting eyes on his "little Indian girl," as he cal ed her, he asked her to marry him. "It is a sorry offer to make you, my dear child," he said, "but it is either this or a convent." And, to escape the convent, Francoise consented to become the wife of the
"bundle of pains and deformities" old enough to be her father.
In the marriage-contract Scarron, with characteristic buffoonery, recognises her as bringing a dower of "four louis, two large and very expressive eyes, a fine bosom, a pair of lovely hands, and a good intel ect"; while to the attorney, when asked what his contribution was, he answered, "I give her my name, and that means immortality." For eight years Francoise was the dutiful wife of her crippled husband, nursing him tenderly, managing his home and his purse, redeeming his writing from its coarseness, and general y proving her gratitude by a ceaseless devotion. Then came the day when Scarron bade her farewel on his death-bed, begging her with his last breath to remember him sometimes, and bidding her to be "always virtuous."
Thus Francoise d'Aubigne was thrown once more on a cold world, with nothing between her and starvation but Scarron's smal pension, which the Queen-mother continued to his widow, and compelled to seek a cheap refuge within convent walls. She had however good-looks which might stand her in good stead. She was tal , with an imposing figure and a natural dignity of carriage. She had a wealth of light-brown hair, eyes dark and brilliant, full of fire and intel igence, a wel -shaped nose, and an exquisitely model ed mouth.
Beautiful she was beyond doubt, in these days of her prime; but there were thousands of more beautiful women in France. And for ten years Madame Scarron was left to languish within the convent wal s with never a lover to offer her release. When the Queen-mother died, and with her the pitiful pension, her plight was indeed pitiful. Her petitions to the King fel on deaf ears, until Montespan, moved by her tears and entreaties, pleaded for her; and Louis at last gave a reluctant consent to continue the al owance.
It was a happy inspiration that led Scarron's widow to the King's favourite, for Madame de Montespan's heart, ever better than her life, went out to the gentle woman whom fate was treating so scurvily. Not content with procuring the pension, she placed her in charge of her nursery, an office of great trust and delicacy; and thus Madame Scarron found herself comfortably installed in the King's palace with a salary of two thousand crowns a year. Her day of poverty and independence was at last ended. She had, in fact, though she little knew it, placed her foot on the ladder, at the summit of which was the dazzling prize of the King's hand.
Those were happy years which followed. High in the favour of the King's mistress, loving the little ones given into her charge as if they were her own children, especial y the eldest born, the delicate and warm-hearted Duc de Maine, who was also his father's darling, Madame had nothing left to wish for in life. Her days were ful of duty, of peace, and contentment. Even Louis, as he watched the loving care she lavished on his children, began to thaw and to smile on her, and to find pleasure in his visits to the nursery, which grew more and more frequent. There was a charm in this sweet-eyed, gentle-voiced widow, whose tongue was so skilful in wise and pleasant words. Her patient devotion deserved recognition. He gave orders that more fitting apartments should be assigned to Madame--a suite little less sumptuous than that of Montespan herself; and that money should not be lacking, he made her a gift of two hundred thousand francs, which the provident widow promptly invested in the purchase of the castle and estate of Maintenon.
Such marked favours as these not unnaturally set jealous tongues wagging. Even Montespan began to grow uneasy, and to wonder what was coming next. When she ventured to refer sarcastical y to the use
"Scarron's widow" had made of his present, Louis silenced her by answering, "In my opinion, _Madame de Maintenon_ has acted very wisely"; thus by a word conferring noble rank on the woman his favourite was already beginning to fear as a rival.
And indeed there were soon to be sufficient grounds for Montespan's jealously and alarm. Every day saw Louis more and more under the spel of his children's governess--the middle-aged woman whose musical voice, gentle eyes, and wise words of counsel were opening a new and better world to him. She knew, as well as himself, how sated and weary he was of the cup of pleasure he had now drained to its last dregs of disillusionment; and he listened with eager ears to the words which pointed to him a surer path of happiness. Even reproof from her lips became more grateful to him than the sweetest flatteries from those of the most beautiful woman who counted but half of her years.
The growing influence of the widow Scarron over the "Sun-King" had already become the chief gossip of the Court. From the al urements of Montespan, of Mademoiselle de Fontanges, and of de Ludre he loved to escape to the apartments of the soft-voiced woman who cared so much more for his soul than for his smiles. "His Majesty's interviews with Madame de Maintenon," Madame de Sevigne writes, "become more and more frequent, and they last from six in the morning to ten at night, she sitting in one arm-chair, he in another."
In vain Montespan stormed and wept in her fits of jealous rage; in vain did the beautiful de Fontanges seek to lure him to her arms, until death claimed her so tragical y before she had well passed her twentieth birthday. The King had had more than enough of such Delilahs. Pleasure had pal ed; peace was what he craved now--salve for his seared conscience.
When Madame de Maintenon was appointed principal lady-in-waiting to the Dauphine and when, a little later, Louis' unhappy Queen drew her last breath in her arms, Montespan at last realised that her day of power was over. She wrote letters to the King begging him not to withdraw his affection from her, but to these appeals Louis was silent; he handed the letters to Madame de Maintenon to answer as she willed.
The Court was quick to realise that a new star had risen; ministers and ambassadors now flocked to the new divinity to consult her and to win her favour. The governess was hailed as the new Queen of Louis and of France. The climax came when the King was thrown one day from his horse while hunting, and broke his arm. It was Madame de Maintenon alone who was al owed to nurse him, and who was by his side night and day. Before the arm was wel again she was standing, thickly veiled, before an improvised altar in the King's study, with Louis by her side, while the words that made them man and wife were pronounced by Archbishop de Harlay.
The prison-child had now reached the loftiest pinnacle in the land of her birth. Though she wore no crown, she was Queen of France, wielding a power which few throned ladies have ever known. Princes and Princesses rose to greet her entry with bows and curtsies; the mother of the coming King called her "aunt"; her rooms, splendid as the King's, adjoined his; she had the place of honour in the King's Council Room; the State's secrets were in her keeping; she guided and control ed the destinies of the nation. And all this greatness came to her when she had passed her fiftieth year, and when all the grace and bloom of youth were but a distant memory.
The King himself, two years her junior, and still in the prime of his manhood, was her shadow, paying to the plain, middle-aged woman such deference and courtesy as he had never shown to the youth and beauty of her predecessors in his affection. And she--thus translated to dizzy heights--kept a head as cool and a demeanour as modest as when she was
"Scarron's widow," the convent protegee. For power and splendour she cared no whit. Her ambition now, as always, was to be loved for herself, to "play a beautiful part in the world," and to deserve the respect of all good men.
Her chief pleasure was found away from the pomp and glitter of the Court, among "her children" of the Saint Cyr Convent, which she had founded for the education of the daughters of poor noblemen, over whom she watched with loving and unflagging care. And yet she was not happy--not nearly as happy as in the days of her obscure widowhood. "I am dying of sorrow in the midst of luxury," she wrote. And again. "I cannot bear it. I wish I were dead." Why she was so unhappy, with her Queendom and her environment of love and esteem, and her life of good works, it is impossible to say. The fact remains, inscrutable, but still fact.
Twenty-five years of such life of splendid sadness, and Louis, his last days clouded by loss and suffering, died with her prayers in his ears, his coverlet moistened by her tears. Two years later--years spent in prayers and masses and charitable work--the "Queen Dowager" drew the last breath of her long life at St Cyr, shortly after hearing that her beloved Due de Maine, her pet nursling of other days, had been arrested and flung into prison.