THE "SUN-KING" AND THE WIDOW
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. Tall, 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 all 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
Lavallière) 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 all 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.
* * * * *
When Françoise d'Aubigné 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'Aubigné, 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 Françoise 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'Aubigné 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 actually 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 equally 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
Françoise 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 Françoise'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 called
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, Françoise 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
intellect"; while to the attorney, when asked what his contribution was,
he answered, "I give her my name, and that means immortality." For eight
years Françoise was the dutiful wife of her crippled husband, nursing
him tenderly, managing his home and his purse, redeeming his writing
from its coarseness, and generally proving her gratitude by a ceaseless
devotion. Then came the day when Scarron bade her farewell on his
death-bed, begging her with his last breath to remember him sometimes,
and bidding her to be "always virtuous."
Thus Françoise d'Aubigné was thrown once more on a cold world, with
nothing between her and starvation but Scarron's small 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 tall, 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 intelligence, a well-shaped nose,
and an exquisitely modelled 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 walls 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 fell 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 allowance.
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, especially 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 full 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 sarcastically 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 spell
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 allurements 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 Sevigné 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 tragically before she had well passed her twentieth
birthday. The King had had more than enough of such Delilahs. Pleasure
had palled; 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 allowed to nurse him, and who was by his side night and day. Before
the arm was well 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 controlled 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 protégée. 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.