MAINTENON
Out from Paris, on the old Route d'Espagne, running from the capital to
the frontier, down which rolled the royal corteges of old, lie Maintenon
and its famous chateau, some sixty odd kilometres from Paris and twenty
from Rambouillet.
Just beyond Versailles, on the road to Maintenon, lies the trim little
townlet of Saint Cyr, known to-day as the West Point of France, the
military school founded by Napoleon I giving it its chief distinction.
Going back into the remote past one learns that the village grew up from
a foundation of Louis XIV, who bought for ninety-one thousand _livres_
"a chateau and a convent for women," that Madame de Maintenon might
establish a girls' school therein. She reserved an apartment for
herself, and one suspects indeed that it was simply another project of
the Widow Scarron to have a place of rendezvous near the capital.
Certainly under the circumstances, taking into consideration the good
that she was doing for orphaned girls, she might at least have been
allowed the right of a roof to shelter her when she wished. She was
absolutely dominant within, though never actually in residence for any
length of time. It was here that "Esther" and "Athalie," which Racine
had composed expressly for Madame de Maintenon's pensionnaires, were
produced for the first time.
[Illustration: Fauteuil _of_ Mme. _de_ Maintenon _Worked by the_
Demoiselles _of_ Saint Cyr]
When not actually living at Saint Cyr it was Madame de Maintenon's
custom to come hither from Paris each day, arriving between seven and
eight in the morning, passing the day and returning to town for the
evening, much as a celebrated American millionaire journalist, whose
country-house overlooks the famous convent garden, does to-day.
Madame de Maintenon actually went into retirement at Saint Cyr upon the
death of Louis XIV, and for four years, until her death, never left it.
She died from old age, rather than from any grave malady, in this
"Maison d'Education," which she had inaugurated, and was buried in the
chapel, beneath an elaborate tomb which the Duc de Noailles, who married
her niece, caused to be erected. The tomb was destroyed during the
Revolution and the "Maison Royale de Saint Cyr," of which nothing had
been changed since its foundation, was suppressed, the edifice itself
being pillaged and the remains of Madame de Maintenon sadly profaned,
finally to be recovered and deposited again in the chapel where a simple
black marble slab marks them in these graven words:
Cy-Git Madame De Maintenon
1635-1719-1836
Napoleon I established the Ecole Militaire at Saint Cyr, from which are
graduated each year more than four hundred subaltern officers.
The ancient gardens of Madame de Maintenon's time now form the "Champs
de Mars," or drill ground, of the military school.
South from Saint Cyr runs the great international highroad, the old
Route Royale of the monarchy. It rises and falls, but mostly straight as
the flight of the crow, until it crosses the great National Forest of
Rambouillet. Following the valley of the Eure almost to its headwaters
it finally comes to Maintenon, a town of a couple of thousand souls,
whose most illustrious inhabitant was that granddaughter of
Theodore-Agrippa d'Aubigne, named Francoise, and who came in time to be
the Marquise de Maintenon.
The Chateau de Maintenon was royal in all but name. The Tresorier des
Finances under Louis XI, Jean Cottereau (a public official who made good
it seems, since he also served in the same capacity for Charles VIII,
Louis XII, and Francis I), had a single daughter, Isabeau, who, in 1526,
married Jacques d'Angennes, who at the time was already Seigneur de
Rambouillet.
As a dot this daughter acquired the lands of Maintenon. The property was
afterwards sold to the Marquis de Villeray, from whom Louis XIV bought
it in 1674 and disposed of it as a royal gift to Francoise d'Aubigne,
the fascinator of kings, who was afterwards to become (in 1688) Madame
La Marquise de Maintenon.
This ambitious woman subsequently married her niece to the Duc d'Ayen,
son of the Marechal de Noailles, and as a marriage portion--or possibly
to avoid unpleasant consequences--turned over the property of Maintenon
to the young bride and her husband to whose family, the Noailles, it has
ever since belonged.
To-day the Duc and Duchesse de Noailles make lengthy stays in this
delightful seigneurial dwelling, and since the apartments are full to
overflowing of historical souvenirs of their family it may be truly said
that their twentieth century life is to some considerable extent in
accord with the traditions of other days.
The existence of this princely residence is an agreeable reminder of the
life of luxury of the olden time albeit certain modernities which we
to-day think necessities are lacking.
Maintenon is certainly one of the most beautiful so-called royal
chateaux of France, if not by its actual importance at least by many of
the attributes of its architecture, the extent of the domain and the
history connected therewith. It bridges the span between the private
chateau and those which may properly be called royal.
In the moyen-age Maintenon was a veritable chateau-fort, forming a
quadrilateral edifice flanked by round towers at three of its angles,
and at the fourth by a great square mass of a donjon, all of which was
united by a vast expanse of solidly built wall which possessed all the
classic attributes of the best military architecture of its time.
Entrance was only over a deep moat spanned by a drawbridge.
[Illustration: _Chateau de Maintenon_]
Jean Cottereau made his acquisition of the domain towards 1490 and
immediately planned a new scheme of being for the old fortress which,
according to a more esthetic conception, would thus be brought into the
class of a luxurious residential chateau. He destroyed the _courtines_
which attached the great donjon to the rest of the building, and opened
up the courtyard so that it faced directly upon the park. He ornamented
sumptuously the window framings, the dormer windows, and the turrets,
and framed in the entrance portal with a series of sculptured motives
which he also added to the entrance to the great inner stairway. In
short it was an enlargement and embellishment that was undertaken, but
so thoroughly was it done that the edifice quite lost its original
character in the process. Like all the chateaux built at this epoch
Maintenon was no longer a mere fortress, but a palatial retreat,
luxurious in all its appointments, and shorn of all the manifest
militant attributes which it had formerly possessed.
The shell was there, following closely the original outlines, but the
added ornamentation had effectually disguised its primordial existence.
Living rooms needed light and air, while a fortress or quarters for
troops might well be ordained on other lines. The Renaissance livened up
considerably the severe lines of the Gothic chateaux of France, and
though invariably the marks of the transition are visible to the expert
eye it is also true, as in the case of Maintenon, that there is
frequently a homogeneousness which is sufficiently pleasing to
effectually cover up any discrepancies which might otherwise be
apparent. The warrior aspect is invariably lost in the transition, and
thus a Renaissance residential chateau enters at once into a different
class from that of the feudal fortress regardless of the fact that such
may have been its original status.
The armorial device of Jean Cottereau--three unlovely lizards blazoned
on a field of silver--is still to be seen sculptured on the two towers
flanking the entrance portal which to-day lacks its old drawbridge
before mentioned. Surrounding the edifice is a deep, unhealthful,
mosquito-breeding moat which is all a mediaeval moat should be, but which
is actually no great attribute to the place considering its
disadvantages. One wonders that it is allowed to exist in so stagnant a
condition, as the running waters of the near-by Eure might readily be
made use of to change all this. The site of the chateau at the
confluence of the Eure and the Voise is altogether charming.
Madame de Maintenon did much to make the property more commodious and
convenient and built the great right wing which binds the donjon to the
main _corps de logis_. Her own apartments were situated in the new part
of the palace. She also built the gallery which leads from the Tour de
Machicoulis to the pointed chapel, which was a construction of the time
of Cottereau, an accessory which every self-respecting country-house of
the time was bound to have. It was by this gallery that the open tribune
in the little chapel was reached, thus enabling Louis XIV to pass
readily to mass while he was so frequent a visitor at that period when,
at Maintenon, he was overseeing the construction of his famous aqueduct.
Maintenon has had the honour, too, to count among its illustrious guests
Racine, who came at the request of Madame de Maintenon, and here wrote
"Esther" and "Athalie" which were later produced at Saint Cyr by Madame
de Maintenon's celebrated band of "Demoiselles."
Louis XIV was not the last of royal race to accept the Chateau de
Maintenon's hospitality for the unhappy Charles X was obliged to ask
shelter of its chatelain for himself and fleeing family. They arrived a
little after midnight of a hot August night, slept as well as possible
in the former apartments of Madame de Maintenon, and attended mass in
the chapel on the following morning. The monarch then discharged the
royal guard and the "hundred Swiss" and gave up, defeated at the game of
playing monarch against the will of the people.
One enters the _Cour d'Honneur_ by a great portal of the time of Louis
XIV. Immediately before one is the principal facade, with its towers of
brick and its slender little turrets framing in so admirably the
entrance door. This facade is of the fifteenth century and on the tympan
of the dormer windows one may still see the monogram of its builder,
Cottereau. The drawbridge has been made way with, and the turrets over
the portal have been bound together by a diminutive balcony of stone,
which, while a manifest superfluity, is in no way objectionable.
Under the entrance vault are doors on either side giving access to the
living apartments of the _rez-de-chaussee_. In the inner courtyard is to
be found the most exquisite architectural detail of the whole fabric,
the tower which encloses the monumental stairway, to which entrance is
had by a portal which is a veritable Gothic jewel. In the tympan of this
portal, as in the dormer windows, is the device of Jean Cottereau,
except in this case it is much more elaborate--a Saint Michel and the
dragon, surrounded by a "_semis de coquilles_" bearing the escutcheons
of the chatelain--_d'argent a lezards de sable_.
At the left of this stairway tower is the principal courtyard facade,
supported by four arcades, pierced with great windows and surmounted by
two fine dormer windows, all in the style of Louis XII, of which the
same effects to be observed at Blois and in the Hotel d'Alluye are
contemporary.
At the left of the inner court is the wing built by Cottereau which
terminates in a great round tower, while to the right is that erected by
Madame de Maintenon ending at the donjon. Directly opposite is a
magnificent vista over the canal of ornamental water framed on either
side by patriarchal trees and having as a background the silhouette of
the arches of the famous aqueduct which was to lead the waters of the
Eure to Versailles.
The interior of the chateau is not less remarkable than the exterior.
Entering by the tower portal one comes at once to that magnificent
_grand escalier_ which is accounted one of the wonders of the French
Renaissance.
The Salle a Manger of to-day was the old-time Salle des Gardes. It is
garnished with a fine wainscoting and panels of Cordovan leather. The
Chambre a Coucher of Louis XIV, to the left, is to-day the Salon, and
here are to be seen portraits of Louis XIV, Louis XII, Francis I, Henri
IV, and Louis XIII.
A tiny rotunda contains a statue of Henri IV as a child, and portraits
of Madame de Maintenon and Louis XIV in their youth. A portrait gallery
of restrained proportions contains effigies of Madame de Maintenon and
her niece Mademoiselle d'Aubigne, the Duc de Penthievre, the Comtesse de
Toulouse, the Duc de Noailles, the Duchesse de Villars and the Duchesse
de Chaumont.
The show-piece of the chateau, albeit of recent construction, is known
variously as the "Grand Galerie" and the "Longue Galerie." Its
decorations are due to the Duc de Noailles, the father of the present
proprietor. Virtually it is a portrait gallery of the Noailles family,
going back to the times of the Crusaders and coming down to the
twentieth century.
The apartments of Madame de Maintenon form that portion of the chateau
which has the chief sentimental interest. In an ante-chamber is a
_chaise a porteurs_ once having belonged to the Marquise, and her
portrait by Mignard. Cordovan leather is hung upon the walls, and the
restored sleeping-room is hung with a canopy and separated from the rest
of the apartment by a balustrade in _bois dore_. Above the
chimney-piece is a portrait of Louis XIV, after Rigaud, and, finally,
the oratory is ornamented by a series of elegant sculptures in wood and
a magnificent Boule coffer.
[Illustration: _Aqueduct of Louis XIV at Maintenon_]
In the left wing is found a beautiful chapel of the fifteenth century,
which is very pure in style. It is decorated with a series of
Renaissance wood panels of the finest workmanship. The coloured glass of
the windows is of the sixteenth century.
The rebuilt monumental stairway connects directly with a passage leading
to the entrance portico which opens on the garden terrace before the
_parterre_.
The park of Maintenon is in every way admirable, with its _pelouse_, its
great border of trees, its waterways and more than thirty bridges. Jean
Cottereau himself planned the first vegetable and fruit garden, or
_potager_, the same whose successor is the delight of the dwellers at
Maintenon to-day.
The _parterre_, the Grand Canal and the two avenues of majestic trees
were due to the conception of Le Notre, and their effect, as set off by
the alleyed forest background and the pillars of the aqueduct of Louis
XIV, is something unique.
The gardens at Maintenon were perhaps not Le Notre's most famous work
but they followed the best traditions of their time, and because of
their vast expanse of ornamental water were, in a way, quite unequalled.
Ambling off towards the forest is a great avenue flanked with high
overhanging shade trees known as the Allee Racine. It gets its name from
the fact that the dramatist was wont to take his walks abroad in this
direction and woo the muse while he was a guest of Madame de Maintenon.