upon the King so great an influence; for she was the real ruler of the
land. No woman ever ruled with more absolute sway, from Queen Esther to
Madame de Pompadour, than did the widow of the profane and crippled
Scarron. It cannot be doubted that she exerted this influence by mere
moral and intellectual force,--the power of physical beauty retreating
before the superior radiance of wisdom and virtue. La Vallière had
wearied and Montespan had disgusted even a sensual king, with all their
remarkable attractions; but Maintenon, by her prudence, her tact, her
wisdom, and her friendship, retained the empire she had won,--thus
teaching the immortal lesson that nothing but respect constitutes a sure
foundation for love, or can hold the heart of a selfish man amid the
changes of life. Whatever the promises made emphatic by passion,
whatever the presents or favors given as tokens of everlasting ties,
whatever the raptures consecrating the endearments of a plighted troth,
whatever the admiration called out by the scintillations of genius,
whatever the gratitude arising from benefits bestowed in sympathy, all
will vanish in the heart of a man unless confirmed by qualities which
extort esteem,--the most impressive truth that can be presented to the
mind of woman; her encouragement if good, her sentence to misery if bad,
so far as her hopes centre around an earthly idol.
Now, Madame de Maintenon, whatever her defects, her pharisaism, her
cunning, her ambition, and her narrow religious intolerance, was still,
it would seem, always respected, not only by the King himself,--a great
discerner of character,--but by the court which she controlled, and even
by that gay circle of wits who met around the supper-tables of her first
husband. The breath of scandal never tarnished her reputation; she was
admired by priests as well as by nobles. From this fact, which is well
attested, we infer that she acted with transcendent discretion as the
governess of the Duke of Maine, even when brought into the most
intimate relations with the King; and that when reigning at the court
after the death of the Queen, she must have been supposed to have a
right to all the attentions which she received from Louis XIV. And what
is very remarkable about this woman is, that she should so easily have
supplanted Madame de Montespan in the full blaze of her dazzling beauty,
when the King was in the maturity of his power and in all the pride of
external circumstance,--she, born a Protestant, converted to Catholicism
in her youth under protest, poor, dependent, a governess, the widow of a
vulgar buffoon, and with antecedents which must have stung to the quick
so proud a man as was Louis XIV. With his severe taste, his experience,
his discernment, with all the cynical and hostile influences of a proud
and worldly court, and after a long and searching intimacy, it is hard
to believe that he could have loved and honored her to his death if she
had not been worthy of his esteem. And when we remember that for nearly
forty years she escaped the scandals which made those times unique in
infamy, we are forced to concede that on the whole she must have been a
good woman. To retain such unbounded power for over thirty years is a
very remarkable thing to do.
Madame de Maintenon, however, though wise and virtuous, made many grave
mistakes, as she had many defects of character. Great as she was, she
has to answer for political crimes into which, from her narrow religious
prejudices, she led the King.
The most noticeable feature in the influence which Madame de Maintenon
exercised on the King was in inciting a spirit of religious intolerance.
And this appeared even long before Madame de Montespan had lost her
ascendency. For ten years before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes
there had been continual persecution of the Protestants in France, on
the ground that they were heretics, though not rebels. And the same
persecuting spirit was displayed in reference to the Jansenists, who
were Catholics, and whose only sin was intellectual boldness. Anybody
who thought differently from the monarch incurred the royal displeasure.
Intellectual freedom and honesty were the real reasons of the disgrace
of Racine and Fénelon. For the King was a bigot in religion as well as a
despot on a throne. He fancied that he was very pious. He was regular in
all his religious duties. He was an earnest and conscientious adherent
to all the doctrines of the Catholic Church. In his judgment, a
departure from those doctrines should be severely punished. He was as
sincere as Torquemada, or Alva, or Saint Dominic. His wife encouraged
this bigotry, and even stimulated his resentments toward those who
differed from him.
At last, in 1685, the fatal blow was struck which decimated the
subjects of an irresponsible king. The glorious edict which Henry IV.
had granted, and which even Richelieu and Mazarin had respected, was
repealed. There was no political necessity for the crime. It sprang from
unalloyed religious intolerance; and it was as suicidal as it was
uncalled for and cruel. It was an immense political blunder, which no
enlightened monarch would ever have committed, and which none but a cold
and narrow woman would ever have encouraged. There was no excuse or
palliation for this abominable persecution any more than there was for
the burning of John Huss. It had not even as much to justify it as had
the slaughter of St. Bartholomew, for the Huguenots were politically
hostile and dangerous. It was an act of wanton cruelty incited by
religious bigotry. I wonder how a woman so kind-hearted, so intelligent,
and so politic as Madame de Maintenon doubtless was, could have
encouraged the King to a measure which undermined his popularity, which
cut the sinews of natural strength, and raised up implacable enemies in
every Protestant country. I can palliate her detestable bigotry only on
the ground that she was the slave of an order of men who have ever
proved themselves to be the inveterate foes of human freedom, and who
marked their footsteps, wherever they went, by a trail of blood. Louis
was equally their blinded tool. The Order--the "Society of Jesus"--was
created to extirpate heresy, and in this instance it was carried out to
the bitter end. The persecution of the Protestants under Louis XIV. was
the most cruel and successful of all known persecutions in ancient or
modern times. It annihilated the Protestants, so far as there were any
left openly to defend their cause. It drove out of France from two
hundred thousand to four hundred thousand of her best people, and
executed or confined to the galleys as many more, They died like sheep
led to the slaughter; they died not with arms, but Bibles, in their
hands. I have already presented some details of that inglorious
persecution in my lecture on Louis XIV., and will not repeat what I
there said. It was deemed by Madame de Maintenon a means of grace to the
King,--for in her way she always sought his conversion. And when the
bloody edict went forth for the slaughter of the best people in the
land, she wrote that "the King was now beginning to think seriously of
his salvation. If God preserve him, there will be no longer but one
religion in the kingdom." This foul stain on her character did not
proceed from cruelty of disposition, but from mistaken zeal. What a
contrast her conduct was to the policy of Elizabeth! Yet she was no
worse than Le Tellier, La Chaise, and other fanatics. Religious
intolerance was one of the features of the age and of the Roman
Catholic Church.
But religious bigotry is eternally odious to enlightened reason. No
matter how interesting a man or woman may be in most respects, if
stained with cruel intolerance in religious opinions, he or she will be
repulsive. It left an indelible stain on the character of the most
brilliant and gifted woman of her times, and makes us forget her many
virtues. With all her excellences, she goes down in history as a cold
and intolerant woman whom we cannot love. We cannot forget that in a
great degree through her influence the Edict of Nantes was repealed.
The persecution of the Protestants, however, partially reveals the
narrow intolerance of Madame de Maintenon. She sided but with those
whose influence was directed to the support of the recognized dogmas of
the Church in their connection with the absolute rule of kings. The
interests of Catholic institutions have ever been identical with
absolutism. Bossuet, the ablest theologian and churchman which the
Catholic Church produced in the seventeenth century, gave the whole
force of his vast intellect to uphold an unlimited royal authority. He
saw in the bold philosophical speculations of Descartes, Malebranche,
Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Locke an insidious undermining of the doctrines
of the Church, an intellectual freedom whose logical result would be
fatal alike to Church and State. His eagle eye penetrated to the core of
every system of human thought. He saw the logical and necessary results
of every theory which Pantheists, or Rationalists, or Quietists, or
Jansenists advanced. Whatever did not support the dogmas of mediaeval
and patriotic theologians, such as the Papal Church indorsed, was
regarded by him with suspicion and aversion. Every theory or speculation
which tended to emancipate the mind, or weaken the authority of the
Church, or undermine an absolute throne, was treated by him with
dogmatic intolerance and persistent hatred. He made war alike on the
philosophers, the Jansenists, and the Quietists, whether they remained
in the ranks of the Church or not. It was the dangerous consequences of
these speculations pushed to their logical result which he feared and
detested, and which no other eye than his was able to perceive.
Bossuet communicated his spirit to Madame de Maintenon and to the King,
who were both under his influence as to the treatment of religious or
philosophical questions. Louis and his wife were both devout supporters
of orthodoxy,--that is, the received doctrines of the Church,--partly
from conservative tendencies, and partly from the connection of
established religious institutions with absolutism in government.
Whatever was established, was supported because it was established. They
would suffer no innovation, not even in philosophy. Anything progressive
was abhorred as much as anything destructive. When Fénelon said, "I
love my family better than myself, my country better than my family, and
the human race better than my country," he gave utterance to a sentiment
which was revolutionary in its tendency. When he declared in his
"Télémaque" what were the duties of kings,--that they reigned for the
benefit of their subjects rather than for themselves,--he undermined the
throne which he openly supported. It was the liberal spirit which
animated Fénelon, as well as the innovations to which his opinions
logically led, which arrayed against him the king who admired him, the
woman who had supported him, and the bishop who was jealous of him.
Although he charmed everybody with whom he associated by the angelic
sweetness of his disposition, his refined courtesies of manner, and his
sparkling but inoffensive wit,--a born courtier as well as philosopher,
the most interesting and accomplished man of his generation,--still,
neither Bossuet nor Madame de Maintenon nor the King could tolerate his
teachings, so pregnant were they with innovations; and he was exiled to
his bishopric. Madame de Maintenon, who once delighted in Fénelon,
learned to detest him as much as Bossuet did, when the logical tendency
of his writings was seen. She would rivet the chains of slavery on the
human intellect as well as on the devotees of Rome or the courtiers of
the King, while Fénelon would have emancipated the race itself in the
fervor and sincerity of his boundless love.
This hostility to Fénelon was not caused entirely by the political
improvements he would have introduced, but because his all-embracing
toleration sought to protect the sentimental pantheism which Madame
Guyon inculcated in her maxims of disinterested love and voluntary
passivity of the soul towards God, in opposition to that rationalistic
pantheism which Spinoza defended, and into which he had inexorably
pushed with unexampled logic the deductions of Malebranche. The men who
finally overturned the fabric of despotism which Richelieu constructed
were the philosophers. The clear but narrow intellect of the King and
his wife instinctively saw in them the natural enemies of the throne;
and hence they were frowned upon, if not openly persecuted.
We are forced therefore to admit that the intolerance of Madame de
Maintenon, repulsive as it was, arose in part, like the intolerance of
Bossuet, from zeal to uphold the institutions and opinions on which the
Church and the throne were equally based. The Jesuits would call such a
woman a nursing mother of the Church, a protector of the cause of
orthodoxy, the watchful guardian of the royal interests and those of all
established institutions. Any ultra-conservatism, logically carried out,
would land any person on the ground where she stood.
But while Madame de Maintenon was a foe to everything like heresy, or
opposition to the Catholic Church, or true intellectual freedom, she was
the friend of education. She was the founder of the celebrated School of
St. Cyr, where three hundred young ladies, daughters of impoverished
nobles, were educated gratuitously. She ever took the greatest interest
in this school, and devoted to it all the time her numerous engagements
would permit. She visited it every day, and was really its president and
director. There was never a better school for aristocratic girls in a
Catholic country. She directed their studies and superintended their
manners, and brought to bear on their culture her own vast experience.
If Bossuet was a born priest, she was a born teacher. It was for the
amusement of the girls that Racine was induced by her to write one of
his best dramas,--"Queen Esther," a sort of religious tragedy in the
severest taste, which was performed by the girls in the presence of the
most distinguished people of the court.
Madame de Maintenon exerted her vast influence in favor of morality and
learning. She rewarded genius and scholarship. She was the patron of
those distinguished men who rendered important services to France,
whether statesmen, divines, generals, or scholars. She sought to bring
to the royal notice eminent merit in every department of life within the
ranks of orthodoxy. A poet, or painter, or orator, who gave remarkable
promise, was sure of her kindness; and there were many such. For the
world is full at all times of remarkable young men and women, but there
are very few remarkable men at the age of fifty.
And her influence on the court was equally good. She discouraged
levities, gossip, and dissipation. If the palace was not so gay as
during the reign of Madame de Montespan, it was more decorous and more
intellectual. It became fashionable to go to church, and to praise good
sermons and read books of casuistry. "Tartuffe grew pale before
Escobar." Bossuet and Bourdaloue were equal oracles with Molière and
Racine. Great preachers were all the fashion. The court became very
decorous, if it was hypocritical. The King interested himself in
theological discussions, and became as austere as formerly he was gay
and merry. He regretted his wars and his palace-building; for both were
discouraged by Madame de Maintenon, who perceived that they impoverished
the nation. She undertook the mighty task of reforming the court itself,
as well as the morals of the King; and she partially succeeded. The
proud Nebuchadnezzar whom she served was at last made to confess that
there was a God to whom he was personally responsible; and he was
encouraged to bear with dignity those sad reverses which humiliated his
pride, and drank without complaint the dregs of that bitter cup which
retributive justice held out in mercy before he died. It was his wife
who revealed the deceitfulness, the hypocrisy, the treachery, and the
heartlessness of that generation of vipers which he had trusted and
enriched. She was more than the guardian of his interests; she was his
faithful friend, who dissuaded him from follies. So that outwardly Louis
XIV. became a religious man, and could perhaps have preached a sermon on
the vanity of a worldly life,--that whatever is born in vanity must end
in vanity.
It is greatly to the credit of Madame de Maintenon that she was
interested in whatever tended to improve the morals of the people or to
develop the intellect. She was one of those strong-minded women who are
impressible by grand sentiments. She would have admired Madame de Staël
or Madame Roland,--not their opinions, but their characters. Politics
was perhaps the most interesting subject to her, as it has ever been to
very cultivated women in France; and it was with the details of cabinets
and military enterprises that she was most familiar. It was this
political knowledge which made her so wise a counsellor and so necessary
a companion to the King. But her reign was nevertheless a usurpation.
She triumphed in consequence of the weakness of her husband more than by
her own strength; and the nation never forgave her. She outraged the
honor of the King, and detracted from the dignity of the royal station.
Louis XIV. certainly had the moral right to marry her, as a nobleman may
espouse a servant-girl; but it was a _faux-pas_ which the proud
idolaters of rank could not excuse.
And for this usurpation Madame de Maintenon paid no inconsiderable a
penalty. She was insulted by the royal family to the day of her death.
The Dauphin would not visit her, even when the King led him to the door
of her apartments. The courtiers mocked her behind her back. Her rivals
thrust upon her their envenomed libels. Even Racine once so far forgot
himself as to allude in her presence to the miserable farces of the poet
Scarron,--an unpremeditated and careless insult which she never forgot
or forgave. Moreover, in all her grandeur she was doomed to the most
exhaustive formalities and duties; for the King exacted her constant
services, which wearied and disgusted her. She was born for freedom, but
was really a slave, although she wore gilded fetters. She was not what
one would call an unhappy or disappointed woman, since she attained the
end to which she had aspired. But she could not escape humiliations. She
was in a false position. Her reputation was aspersed. She was only a
wife whose marriage was concealed; she was not a queen. All she gained,
she extorted. In rising to the exalted height of ruling the court of
France she yet abdicated her throne as an untrammelled queen of society,
and became the slave of a pompous, ceremonious, self-conscious,
egotistical, selfish, peevish, self-indulgent, tyrannical, exacting,
priest-ridden, worn-out, disenchanted old voluptuary. And when he died
she was treated as a usurper rather than a wife, and was obliged to
leave the palace, where she would have been insulted, and take up her
quarters in the convent she had founded. The King did not leave her by
his will a large fortune, so that she was obliged to curtail her
charities.
Madame de Maintenon lived to be eighty-four, and retained her
intellectual faculties to the last, retiring to the Abbey of St. Cyr on
the death of the King in 1715, and surviving him but four years. She was
beloved and honored by those who knew her intimately. She was the idol
of the girls of St. Cyr, who worshipped the ground on which she trod.
Yet she made no mark in history after the death of Louis XIV. All her
greatness was but the reflection of his glory. Her life, successful as
it was, is but a confirmation of the folly of seeking a position which
is not legitimate. No position is truly desirable which is a false one,
which can be retained only by art, and which subjects one to humiliation
and mortifications. I have great admiration for the many excellent
qualities of this extraordinary and gifted woman, although I know that
she is not a favorite with historians. She is not endeared to the heart
of the nation she indirectly ruled. She is positively disliked by a
large class, not merely for her narrow religious intolerance, but even
for the arts by which she gained so great an influence. Yet, liked or
disliked, it would be difficult to find in French history a greater or
more successful woman.
AUTHORITIES.
Henri Martin's History of France; Biographic Universelle; Miss Pardoe's
History of the Court of Louis XIV.; Lacretelle's History of France; St.
Simon's Mémoires; Voltaire's Siècle de Louis XIV.; Guizot's History of
France; Early Days of Madame de Maintenon, Eclectic Magazine, xxxii. 67;
Life and Character of Madame de Maintenon, Quarterly Review, xcvi. 394;
Fortnightly Review, xxv. 607; Temple Bar, Iv. 243; Fraser, xxxix. 231;
Mémoires of Louis XIV., Quarterly Review, xix. 46; James's Life and
Times of Louis XIV.; James's Life of Madame de Maintenon; Secret
Correspondence of Madame de Maintenon; Taine on the Ancien Régime;
Browning's History of the Huguenots, Edinburgh Review, xcix. 454;
Butler's Lives of Fénelon and Bossuet; Abbé Ledieu's Mémoire de Bossuet;
Bentley, Memoirs de Madame de Montespan, xlviii. 309; De Bausset's Life
of Fénelon.
SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH.
* * * * *
A.D. 1660-1744.
THE WOMAN OF THE WORLD.
In the career of Madame de Maintenon we have seen in a woman an
inordinate ambition to rise in the world and control public affairs. In
the history of the Duchess of Marlborough, we see the same ambition, the
same love of power, the same unscrupulous adaptation of means to an end.
Yet the aim and ends of these two remarkable political women were
different. The Frenchwoman had in view the reform of a wicked court, the
interests of education, the extirpation of heresy, the elevation of men
of genius, the social and religious improvement of a great nation, as
she viewed it, through a man who bore absolute sway. The Englishwoman
connived at political corruptions, was indifferent to learning and
genius, and exerted her great influence, not for the good of her
country, but to advance the fortunes of her family. Madame de Maintenon,
if narrow and intolerant, was unselfish, charitable, religious, and
patriotic; the Duchess of Marlborough was selfish, grasping,
avaricious, and worldly in all her aspirations. Both were
ambitious,--the one to benefit the country which she virtually ruled,
and the other to accumulate honors and riches by cabals and intrigues in
the court of a weak woman whom she served and despised. Madame de
Maintenon, in a greater position, as the wife of the most powerful
monarch in Christendom, was gentle, amiable, condescending, and
kind-hearted; the Duchess of Marlborough was haughty, insolent, and
acrimonious. Both were beautiful, bright, witty, and intellectual; but
the Frenchwoman was immeasurably more cultivated, and was impressible by
grand sentiments.
And yet the Duchess of Marlborough was a great woman. She was the most
prominent figure in the Court of Queen Anne, and had a vast influence on
the politics of her day. Her name is associated with great statesmen and
generals. She occupied the highest social position of any woman in
England after that of the royal family. She had the ear and the
confidence of the Queen. The greatest offices were virtually at her
disposal. Around her we may cluster the leading characters and events of
the age of Queen Anne.