The Third Night of Young's Complaint is entitled Narcissa, from its

being dedicated to the sad history of the early death of a beautiful

lady, thus poetically designated by the author. Whatever doubts may

exist with respect to the reality or personal identity of the other

characters noticed in the "Night Thoughts," there can be none whatever

as regards Narcissa. She was the daughter of Young's wife, by her

first husband, Colonel Lee. When scarcely seventeen years of age she

was married to Mr. Henry Temple, son of the then Lord Palmerston.

[Footnote 158] Soon afterward, being attacked by consumption, she was

taken by Young to the south of France in hopes of a change for the

better; but she died there about a year after her marriage, and Dr.

Johnson tells us, in his "Lives of the Poets," that "her funeral was

attended with the difficulties painted in such animated colors in

Night the Third." Young's words in relation to the burial of Narcissa,

eliminating, for brevity's sake, some extraneous and redundant lines,

are as follows:

[Footnote 158: By a second wife, grandfather of the present

Premier.]

"While nature melted, superstition raved;

That mourned the dead; and this denied a grave.

For oh! the curst ungodliness of zeal!

While sinful flesh retarded, spirit nursed

In blind infallibility's embrace,

Denied the charity of dust to spread

O'er dust! a charity their dogs enjoy.

What could I do? what succor? what resource?

With pious sacrilege a grave I stole;

With impious piety that grave I wronged;

Short in my duty: coward in my grief!

More like her murderer than friend, I crept

With soft suspended step, and muffled deep

In midnight darkness, whispered my last sigh.

I whispered what should echo through their realms,

Nor writ her name whose tomb should pierce the skies."

All Young's biographers have told the same story from Johnson down to

the last edition of the "Night Thoughts," edited by Mr. Gilfillan,

who, speaking of Narcissa, says "her remains were brutally denied

sepulture as the dust of a Protestant." Le Tourneure translated the

"Night Thoughts" into French in 1770, and, strange to say, the work

soon became exceedingly popular in France, more so probably than ever

it has been in England. Naturally enough, then, curiosity became

excited as to where the unfortunate Narcissa was buried, and it was

soon discovered that she had been interred in the Botanic Garden of

Montpellier. An old gate-keeper of the garden, named Mercier,

confessed that many years previously he had assisted to bury an

English lady in a hollow, waste spot of the garden. As he told the

story, an English clergyman came to him and begged that he would bury

a lady; but he refused, until the Englishman, with tears in his eyes,

said that she was his only daughter; on hearing this, he (the

gate-keeper), being a father himself, consented. Accordingly the

Englishman brought the dead {798} body on his shoulders, his eyes

raining tears, to the garden at midnight, and he there and then buried

the corpse. About the time this confession was made, Professor Gouan,

an eminent botanist, was writing a work on the plants in the garden,

into which he introduced the above story, thus giving it a sort of

scientific authority; and consequently the grave of Narcissa became

one of the treasures of the garden, and one of the leading lions of

Montpellier. A writer in the "Evangelical Magazine" of 1797 gives an

account of a visit to the garden, and a conversation with one Bannal,

who had succeeded Mercier in his office, and who had often heard the

sad story of the burial of Narcissa from Mercier's lips. Subsequently,

Talma, the tragedian, was so profoundly impressed with the story that

he commenced a subscription to erect a magnificent tomb to the memory

of Narcissa; but as the days of bigotry in matters of sepulture had

nearly passed away, it was thought better to erect a simple monument,

inscribed, as we learn from "Murray's Handbook," with the words:

"Placandis Narcissae manibus,"

the "Handbook" adding, "She was buried here at a time when the

atrocious laws which accompanied the Revocation of Nantes, backed by

the superstition of a fanatic populace, denied Christian burial to

Protestants."

Strange to say, this striking story is almost wholly devoid of truth.

Narcissa never was at Montpellier. That she died at Lyons we know from

Mr. Herbert Crofts's account of Young, published by Dr. Johnson; that

she was buried there we know by her burial registry and her tombstone,

both of which are yet in existence. And by these we also learn that

Young's "animated" account of her funeral in the "Night Thoughts" is

simply untrue. She was not denied a grave:

"Denied the charity of dust to spread

O'er dust,"

nor did he steal a grave, as he asserts, but bought and paid for it.

Her name was not unwrit, as her tombstone still testifies. The central

square of the Hotel de Dieu at Lyons was long used as a burial place

for Protestants; but the alteration in the laws at the time of the

great Revolution doing away with the necessity of having separate

burial places for different religions, the central garden was

converted into a medical garden for the use of the hospital. The

Protestants of Lyons being of the poorer class, there were few

memorials to move when the ancient burying place was made into a

garden. The principal one, however, consisting of a large slab of

black marble, was set up against a wall, close beside an old Spanish

mulberry-tree. About twenty years ago the increasing growth of this

tree necessitated the removal of the slab, when it was found that the

side which had been placed against the wall contained a Latin

inscription to the memory of Narcissa. The inscription, which is too

long to be quoted here, leaves no doubt upon the matter. It mentions

the names of her father and mother, her connection with the noble

family of Lichfield, her descent from Charles II., and concludes by

stating that she died on the 8th of Oct., 1736, aged 18 years. On

discovering this inscription M. Ozanam, the director of the Hotel de

Dieu, searched the registry of the Protestant burial, still preserved

in the Hotel de Ville at Lyons, and found an entry, of which the

following is a correct translation: "Madam Lee, daughter of Col. Lee,

aged about eighteen years, wife of Henry Temple, English by birth, was

buried at the Hotel de Dieu at Lyons, in the cemetery of persons of

the Reformed religion of the Swiss nation, the 12th of Oct., 1736, at

eleven o'clock at night, by order of the Prevot of merchants."

"Received 729 livres 12 sols. Signed, Para, priest and treasurer."

From this document, the authenticity of which is indisputable, we

learn the utter untruthfulness of Young's recital. True, Narcissa was

buried at night, and most probably {799} without any religious

service, and a considerable sum charged for the privilege of

interment, but she was not denied the "charity their dogs enjoy."

Calculating according to the average rate of exchange at the period,

729 livres would amount to thirty-five pounds sterling. Was it this

sum that excited a poetical imagination so strong as to overstep the

bounds of veracity? We could grant the excuse of poetical license had

not Young declared in his preface that the poem was "real, not

fictitious." The subject is not a pleasing one, and we need not carry

it any further; but may conclude, in the words of Mr. Cecil, who,

alluding to Young's renunciation of the world in his writings when he

was eagerly hunting for church preferment, says: "Young is, of all

other men, one of the most striking examples of the sad disunion of

piety from truth."

----

From The Dublin Review.

MADAME DE MAINTENON.

_Madame de Maintenon et sa Famille. Lettres et Documents inedits._ Par

HONORE BONHOMME. Paris: Didier. 1863.

_Histoire de Madame de Maintenon, et des principaux Evenements du Regne

de Louis XIV_. Par M. le DUC DE NOAILLES, de l'Academie Francaise.

Tomes 4. Paris: Comon. 1849-1858.

_The Life of Madame de Maintenon_. Translated from the French. London:

Lockyer Davis. 1772.

_The Secret Correspondence of Madame de Maintenon with the Princess des

Ursins, from the original manuscripts in the possession of the Duke of

Choiseul_. Translated from the French. 3 vols. London: Whittaker. 1827.

Memorial de Saint-Cyr. Paris: Fulgence. 1846.

Female characters have, for good or ill, played a larger part on the

stage of French history than of English. We have no names which

correspond in extensive influence to those of Mesdames de Sevigne, de

Maintenon, de Genlis, and Recamier; while the extraordinary power,

both political and social, exercised by royal mistresses in France,

finds no parallel in England, even in the worst days of courtly

profligacy. Nor is it easy to say to what cause this difference

between the two countries is to be ascribed. It may be that public

opinion has been brought to bear more fully on individual action here

than in France, and acts as a more powerful restraint; and it may be

also that extreme prominence in society is repugnant to the more

modest and retiring habits of Englishwomen. There is no lady in our

annals who has occupied a position similar to that of Madame de

Maintenon in relation to royalty except Mrs. Fitzherbert; but she,

though highly distinguished for her virtues, was altogether wanting in

those intellectual endowments which adorned that gifted woman who won

the esteem and fixed the affections of Louis XIV. Many circumstances

combined to make her the most striking example of female ascendency in

France; and the object of this paper will be to trace the causes which

led to it, as well as to her being, to this day, an object of

never-failing interest to the French people. Like all great women, she

has had many virulent detractors and many ardent eulogists; but we

shall endeavor to avoid the {800} extremes of both, more especially as

M. Bonhomme is of opinion that her biography has still to be written.

If there were no higher consideration, self-respect alone would demand

scrupulous impartiality in a historical inquiry; and we are the less

tempted to depart from this rule in the present instance because we

are convinced that in Madame de Maintenon's history there is ample

scope for the most chivalrous vindication of her fame, and that, as

time goes on, and the materials relative to her contemporaries are

collated, her apparent defects will lessen in importance, and her

character stand out in fairer proportions and clearer light. It needs

only to compare recent memoirs of her with the jejune attempts of the

last century, to perceive how much her cause gains from fuller and

closer investigation. The Due de Noailles has rendered good service to

the literature of his country by his voluminous history of this lady,

conducted as it is on the sound and admirable principle of making the

subject of the biography speak for herself. There is no historical

personage about whom more untruths have been circulated; and, after

all that has been said and written, the only way to know her is to

read her correspondence.

Lord Macaulay speaks of Franchise de Maintenon in terms so pointed,

that they well deserve to be quoted at the outset:

"It would be hard to name any woman who, with so little romance in her

temper, has had so much in her life. Her early years had been passed

in poverty and obscurity. Her first husband had supported himself by

writing burlesques, farces, and poems. When she attracted the notice

of her sovereign, she could no longer boast of youth or beauty; but

she possessed in an extraordinary degree those more lasting charms,

which men of sense, whose passions age has tamed, and whose life is a

life of business and care, prize most highly in a female companion.

Her character was such as has well been compared to that soft green on

which the eye, wearied by warm tints and glaring lights, reposes with

pleasure. A just understanding; an inexhaustible yet never redundant

flow of rational, gentle, and sprightly conversation; a temper of

which the serenity was never for a moment ruffled; a tact which

surpassed the tact of her sex as much as the tact of her sex surpasses

the tact of ours; such were the qualities which made the widow of a

buffoon first the confidential friend, and then the spouse, of the

proudest and most powerful of European kings. It was said that Louis

had been with difficulty prevented by the arguments and vehement

entreaties of Louvois from declaring her Queen of France." [Footnote

159]

[Footnote 159: "History of England," chap, xi., 1689.]

The romance of her life began with her birth, which took place on the

27th of November, 1635, [Footnote 160] in the prison of Niort, where

her father was confined. His life had been full of adventure and

crime, and he was unworthy of the faithful and affectionate wife who

shared his imprisonment. He changed his religious profession several

times, but at the moment of Frances' birth he called himself

Protestant. The child accordingly was baptized in the Calvinist church

of Niort, though her mother was a Catholic, and was placed under the

charge of her aunt, Madame de Vilette, at Murcay, about a league from

the prison. The prisoner, Constant d'Aubigne, was at length released,

and being disinherited by his father for his ill conduct, embarked a

second time for America about the year 1643, [Footnote 161] taking

with him his wife and children. Little Frances suffered so much from

the voyage that at one time she was thought to be dead, and a sailor

held her in his arms, ready to sink her in a watery grave. "_On ne

revient pas_" as the Bishop of Metz said long after {801} to Madame de

Maintenon, _"de si loin pour pen de chose."_ [Footnote 162]

[Footnote 160: "_Bonhomme_," p. 235.]

[Footnote 161: _Ibid._, p. 230. ]

[Footnote 162: "One does not return from so far but for a great object."]

Notwithstanding her father's evil example, there was enough in Frances

d'Aubigne's ancestral remembrances to have dazzled her imagination in

after life. Her aunt, who had been her earliest instructress, was a

zealous Protestant; and her grandfather, Agrippa d'Aubigne, as a

soldier, a historian, and a satirical poet, was one of the first men

of his day. He had served Henry IV. in various capacities, and was

used to address his royal master so freely as to reproach him for his

change of religion. One day, when the king was showing a courtier his

lip pierced by an assassin's knife, d'Aubigne said, "Sire, you have as

yet renounced God only with your lips, and he has pierced them; if you

renounce him in heart, he will pierce your heart also."

Frances' father died in Martinique, having lost all he had gained by

gambling. Madame d'Aubigne therefore returned to France, and devoted

herself to the education of her child. She made her familiar with

"Plutarch's Lives," and exercised her in composition. She would gladly

have kept the task of instruction to herself, but poverty constrained

her at last to resign Frances with many fears into the hands of her

aunt, Madame de Vilette. The effect of this transfer was her becoming

imbued with Calvinist tenets; and when, through the interference of

the government, [Footnote 163] she was removed from Madame de

Vilette's care, and made over to a Catholic relative, she proved very

refractory, and persisted in turning her back to the altar during

mass. Various means of persuasion were tried in vain; and it was not

till the Ursuline sisters in Paris took her in hand that her scruples

vanished, and she consented to abjure her errors and to believe

anything except that her aunt Vilette would be damned. In after-life

she used often to say that her mother and several of the nuns had been

very injudicious and severe with her, and that, but for the kindness

and good sense of one lady in the convent, she should probably never

have embraced the Catholic faith.

[Footnote 163: "_Duc de Noailles," tome_ I., p. 77.]

Only a few years passed before she had to choose between a conventual

life and a distasteful marriage. Her mother was dead, and "the

beautiful Indian," as she was called, was left almost without

resources. She had become acquainted with the comic poet Scarron, and

often visited him. He was five-and-twenty years older than herself,

and hideously deformed. A singular paralysis, caused by quack

medicines, had deprived him of the use of his limbs, his hands and

mouth only being left free. His satirical pieces had been very

popular, and, though fixed to his chair, he received a great deal of

company, and joked incessantly. He was much struck by Frances

d'Aubigne, and appreciated her talents the more highly because mental

culture was rapidly advancing, and the conversation in drawing-rooms

began to be rational. His offer of marriage was accepted by her, for

"she preferred," as she said, "marrying him to marrying a convent." In

the summer of 1652 she became his bride. Such a union deserved a place

in one of his own farces, and gave little promise of happiness or

virtue. But the consequences were far different from what might have

been expected. A change for the better had taken place in public

morals, and Madame Scarron had no sooner a house of her own than she

took a prominent part in the movement. She carefully tended her

helpless spouse; brushed the flies from his nose when he could not use

his fingers, and administered to him the opiate draught without which

he could not sleep. She received his guests with a dignity beyond her

years, and her conduct was regulated on a plan of general reserve. No

one dared address her in words of double signification; and one of the

young men of fashion who frequented the house declared that he {802}

would sooner think of venturing on any familiarity with the queen than

with Madame Scarron. People saw that she was in earnest. During Lent,

she would eat a herring at the lower end of the table, and retire

before the rest. So young and attractive, in a capital of brilliant

dissipation, and with such a husband as Scarron, her example could not

but have an effect. Meanwhile she cultivated her mind, and learned

Italian, Spanish, and Latin. She knew not what might be required of

her, for Scarron's fortune was dwindling away, and he had been

compelled to resign the prebend of Mans. He was a lay-ecclesiastic,

and, like many literary men of that day, bore the title of abbe.

Poverty again stared her in the face, and the servant who waited at

table had often to whisper, "Madame, no roast again to-day!" Devoted

to her husband's sick chamber, she avoided society abroad, and wrote,

only two years after her marriage, letters which might have come from

an aged saint on the brink of eternity. "All below is vanity," she

said, "and vexation of spirit. Throw yourself into the arms of God;

one wearies of all but him, who never wearies of those who love him."

Her enemies have strongly contested her virtue at this period, and

appealed to her intimacy with Ninon de Lenclos in proof of their

allegations. This modern Leontium certainly frequented Scarron's

drawing-room and also (such were the dissolute manners of the age)

that of most other celebrities in Paris. But the unhappy woman herself

has left behind her an unquestionable testimony to Madame Scarron's

purity. "In her youth," she says, "she was virtuous through weakness

of mind: I tried to cure her of it, but she feared God too much." She

had, of course, many admirers, and she must needs have gone out of the

world not to have them. But to be admired and courted is one thing, to

yield and sin mortally is another. It might be wished that Madame

Scarron's name had never been mixed up with that of Ninon, to whom

virtue was "_faibleese d'esprit_" but the freedom of her conduct must

not be tried too severely by the stricter laws of propriety which

prevail among us now. She never forgot Ninon, corresponded with her at

times, aided her when she was in distress, and was consoled by her

dying like a Christian at the age of 90. [Footnote 164 ] She who had

boasted that Epicurus was her model gave the closing years of her life

to God. [Footnote 165]

[Footnote 164: In 1705.]

[Footnote 165: "_Duc de Noailles," tome_ i., p. 206.]

Madame Scarron's resistance to the importunities of Villarceaux was

well known, and is thus alluded to by Bois-Robert in verses addressed

to the marquis himself: [Footnote 166]

"Si c'est cette rare beaute

Qui tieut ton esprit enchaine,

Marquis, j'ai raison de te plaindre;

Car son humeur est fort a craindre:

Elle a presque autant de fierte

Qu'elle a de grace et de beaute."

[Footnote 166: "Marquis, if it is this rare beauty who holds you in

chains, I have reason to pity you; for she as of a temper much to be

feared. She has almost as much pride as she has grace and beauty."]

But those who follow the course of Madame de Maintenon's interior life

know perfectly well how to interpret what Bois-Robert called

"haughtiness," and Ninon "weakness of mind." It is a matter of no

small importance to rescue such characters from the foul grasp of

calumny. Gilles Boileau was the only one of her contemporaries while

she was young who dared to throw out any suspicion against her honor,

but this he did evidently to avenge himself on Scarron, against whom

he had a mortal pique.

A new era was dawning on France. Richelieu and Mazarin had by their

policy prepared the triumphs of monarchy; Turenne and Conde had

displayed their genius in war; the great ministers and captains waited

for the moment when their master should call them to his service; and

arts and letters were ready to embellish all with their rich coloring.

Louis XIV. really mounted the throne in 1660, and the glory and

greatness of France rose {803} with him. Pascal, Moliere, La Fontaine,

and Boileau published their works almost at the same time. Racine

presented to the king the first-fruits of his master mind, and the

voice of Bossuet had already been heard from the pulpit. Scarron

foresaw the brilliancy of the epoch, but he saw also that his own end

was nigh. "I shall have," he said, "no cause for regret in dying,

except that I have no fortune to leave my wife, who deserves more than

I can tell, and for whom I have every reason in the world to be

thankful." Humorous to the last, he made a jest of his sufferings,

and, when seized with violent hiccough, said if he could only get over

it, he would write a good satire upon it. He died perfectly himself,

and was not even for a moment untrue to his character. A few seconds

before his end, seeing those around him in tears, he said, "You weep,

my children; ah! I shall never make you cry as much as I have made you

laugh." He had but one serious interval to give to death--that in

which Madame Scarron caused him to fulfil his religious duties. He had

always been a Christian, and neither in his writings nor in his

conversation had allowed anything prejudicial to religion to escape

him. A chaplain came every Sunday to say mass at his house. "I leave

you no fortune," he said to his wife when dying, "and virtue will

bring none: nevertheless be always virtuous." The point of this

admonition must be gathered from the corruption of the times. Her

mother's last words also had sunk deep into Frances' memory, for she

had warned her "to hope everything from God and to fear everything

from man." Scarron died in 1660, and was soon forgotten. His name

would now scarcely be known, nor would any at this day be conversant

with his comedies and satires but for the exalted position which his

widow subsequently attained. His immediate successors obeyed

unconsciously the epitaph which he had himself composed, and made no

noise over the grave where poor Scarron took his "first night's rest."

"Passants, ne faites pas de bruit,

De crainte que je ne m'eveille;

Car voila la premiere nuit

Que le pauvre Scarron sommeille." [Footnote 167]

[Footnote 167: "Poor Scarron his first night of sleep enjoys: Hush,

passers-by, nor wake him with your noise!"]

Was there ever a more pathetic joke?

When Mazarin died in 1661, the young king summoned his council and

said, "Gentlemen, I have hitherto allowed the affairs of state to be

conducted by the late cardinal; henceforward I intend to govern

myself, and you will aid me with your advice when I ask it." From that

day, the face of society in France rapidly changed. Then, as Voltaire

says, the revolution in arts, intellect, and morals which had been

preparing for half a century took effect, and at the court of Louis

XIV. were formed that refinement of manners and those social

principles which have since extended through Europe. The example long

set by the Hotel de Rambouillet in Paris was followed by many others,

and numerous _salons_ which have since become matter of history united

all that was most brilliant in genius and talent with much that was

estimable for worth and even piety.

The first ten years of Madame Scarron's widowhood were passed in the

midst of these elegant and intellectual circles. The assemblies of

Madame de Sevigne, Madame de Coulanges, Louvois' cousin, and Madame

de Lafayette, the novelist, were, with the hotels of Albret and

Richelieu, those which she principally frequented. She was in great

distress, and her friends tried to obtain for her the pension her

husband had once enjoyed. But Cardinal Mazarin was inflexible. He

remembered the "Mazarinade," in which Scarron had satirized him, and

refused to grant any relief to his charming widow. But she would be

beholden to none for a subsistence. She retired into the {804} convent

of the Hospitalers, where a relation lent her an apartment, and lived

for some time on a pittance she had hoarded. The queen-mother then

became interested in her behalf, and a pension of L50 a year was

assigned her. "Henceforward," she said in a letter to Madame d'Albret,

"I shall be able to labor for my salvation in peace. I have made a

promise to God that I will give one fourth of my pension to the poor."

She now removed to the Ursuline convent, where she lived simply and

modestly, but visited constantly, and received, as the sisters

complained, "a furious deal of company." Her dress was elegant, but of

cheap materials, and she managed by rare economy to keep a maid, pay

her wages, and have a little over at the end of the year. She might

have accepted the Marechal d'Albret's offer of a home in her hotel,

but she preferred entire independence in her own humble asylum. Many a

page could we fill with accounts of the friendships she formed at this

period. To epitomize her life is in one respect a painful task, for

the records we possess respecting her are equally interesting and

copious. She has found at last a biographer worthy of her, and it is

to the Due de Noailles' volumes we must refer those who long for

further details than our space allows us to give. He is the ablest

champion of her honor that has yet appeared, and refutes triumphantly

the calumnies of the Duc de Saint Simon by which so many have been

deceived.

At the Hotel d'Albret Madame Scarron often met Madame de Montespan,

who soon after became the mistress of Louis. The two ladies had many

tastes in common, and an intimacy sprang up between them. How

strangely they became related to each other afterward we shall

presently see. Meanwhile Madame Scarron was overtaken by another

reverse. The queen-mother died in 1666, and with her the pension

ceased. Many splendid mansions were eager to receive and entertain

her, but she declined them all as permanent abodes. A rich and

dissolute old man proposed to marry her, and her friends unwisely

seconded his overtures; but she was proof against them, and wrote to

Ninon to express her gratitude, because the voice of that licentious

woman alone was raised in approval of her conduct. She was indignant

at the comparison her friends made between the unworthy aspirant and

her late husband, and avowed her readiness to endure any hardships

rather than sacrifice her liberty, and entangle herself in an

engagement which conscience could not approve. Constrained, therefore,

by want, she was about to expatriate herself, and follow in the train

of the Duchesse de Nemours, who was affianced to the King of Portugal.

It was a sore trial, for none are more attached to their country, none

endure exile with less fortitude, than the French. She saw Madame de

Montespan once more; it was in the royal palace, and that incident

changed her destiny. The future rivals met under conditions how

different from those which were one day to exist! Madame de Montespan,

though not yet the king's mistress, was already in high favor, and the

patroness of that poor widow who was afterward, by winning Louis'

esteem, to supplant her in his affections, and become, all but in

name, Queen of France. Through her mediation the forfeited pension was

restored, and we find her name in the list of ladies invited to a

court fete in 1688. Nevertheless, her troubles withdrew her very much

from the world, and she thought for a time of adopting a religious

habit. Indeed, it is not impossible that she might actually have done

so, had she not been made averse to the step by the severity of her

confessor, the Abbe Gobelin. With a view of mortifying her ambition to

please and be admired, he recommended her to dress still more plainly,

and be silent in company. She obeyed, and became so disagreeable to

herself and others that she sometimes felt inclined to {805} renounce

her habits of devotion. [Footnote 168] She retired, however, to a

small lodging in the Rue des Tournelles, lived more alone, and, as she

wrote to Ninon, "read nothing but the Book of Job and the Maxims."

[Footnote 168: _"Duc de Noailles,_" tome i., pp. 310-12.]

Here fortune came to her relief. The infidelities of Louis XIV. are

unhappily too well known. Suffice it in this place to say that Madame

de Montespan bore him a daughter in 1669, and a son, afterward the Duc

du Maine, in 1670. Circumstances required that the existence of these

children should be concealed, and their mother, in whose heart the

voice of conscience was never stifled, bethought her of the good

Madame Scarron as one who was well fitted to take charge of their

education. Accordingly, she was sounded on the subject. The king's

name was not mentioned, but she was informed that the secret regarding

the children was to be kept inviolate. She hesitated, refused,

reconsidered the matter, and at last consented on condition that the

king himself should command her services. The office was far from

dishonorable in the eyes of the world. Madame Colbert, the minister's

wife, had been intrusted with two of his majesty's children by Madame

de la Valliere. It was not on this point that Madame Scarron was

anxious, but she feared lest she should give scandal and entangle her

conscience by a seeming indulgence to such immorality. Louis at last

requested that she would be as a mother to his babes. They were placed

with a nurse in an obscure little house outside the walls of Paris.

Madame Scarron was to live as before in her own lodgings, but without

losing sight of the infants. It was a point of honor with her to

observe the utmost secrecy. She visited each of them separately, for

they were kept apart, and passed in and out disguised as a poor woman,

and carrying linen or meat in a basket. Returning home on foot, she

entered by a private door, dressed, and drove to the Hotel d'Albret or

Richelieu to lull suspicion asleep. When the secret was at length

known, she caused herself to be bled lest she should blush. [Footnote

169] In two years' time the number of children had increased, and a

different arrangement was adopted. A large house was purchased in the

country, not far from Vaugirard, and Madame Scarron, now enjoying a

certain degree of opulence, established herself there, and gave all

her time to the task of education. She was lost to the world, and her

friends deeply lamented her disappearance. But she was sowing the seed

of her future greatness. The king, who had a great love for his

children, often saw her when he visited them; the aversion he had felt

for her at first gradually melted away; he admired her tender and

maternal care of his offspring, contrasted it with the comparative

indifference of their own mother, greatly increased her pension, and,

having legitimized the Duc du Maine, the Count de Vexin, and

Mademoiselle de Nantes in 1673, soon after appointed them with their

gouvernante a place at court. Thus, step by step, without her own

seeking, she was led on to exercise a higher and most salutary

influence on the king's moral character, till, in reward of her

long-tried virtue, she was ultimately to fix his wandering affections

and effect his conversion; an object which for so many years she had

regarded as the end of her being. She was nearly forty years of age

when she entered on her duties in the palace; and, in that difficult

and trying position, she set the glorious example of one who was

guided in all things by principle, and who thought that the highest

talents were best devoted to leading an irreproachable life. She had a

work before her, and it was great. She contributed to withdraw the

king from his disorderly habits, to restore him to the queen, and to

bring about a reformation of morals in a quarter where it {806} had

been most wantonly retarded by the royal example. The king, in that

day, was all in all. The ideal of the government was royalty. The

Fronde had died away, and with it the power of the nobles. That of the

people, in the sense in which it is now generally understood, was

unknown; even infidels and scoffers scarcely dreamed of it. The

monarch, like Cyrus [Footnote 170] and the Caesars, believed himself

something more than man. Diseases fled at his touch, and he virtually

set himself above all laws, human and divine. It needed the eloquence

of a Bossuet to convince Louis that a priest had done his duty in

refusing absolution to the mother of his illegitimate children,

[Footnote 171] The success of his arms enhanced his self-esteem, and

the atmosphere of his court was so tainted with corruption that Madame

Scarron often sighed for retirement, and resolved to flee from so

perilous and painful a promotion. Her intercourse with Madame de

Montespan was chequered with stormy dissensions, and the jealousy of

the latter became almost insupportable. The education of the children

was a constant subject of contention, and Madame Scarron, who knew

that they would be ruined if left to their mother, was not disposed to

yield any of her rights. But the Duc du Maine was the idol of his

father and mother, and this served to attach them both to the

incomparable gouvernante, who loved the boy with an affection truly

maternal.

[Footnote 169: "_Deuxieme Entretien a Saint-Cyr._" ]

[Footnote 170: "Herodotus, Clio," cciv.]

[Footnote 171: "_Duc de Noailles," tome_ i., p. 316.]

Being disgusted with the court, and having received from the king a

present of 200,000 francs, she bought in 1674 the estate of Maintenon,

about thirty miles from Versailles, with the intention of retiring

thither. But a rupture between the king and his favorite mistress was

at hand, and on this circumstance hinged Madame Scarron's future

career.

In spite of his profligacy, Louis XIV. was at bottom religiously

disposed. His serious attention to business proved him to be a man of

thought and reflection, and, when the great festivals came round, it

grieved him not to be in a condition to fulfil his religious duties.

The sermons of Bourdaloue during the Lent of 1675 touched him, and the

expostulations of Bossuet in private deepened their effect. He

resolved to dismiss Madame de Montespan, and departed to join the army

without seeing her. "I have satisfied you, father," he said to

Bourdaloue: "Madame de Montespan is at Clagny." "Yes, sire," replied

the preacher; "but God would be better satisfied if Clagny were

seventy leagues from Versailles." Meanwhile Madame Scarron, with the

Duc du Maine, went to Bareges, and, as the king had, before creating

her a marchioness, graciously called her, in presence of his nobles,

Madame de Maintenon, we shall henceforward speak of her by the name

which she bears in history. The three most important personages in our

drama were now separated. The king, at the head of his army, received

the letters of Bossuet, conjuring him to persevere in his promises of

amendment, while Madame de Montespan, in her retreat, was pressed by

the same fervid eloquence to return to the path of virtue. But the Duc

du Maine was everywhere entertained as the king's son, and fetes that

vied with each other in splendor awaited him and his gouvernante

everywhere. So popular was the king, so loyal his people, that his

vice passed for virtue or innocent gallantry.

Bareges was not then what it has now become. A few thatched cottages

and one house with a slated roof were all it could boast. Madame de

Maintenon and her sick charge, the little duke, had but one room,

meanly furnished, where he slept by her side. The place was then

scarcely known; but the physician Fagon had discovered it during his

excursions among the Pyrenees, and, by making Madame de Maintenon

acquainted with the {807} efficacy of its baths, he raised it to

importance and secured for himself fortune and renown. Here she

received many letters from the king in attestation of his friendship;

and returning hence, she visited Niort and the prison where she was

born, the aunt she had so tenderly loved, and the Ursuline convent

where she had first been schooled and supported by charity. Attentions

were lavished on her in every quarter, and many valuable records of

her family fell into her hands. Among these was the life of her

illustrious grandfather, Agrippa d'Aubigne, written by himself.

Her reception by the king was more cordial than ever; but the high

favor in which she stood did not break her resolution to renounce a

court life as soon as circumstances should permit. She corresponded

regularly with the Abbe Gobelin, and often expressed her willingness

to follow implicitly his advice. Madame de Montespan regained her

ascendancy, at least in appearance; but many thought that the king was

fast becoming weaned from her, through the new influence. Madame de

Maintenon exerted daily a more manifest empire. Everything, as Madame

de Sevigne wrote in 1676, yielded to her. One attendant held the

pommade before her on bended knee, another brought her gloves, and a

third lulled her to sleep. She saluted no one; but those who knew her

believed that she laughed in her heart at these formalities. "I desire

more than ever," she said to M. Gobelin, "to be away from this place;

and I am more and more confirmed in my opinion that I cannot serve God

here." Madame de Montespan, during some years, continued to be the

recognized favorite; but the beautiful Fontanges divided with her the

unenviable distinction till, having just been made a duchess, she died

in the flower of her youth. But amidst all this levity, Louis paid the

severe Madame de Maintenon the most delicate attentions, which failed

not to excite the utmost indignation in the breast of the royal

mistress. At length, in 1680, the dauphin espoused the daughter of the

Elector of Bavaria, and Louis, anxious to retain Madame de Maintenon

in the service of the court, made her lady of the bed-chamber to the

dauphiness. In this honorable office she was set free from the bondage

she had endured. She had now nothing in common with Madame de

Montespan; and she exchanged the apartments she had occupied for

others immediately over those of the king, where he could visit her at

will, and, by her lively and flowing conversation, refresh his mind

when weary with business, or jaded with pleasures that had long since

begun to pall. Surrounded by minions of every sort, it was something

new to him to be addressed freely and without any selfish view. This

was the secret of Madame de Maintenon's power over his heart, and he

confessed the potency of the spell. Madame de Montespan was visited

less and less, and Louis passed hours every day in the apartments of

the dauphiness, where he found also her lady of the bed-chamber. A

cabal was formed by the deserted mistresses and some profligate

ministers against the new and truly estimable object of Louis' favor;

but their machinations failed. The sovereign at last broke his chains,

and Madame de Montespan, like Ninon and La Valliere, made profit of

the time which was allowed to her for repentance, but which had been

denied to Fontanges. The miserable death-bed of that young creature,

distracted by remorse, but still clinging passionately to her unlawful

love, deeply affected the king, [Footnote 172] and is said to have

powerfully contributed to reclaim him from his evil habits. The benign

influence of Madame de Maintenon reunited him to the long abandoned

queen, who, with all her exalted piety and Christian virtue, was

deficient, it must be confessed, in tact and discernment, as well as

in those intellectual {808} gifts which would have made her an

acceptable companion to Louis; while her strict devotional practices

and retiring habits--habits which her native modesty and timidity of

character, combined with her husband's neglect, tended to confirm--may

have had no small share in increasing his estrangement. His evenings

were now frequently spent with her; and every member of the royal

family was delighted with the happy change, and grateful to her by

whom it had been brought about. The king himself found the paths of

virtue to be those of peace, and the finer parts of his character were

displayed to advantage. He had naturally a kind and feeling heart, and

was by no means that monster of selfishness and formality which

historians so often make him. [Footnote 173]

[Footnote 172: _Gabourd, "Histoire de France," tome_ xiv., p. 453,

note. ]

[Footnote 173: _"Duc de Noailles," tome_ ii., p. 28.]

After the peace of Nimeguen, Louis XIV., having seen his enterprises

everywhere crowned with victory, became intoxicated with his own

greatness, and arrogant toward foreign powers. But the counsels of

Madame de Maintenon tended to restrain his ambition and modify the

defiant tone of his government. She well knew that such an attitude,

beside being wrong in itself, was the certain forerunner of formidable

coalitions. However lightly she might have thought of the Prince of

Orange, if singly matched with the greatest potentate of Europe, she

wisely judged his talents and prowess capable of inflicting great

injury on France if he were in union with exasperated allies. While

her hand thus nearly touched the helm of state, it was busy as ever in

dispensing private charities; and it was about this time also that she

founded an establishment at Rueil which was the origin of "Saint-Cyr."

"For the first time," she said, in a letter to her brother, [Footnote

174] "I am happy."

[Footnote 174: 20th February, 1682.]

In 1683 the queen died, and Louis, who had become convinced of her

merits too late, wept over her when expiring and said, "It is the

first trouble she has ever caused me." Madame de Maintenon, who had

staid with her to the last, was about to retire, when the Duc de la

Rochefoucauld, taking her by the arm, drew her toward the king,

saying, "It is no time, madame, to leave him: he needs you in his

present condition." Her position at court was now very embarrassing.

She was aware of the king's predilections, and he was no less

persuaded that she could be attached to him by none but virtuous ties.

The dauphiness requested her to accept the place of lady of honor, but

she steadily refused. Was it indeed that she aspired higher? Could she

fancy for one moment that Louis would exalt her to the rank of his

wife? An anecdote related by Madame de Caylus would lead us to suppose

that the thought had crossed her mind, and that the king himself had

perhaps given her some pledge of his intentions. Madame de Caylus was

astonished at her declining a post of such high dignity. "Would you,"

asked her aunt, "rather be the niece of a lady of honor, or the niece

of one who refused to be such?" Madame de Caylus replied that she

should look upon her who refused as immeasurably higher than her who

accepted: on which Madame de Maintenon kissed her. She had given the

right answer. Madame de Montespan was still at court with her

children, but her day was gone by; and she whose silent influence had

wrought her overthrow never triumphed over her, and even deemed it

prudent to abstain from any overt attempt to prevent the king's seeing

her.

The decorations at Versailles were at this time conducted on such a

scale as to make that spot one of the wonders of the world. All Europe

was curious to see its gardens or read of their matchless splendor.

Its fountains and cascades were never to be silent, night or day, and

the waters of the Eure were to supply them by means of a canal and

aqueduct more than fourteen leagues in length. {809} Twenty-two

thousand men worked on the line, which traversed the estate and valley

of Maintenon. The aqueduct was there supported by magnificent arcades,

and its entire cost, without counting purchase of land, was about nine

millions of francs. To the town of Maintenon the "very powerful and

pious" lady who bore its name was a great benefactress. She obtained

for it fairs and markets, and founded in it a hospital and schools.

She rebuilt, entirely at her own cost, the church and presbytery, as

well as those of two adjoining parishes. She brought thither Normans

and Flemings to teach the villagers how to weave, and distributed

abundant alms to the poor and infirm. The king staid at her chateau

repeatedly, and inspected the works that were rapidly advancing among

the hills. Racine also was her guest about this period, and was

charmed with his visit. Here, too, in the very house where Charles X.,

and with him the direct Bourbon line, afterward ceased to reign, was

probably fixed that remarkable marriage of which we shall have much to

record.

Madame de Maintenon was still beautiful, though in her fiftieth year.

She was three years older than the king, and the influence she exerted

over him was no matter of surprise to those who were used to watch her

radiant eyes and face beaming with animation and intelligence. Severe

virtue gave additional dignity to her distinguished and graceful

manners, and, while she yielded to none in conversational powers, she

was also a good listener. The proud king found in her one to whom he

could bow without humiliation, and her conquest of his heart was a

signal triumph of moral worth. The marriage was private, and the

secrecy so well preserved that its date cannot be ascertained. It is

supposed to have taken place in 1685, and was celebrated by the

Archbishop of Paris, in the presence of Pere la Chaise; Bontemps, a

valet-de-chambre, who served the mass; and M. de Montchevreuil, Madame

de Maintenon's intimate friend. A union satisfactory to her conscience

was all she required, and this being obtained, she took the utmost

pains to prevent the matter becoming public. The court remained for

some time in ignorance of the marriage; but the fact is beyond all

doubt, and is dwelt on with little disguise by the Bishop of Chartres,

in letters to the king and his wife, and by Bourdaloue in his private

instructions to the latter. While Saint-Simon denounces it as "so

profound a humiliation for the proudest of kings that posterity will

never credit it," Voltaire, with more good sense, maintains that Louis

in this marriage in no degree compromised his dignity, and that the

court, never having any certainty on the subject, respected the king's

choice without treating Madame de Maintenon as queen. [Footnote 175]

There is not the slightest proof that Louis ever contemplated sharing

his throne with her openly, and still less that her ambition extended

so far. In the passage we quoted from Macaulay the reader will have

observed that he introduces the fable with "It was said." He is, in

fact, there following Saint-Simon and the Abbe de Choisy, [Footnote

176] whose "Memoirs" are, in this particular, altogether at variance

with Madame de Maintenon's character as revealed in her letters, with

the modesty and reserve which distinguished her in so high a station,

and with the impenetrable silence she always observed with regard to

the fact of the king being her husband. [Footnote 177]

[Footnote 175: _"Siecle de Louis XIV.," tome_ ii.]

[Footnote 176: _Livre_ vii.]

[Footnote 177: _"Duc de Noailles," tome_ ii., pp. 131-2.]

Though living in the midst of the court, her elevation was, as

Voltaire says, nothing but a retreat. She restricted her society to a

small number of female friends, and devoted herself almost exclusively

to the king. No distinction marked her in public, except that she

occupied in chapel a gilded tribune made for the queen. {810} Louis

spoke of her as _Madame_, and if the Abbe de Choisy may be trusted,

Bontemps, the valet, addressed her in private as "your majesty." She

was seldom seen in the reception-halls, but the king passed all the

time that was not occupied with public affairs in her apartment. He

rose at eight, surrounded by his officers; as soon as dressed, he was

closeted with his ministers, with whom he remained till midday; at

half-past twelve he heard mass, and in passing and repassing through

the grand gallery, to which the public was admitted, might be

addressed by any one who asked permission of the captain of his

guards. After mass, he visited Madame de Montespan daily till the year

1691, [Footnote 178] and staid with her till dinner was announced.

This was ordinarily about half-past one. Madame de Maintenon, though

she supped in her own room, dined always at the king's table, sitting

opposite him. Then followed shooting in the park, which was his

favorite amusement. Sometimes he hunted the stag, the wolf, or the

wild boar; but from the time he dislocated his arm in 1683, through

his horse's stumbling over a rabbit-burrow, he seldom went to the

chase mounted, but in a calash, which he drove himself, with some

ladies, and very often Madame de Maintenon. Banquets were spread in

the woods, and in the summer evenings gondolas with music plied on the

canal, and Madame de Maintenon's place was always in that of the king.

At six or seven he returned home, and worked or amused himself till

ten, the hour for supper; after which he passed an hour with his

children, lawful and legitimized, his brother sitting in an arm-chair

like himself, the dauphin and the other princes standing, and the

princesses on tabourets. During winter at Versailles, a ball, a

comedy, or an _appartement_ followed every evening in regular

succession. The _appartement_ was an assembly of the entire court, and

sometimes ended with dancing, after music, chess, billiards, and all

sorts of games.

[Footnote 178: _"Duc de Noailles" tome_ ii., p. 147, note. ]

There was nothing in Madame de Maintenon's temper opposed to the

ceaseless festivities of Versailles, Marly, and Fontainebleau. She

heightened them, indeed, by the noble pleasures of the mind, which her

influence could not fail to introduce. Her style of dress was

exquisite, and elderly beyond what her age required; and while she

treated all around her with the utmost attention, she was altogether

free from airs of importance. She rose between six and seven, went

straight to mass, and communicated three or four times a week. While

she was dressing, one of her attendants read the New Testament or the

"Imitation of Jesus Christ;" and during the rest of the day her

movements were regulated by those of the king. Whenever she was at

liberty, she passed her mornings at Saint-Cyr, and Louis came to her

regularly several hours before supper. She never went to him except

when he was ill. Her income amounted to nearly four thousand pounds a

year of our money; and of this the larger part was given to the poor.

In vain the members of her family looked to her for promotion, in vain

they reproached her with forgetting the claims of kindred: "I refer

you, madam," she wrote to the Princesse des Ursins, "to the valley of

Josaphat to see whether I have been a bad kinswoman. I may be

deceived, but I believe I have done as I ought, and that God has not

placed me where I am to persecute him continually for whom I wish to

procure that repose which he does not enjoy. No, madam, it is only in

the vale of Josaphat that the reasons for my conduct toward my

relatives will be apparent. Meanwhile, I conjure you not to condemn

me." [Footnote 179]

[Footnote 179: Letter of 16th February, 1710. ]

The poor and unfortunate had no cause for similar complaints. She gave

away between two and three {811} thousand pounds a year. During the

scarcity of 1694, having parted with all she had, she sold a beautiful

ring and a pair of horses, to supply the wants of the sufferers.

"Distribute my alms," she wrote to her steward, "as quickly as you

can. Spare no pains, and repine at no difficulty. Circumstances

require unusual charities. See if peas, beans, milk, and barley-meal,

if anything, in short, will supply the place of the bread which is so

dear. Do in my house as you would in your own family. I leave it in

your charge. Incite the people to courage and to labor. If they do not

sow, they will reap nothing next year."

She often visited the needy, and relieved their wants with her own

hand. She would put off buying anything for herself to the last

moment, and then say, "There, I have taken that from the poor." Her

charity inspired others with the spirit of self-denial, and the king

and his chief almoner often dispensed their bounty through her. But

neither poor nor rich diverted her attention from Louis. To his ease,

his tastes, his sentiments--even when they shocked her--his time, and

his very friendships, she sacrificed everything. He was her vocation;

and her own friends could not, as she said, but look upon her as dead

to them. To her the king confided all; and thus the cares of state,

the perils of war, the intrigues of the court, cabals, petitions,

private interests, and even family disputes, were continually rolling

their din at her feet. Princes, princesses, ministers, and a crowd of

persons anxious to secure their own interests, forced themselves upon

her, and broke up all the pleasures of solitude and society, of study,

meditation, and correspondence, for which she pined. But she had

counted the cost, and bore with equanimity the absence of that perfect

happiness which she never expected to attain on earth. The honors

which encircled her were brilliant fetters, and galled her no less

because they glittered. "I can hold out no longer," she said one day

to her brother, Count d'Aubigne; "I would that I were dead!" The sense

of duty was her abiding strength, and she derived consolation from

reflecting that her elevation was not of her own seeking. The path by

which she had been led was strange--so strange that she could not but

believe she had a divine mission to accomplish. It was easy to

interpret her conduct in a worldly and ambitious sense; but when,

since the Master of the house was called Beelzebub, have the children

of his household been rightly understood? Whatever is in the heart

comes out sooner or later in the writings, and those who read Madame

de Maintenon in her letters, will be in no doubt as to what were her

guiding principles. Always true to herself, she was an enigma to those

only who had not the key to her true character. The year of her

marriage was signalized by one of the most important legislative acts

in the history of modern Europe. This was the revocation of the edict

of Nantes, by which, eighty-seven years before, Henry IV. had, shortly

after his abjuration of Protestantism, terminated a long civil war by

granting to the Calvinists freedom of religious worship and admission

to offices of state. The edict itself was as contrary to the spirit of

that age as it would be consonant with the ideas of this. Those who

regarded each other respectively as idolaters and heretics had not yet

learned to live together in social and political brotherhood. The

popes and saintly doctors of those times looked on such fraternity

with horror, and foresaw that, if it became general, indifference and

widespread infidelity would be its certain results. Events have

justified their anticipations; and though it may be doubted whether

this or that act of intolerance, such as the revocation of the edict

in question by Louis XIV., were wise and expedient under the

circumstances, it ought never to be forgotten that the establishment

and maintenance of Catholic unity in a {812} kingdom redounds,

abstractly considered, to the glory of a Christian prince. To this

glory the government of Louis aspired; and while it is clear from

Madame de Maintenon's correspondence that she took no active part in

the matter, it is evident also that she approved it, as did the nation

in general. Voltaire concurs with the Duc de Noailles in exonerating

her from the charge of having instigated the revocation and applauded

its results. No traces of a spirit of persecution can be discovered in

her character. Nothing can exceed the sweetness of disposition with

which she reproved her brother, when governor of Cognac, for having

treated the Calvinists with needless severity. "Have pity," she wrote,

"on persons more unfortunate than culpable. They hold the errors we

once held ourselves, and from which violence never withdrew us. Do not

disquiet them; such men must be allured by gentleness and love: Jesus

Christ has set us the example." [Footnote 180] Ruvigny, a Protestant,

afterward made Earl of Galway by William III., spoke of her to the

king as one who had a leaning to the Reformed religion; and though

nothing could be more untrue, it shows that her zeal as a Catholic

could not have been intemperate. The king himself told her that her

tenderness toward the Huguenots came, he thought, of her having

formerly been one of them; and the historians of the French refugees

in Brandeburg, Erman and Reclam, allow that she never advised the

violent measures that were used, and declare that she abhorred the

persecutions consequent on the revocation. The authors of them, they

add, concealed them from her as far as possible, knowing that she

desired the adoption of no other means but instruction and kindness.

[Footnote 181] In her conversations with the sisters at Saint-Cyr, her

language was always in conformity with these statements. The king, she

told them, who had a wonderful zeal for religion, pressed her to

dismiss some Huguenots from her service, or oblige them to enter the

fold of the Church. "I pray you, sire," she replied, "to let me be

mistress of my own domestics, and manage them in my own way."

Accordingly, she never pressed them to renounce their errors. She

showed them the more excellent way when ever she had an opportunity,

and in good time had the satisfaction of seeing them all embrace the

Catholic faith.

[Footnote 180: _Lettre a M. d' Aubigne_, 1682.]

[Footnote 181: _Tome_ i., p. 77.]

If, then, Madame de Maintenon applauded the revocation of the edict of

Nantes, she must not be held responsible for the forced conversions,

the dragonades, imprisonments, and emigration in which it issued. Her

approval must be interpreted in the same sense as the brief addressed

to Louis by Innocent XI., [Footnote 182] in which the pontiff

congratulated him on "revoking all the ordinances issued in favor of

heretics throughout his kingdom, and providing, by very sage edicts,

for the propagation of the orthodox faith." The immunities granted to

the Calvinists by Henry IV. involved, according to Ranke, a Protestant

historian, "a degree of independence which seems hardly compatible

with the idea of a state." [Footnote 183] Religious dissent naturally

engendered political disaffection. The Protestant assemblies in the

time of Louis XIII. endeavored to establish a kind of federal

republic. Six times during that king's reign the Calvinists took up

arms. Richelieu maintained that nothing great could be undertaken so

long as the Huguenots had a footing in the kingdom. They formed a

treaty with Spain, with a view to their independence, and were

regarded by the nation at large as a public enemy.

[Footnote 182: 13th November, 1685. ]

[Footnote 183: "Lives of the Popes," vol. ii., p. 439.]

Zealously as Madame de Maintenon labored for the conversion of her own

relatives--particularly M. de Vilette and his children--it is no

wonder that she concurred with the king, the clergy, and the people in

thinking that the {813} time was come to withdraw from the Protestants

of France privileges dangerous to religion and to the state, and to

concert more effective measures for their conversion. She held with

Bossuet that a Christian prince "ought to use his authority for the

destruction of false religions in his realm, and that he is at liberty

to employ rigorous measures, but that gentleness is to be preferred."

[Footnote 184] She believed with Fenelon that the religious toleration

which is necessary in one country may be dangerous in another--for the

mild and loving prelate of Cambray agreed at bottom with the sterner

Bossuet on this subject. [Footnote 185] Whether subsequent events

vindicated the political expediency of the revocation; whether the

evils it produced were not greater than the good it proposed; whether

those who recommended it would not, if furnished with our experience,

have wished it had never been carried into effect--are questions of

great importance and interest, but foreign to the purpose of this

paper.

[Footnote 184: _"Politique tiree de l'Ecriture Sainte," livre_ vii.]

[Footnote 185: _"Essai sur le Gouvernement civil," tome_ xxii.]

We have more than once alluded to Saint-Cyr, and it is time now to

give some account of the origin and nature of that noble institution,

which perished with the monarchy and old aristocracy of France, on

which it depended, and of which it was a support. Like most other

great works, its beginnings were small. Before Madame de Maintenon was

raised so near the throne, she used often to meet at the Chateau de

Montchevreuil an Ursuline sister named Madame de Brinon, whose convent

had been ruined. Devoted to the work of education, this lady spent her

days in giving instruction to some children in the village. Her

resources being very low, Madame de Maintenon intrusted her with the

care of several children whom she charitably maintained, and often

visited them and their mistress, first at Rueil, and afterward at

Noisy, where the king placed a chateau at her disposal, and enabled

her to enlarge the establishment. The daughters of poor gentlemen were

then admitted to the school. The king, returning from the chase one

day, paid them an unexpected visit, and was so pleased with all he saw

that Madame de Maintenon had little difficulty in inducing him to

extend his royal patronage much further, and provide means whereby two

hundred and fifty young ladies, of noble birth and poor fortunes,

might be instructed, clothed, and fed, from the age of seven or twelve

years to twenty. The domain of Saint-Cyr was purchased; and twelve

young persons belonging to the establishment, and destined for the

most part to a religious life, were selected as mistresses to direct

the larger institution. They entered on their duties after a noviciate

of nine months, and were called _Dames de Saint Louis_. Their vows

were simple, had reference to the purpose in hand, and were not

binding for life. The young ladies were nominated by the king, and

were required to prove their poverty and four degrees of nobility on

the father's side. The final transfer of the revenues of the abbey of

St. Denis to the establishment of Saint-Cyr was not approved by the

Holy See till after some years, in consequence of the dispute existing

between Louis and the court of Rome. In 1689, however, Alexander VIII.

formally authorized the foundation, and in the February of the next

year addressed a suitable brief to Madame de Maintenon, expressing the

warm interest he felt in her undertaking. Madame de Brinon was elected

superior for life, but, as she did not altogether second the designs

of the foundress, relaxed the rules, and introduced amusements which

were thought too worldly, a change became necessary. It was not

without much patience on the part of Madame de Maintenon that the

difficulties were at last overcome. Madame de Montchevreuil, their

mutual friend, was charged with a _lettre de cachet_ by which the king

commanded Madame de Brinon to quit {814} Saint-Cyr. She retired to the

abbey of Maubisson, of which the Princess Louisa of Hanover was

abbess, and there passed the remainder of her days in honorable

retirement, and in the enjoyment of a small pension. She was fond of

great personages, and of playing an important part, and this feeling

led to her becoming the intermediary between Leibnitz and Bossuet, in

a correspondence which aimed at the reunion of Catholics and

Protestants, and which, as might have been expected, produced no

results.

After Madame de Brinon's departure, Madame de Maintenon devoted

herself more and more to her important enterprise. As the young ladies

were educated for home and the world, not the cloister, they were

indulged occasionally with dramatic representations. This gave rise to

two of Racine's finest pieces. Having been requested by Madame de

Maintenon to invent some moral or historical poem in dialogue, from

which love should be excluded, he produced "Esther," which was first

acted at Saint-Cyr in 1689, in presence of the king. His majesty was

charmed; the prince wept. Racine had never written anything finer, or

more touching. Esther's prayer to Assuerus transported the audience.

Madame de Sevigne only lamented that a little girl personated that

great king. Numerous representations followed, and crowds of eager

spectators, courtiers, ecclesiastics, literati, and religious sat

beside the ex-king and queen of England, to hear the pure and

harmonious verses of Racine recited by the young, the innocent, and

the beautiful, to the richest and softest music Moreau could compose.

This success was but the forerunner of a still greater. At the request

of Louis, Racine wrote another tragedy the following year--viz.,

"Athalie;" in the opinion of French critics the most perfect of all

tragedies. But the excitement attending the play of "Esther" had been

too great to allow of a renewal of the experiment. The "comedy," as it

was called, of "Athalie" was performed therefore by "the blue class,"

without stage or costume, in presence only of the king, Madame de

Maintenon, James II., and six or seven other persons, among whom was

Fenelon.

In the midst of such amusements, pride and frivolity crept into

Saint-Cyr, and Madame de Maintenon became convinced that she had

allowed its pupils more freedom than they could enjoy without abuse.

Reform was indispensable. The _Dames de Saint Louis_ took monastic

vows under the rule of St. Augustin. No effort was spared to inculcate

piety and make religion loved. Bossuet and Fenelon were frequently

invited to address the young people. One of the sermons thus delivered

is found in the works of Bossuet, but the original manuscript is said

to be in the handwriting of the Archbishop of Cambray. It bears, in

fact, the impress of their twofold genius, but the pathos of its style

stamps it as more peculiarly the production of Fenelon. [Footnote 86]

[Footnote 186: _"Duc de Noailles," tome_ iii., p. 140.]

The Duc de Saint-Simon, incapable of mastering ideas of a religious

order, carps and jeers at Madame de Maintenon as one who thought

herself an "universal abbess." Those who carefully examine the annals

of Saint-Cyr, and weigh the difficulties that arose from the various

characters of the superiors chosen, the tendency at one time to relax

and at another to overstrain the religious education of the pupils,

will arrive at the conclusion that few ladies in an exalted position,

and in the midst of all that is most worldly, ever possessed so much

of that wise and loving spirit of government which should distinguish

an abbess, as the wife, friend, companion, and counsellor of Louis

XIV. One might almost say that Saint-Cyr was the passion of her life.

When at Versailles she went there daily, and often arrived at six in

the morning. The young ladies, scarcely yet awake, had the joy of

seeing her beloved and {815} revered figure among them in the sleeping

apartments; and she frequently helped to dress the little ones and

comb their hair, with unaffected and maternal kindness. The

unremitting attention she gave to the establishment was soon rewarded,

and its beneficial effects on society were placed beyond all doubt.

The pupils and mistresses alike of Saint-Cyr were held in great

esteem, and many of them, scattered through the kingdom, filled

important educational and conventual posts; while in Hungary, Austria,

Russia, and the Milanese, institutions were formed on its model. By

interesting the king in its details, and inducing him to visit it very

often, Madame de Maintenon partly secured the other great aim of her

existence, namely, his amusement.

Of all the errors that have, from time to time, insinuated themselves

into the minds of Catholics, none has worn a more plausible and poetic

aspect than Quietism. It crept into Saint-Cyr under the auspices of

Madame de la Maisonfort, a person of a peculiarly imaginative and

mystic temperament. She discoursed with like fluency with Racine and

Fenelon, and always appeared brimful of intelligence and devotional

feelings. Madame de Maintenon had received her as a friend, and hailed

with delight her resolution to adopt a religious habit and become one

of the _Dames de Saint Louis_. She made her profession in 1692, and by

moderating her vivacity for a time deceived others, and perhaps

herself also. Errors akin to those of Molinos were then spreading

fast, and Madame Guyon, their chief propagandist, happened to be a

relation of Madame de la Maisonfort. When the former lady was arrested

for the first time in 1688, her kinswoman and Madame de Maintenon

interceded for her. After this she often visited Saint-Cyr, and

gradually became intimate with the ladies engaged in the institution.

Her manuscripts were eagerly read, and a chosen few who were first

initiated in their mysteries inoculated others with the subtle poison,

until all the novices, one confessor, the lay-sisters, and many under

instruction, abandoning themselves, as they believed, to the sole

guidance of the Holy Spirit, practiced all kinds of mystic devotion,

talked incessantly the pious jargon of Quietism, looked down upon

those who could not embrace the new tenets, and strangely forgot their

vows of obedience to superiors. Nothing was heard but the praises of

pure love, holy indifference, inactive contemplation, passive prayer,

and that entire abandonment of one's self to God which exempts us from

caring about anything, and even from being anxious about our own

salvation. [Footnote 187] Fenelon, by his intimacy with Madame Guyon,

whose director he was, lent life and vigor to these extravagant ideas.

[Footnote 187: Madame Guyon herself disowned many of the monstrous

conclusions of the Quietists, while her own opinions were in excess

of those of Fenelon.]

His elevation to the see of Cambray, in 1695, was regarded by them as

the triumph of their cause, and Saint-Cyr bade fair to rival Port

Royal as a stronghold of suspected tenets. But episcopal authority

interfered at last, and through the remonstrances of the Bishop of

Chartres, Madame Guyon was dismissed, and her books were forbidden.

She continued, however, to correspond with the inmates of Saint-Cyr;

and when, in December, 1695, she was imprisoned anew, they exhorted

each other to remain firm and endure the coming persecution. Bossuet

himself, at the request of Madame de Maintenon, now fully alive to the

danger, came to assist in extinguishing the nascent error, while

Fenelon, on the contrary, defended his own and Madame Guyon's opinions

from what he considered to be exaggerated charges, and wrote his

famous _"Maximes des Saints"_ in opposition to Bossuet's _"Etats d'

Oraison."_ It is a question whether Bossuet was not led, in the zeal

of his antagonism, to make indefensible statements of a different

tendency. Fenelon, in fact, charged him with so doing, and the spirit

{816} displayed by the Bishop of Meaux in defending himself and

prosecuting the condemnation of his former friend, does not present

the most pleasing incident in the great Bossuet's career. Perhaps

Fenelon has won more glory by his ready and humble submission to the

ultimate decision of the Holy See than has Bossuet by his zeal in

procuring a just censure on Fenelon's errors. The temper and ability

with which Fenelon pleaded his cause began to enlist public opinion in

his favor. He utterly disclaimed all participation in the errors of

Quietism, and said he could easily have calmed the heated minds of the

sisters of Saint-Cyr, and have brought them in all docility under

their bishop's yoke. [Footnote 188] But Bossuet invoked the authority

of the king, the decision of his brother prelates, and the judgment of

the Holy See. The Bishop of Chartres, on making a personal inquiry

into the state of things, required that not only Madame Guyon's

writings, but those of Fenelon himself, should be delivered into his

hands. Whatever the merits of the question in other respects, and

whatever opinion may be formed of the respective teaching of these two

great men, there can be no doubt that the _"Maximes des Saints"_ had

fostered prevailing errors. The king expressed great displeasure at

the course events had taken, and by a _lettre de cachet_ in 1698

ordered Madame de la Maisonfort and another lady to quit the

establishment, and all other infected persons to be removed. They

passed the night in tears in the superior's apartment; and the next

day Madame de Maintenon come to console the community for their loss.

If she erred at all throughout this perplexing affair, it was by

over-indulgence and by forbearing too long. When her duty became clear

and imperative, she was never undecided, nor showed any inclination to

encourage novelties in religion.

[Footnote 188: _"Duc de Noailles," tome_ iii., p. 241.]

A history of Madame de Maintenon, however detailed, must always be

wanting in those personal traits which distinguish most striking

biographies, and this for the simple reason that her habits and

disposition were retiring, and her daily effort was to throw a veil

over herself. That her influence in the long run was enhanced by this

modesty, no one can doubt; yet it is not on that account the less

true, that in the scenes through which she passed it is difficult to

seize and depict her individually. We must, nevertheless, endeavor to

give some idea of her relations with the royal family, by some of whom

she was beloved, by others hated, and by all held in high

consideration. Monsieur, the king's brother, liked and respected her

for Louis' sake, to whom he was sincerely attached; but it was far

otherwise with Madame. A Bavarian by birth, she was completely German

in her tastes, and in the midst of Parisian splendor sighed for her

home beyond the Rhine. She was, she said, a hermit in a crowd, and

passed her days in utter loneliness. She was a Protestant at heart,

intensely masculine, and had little sympathy with Madame de

Maintenon's quiet mode of life. So fond was she of the chase, that she

continued to follow it, though she had been thrown from her horse

six-and-twenty times. Madame de Maintenon was her special aversion,

and this antipathy arose principally from her national prejudices

against unequal marriages. The king's wife was, in her view, an

upstart, and the credit she had obtained at court did not diminish

this impression. She spoke with contempt of her piety as mere

hypocrisy, and laid to her charge every species of enormity. She had

pandered to the dauphin's profligacy; killed the dauphiness by means

of her accoucheur; led the young Duchess of Bourgogne into sin;

monopolized corn during a famine to enrich herself; and never dreamed

of anything but her own pleasures and ambition; she had poisoned

Louvois and, nobody knew why, the architect Mansart; she, with Pere

{817} la Chaise, had instigated the persecution of the Protestants;

she had set fire to the chateau of Luneville; and, from her retreat at

Saint-Cyr, fomented conspiracies against the regent! Truly the poison

of asps was under the lips of Madame Elizabeth of Bavaria. The

dauphiness, on the other hand, neglected by her dissolute husband,

made Madame de Maintenon her friend, and found consolation in pouring

her troubles into her ear, and listening in return to her sage and

tender counsels. After ten years of sickness and sorrow in her married

life, she died of consumption in 1690. "See," said the king to her

unworthy partner, "what the grandeur of this world comes to! This is

what awaits you and me. God grant us the grace to die as holily as she

has done!"

The pages of French history present few pictures more replete with

grandeur and interest than the retreat of the great Conde at

Chantilly. Crowned with the laurels of a hundred victories, the

princely veteran there gathered around him a more distinguished staff

than had ever sat in his councils of war--men who, endued with

intellectual might and moral greatness, were to achieve lasting

conquests in the realm of mind. Profoundly skilled himself in history,

philosophy, art, science, and even theology, he loved to entertain

those who, in various ways, had devoted their lives to the triumph of

knowledge and reflection over ignorance and sensuality. All that was

noblest in birth and cultivated in mind met together in his

orangeries, and sauntered among his gardens and fountains. There the

most eminent prelates of their time were seen side by side with the

greatest dramatists, historians, and poets. There was Flechier and

Fleury; there La Fontaine, Boileau, and Moliere; there Rapin and Huet,

La Bruyere and Bossuet. There wit sparkled and wisdom shone as

incessantly as the jets and cascades that rose and fell in light and

music by night and day. Thither came often the entire court, and with

it Madame de Maintenon, a star among stars, brilliant but retiring, to

enhance the glory of the illustrious and aged chief. There, honored by

the king and closeted with him daily, as at Versailles and elsewhere,

she could not fail to receive the willing homage of every member of

the house of Conde. There, too, after the general's death, she saw her

former pupil, the king's daughter, Mademoiselle de Nantes, espoused to

Conde's grandson; and thus, as time went on, she watched the career of

those whom she had educated, and who formed the more noble alliances

because the king had raised them to the rank of royal princesses.

Never did any lady occupy a more remarkable and in some respects a

more enviable position than herself. "There never was a case like it,"

says Madame de Sevigne, "and there never will be such a one again."

She united the most opposite conditions. By her union with Louis she

was all but queen, and by her admirable tact exerted over state

affairs a far greater influence than belongs in general to a

sovereign's consort. She had been the servant of that very king of

whom she was now the helpmate; a wise instructress to his children,

and a mother in her affection and care. At one moment she was acting

abbess, controlling the complicated irregularities which had crept

into the religious and secular economy of Saint-Cyr, and at another

she was mediating as peace-maker in the family quarrels and petty

jealousies of pampered courtiers, or by her sage counsels arresting

the ravages of war, and rescuing harmless populations from the scourge

of fire and sword. Children loved to hear her voice, and hung upon her

smiles; the poor and afflicted were fain to touch the hem of her

garment, for they felt that virtue went forth from her; none were so

great as to look down upon her; none so lowly as to think that she

despised them. Her sovereignty over others was that to which men

render the most willing obedience--the sovereignty, not merely of

station or {818} intellect, but of character of sterling worth, of

wisdom learned in the school of suffering, of virtue tried like gold

in the fire.

As Madame de Maintenon's talents and merits prevented her being lost

in a crowd of courtiers, or in any way identified with them, so, on

the other hand, her affectionate disposition kept her from being

isolated and closing herself round against any intrusion of private

friendship. So far from it, she had with her a select group of ladies

who were called her familiars, who shared with her, in a measure, the

king's intimacy, accompanied her in her walks and drives at Marly, and

were her guests at the dinners and suppers she gave at Versailles and

Trianon. They were in some sort her ladies of honor, though, like

herself, without any visible distinction. Of these the principal were

Madame de Montchevreuil and Madame d'Heudicourt, both old friends, and

with them nine others, among whom were her two nieces, Mesdames de

Mailly and de Caylus. To each of these a history attaches; for the

constant companions of so extraordinary a woman could not but have

special attractions and remarkable qualities. There were in this

number those who had drunk deeply of the intoxicating cup of worldly

pleasure, and having drained its poisonous dregs, thirsted for the

fountain of living waters. It was Madame de Maintenon's especial care

to encourage such friends in their heavenly aspirations, and lead

them, in the midst of the court, to enter the devotional life. Often

she called the fervent Fenelon to her assistance, and his letters

addressed to Madame de Grammont are a lasting proof of the readiness

with which he answered to the call. If, as all her contemporaries

assure us, it was impossible to combine more that was pleasing and

solid in conversation than did Madame de Maintenon--if, in her case,

reason, as Fenelon expressed it, spoke by the lips of the Graces--how

admirable must she have appeared when she directed her powers of

persuasion to the highest and most blessed of all ends! Neither pen

nor pencil can adequately recall the charms which surrounded her; but

the captive heart of Louis and the unanimous voice of the richest and

most lettered court in Europe attest their reality and power. In her

ceaseless efforts to amuse the king, his immortal interests were never

lost sight of; and if she spoke to him comparatively seldom on the

subject, it was because it occupied all her thoughts. Out of the

abundance of the heart the lips are often mute.

In 1686 Louis suffered extreme pain and incurred great danger from a

tumor, which at last required an operation. This circumstance brought

Madame de Maintenon's capacity for nursing into full play. It was she

who watched by his bedside, and alleviated the sufferings of the

nation's idol. The surgery of that day was wretched, and the operation

for fistula which had to be performed was attended with great danger.

Intense solicitude prevailed through the country; for, in spite of all

efforts to prevent anxiety, the report spread rapidly that the king's

life was in peril. The churches were thronged, and the people's

attachment found vent in prayer. The royal patient alone was unmoved.

The _grande operation_, as it was called, had been decided on six

weeks previously, and the evening before it was to take place he

walked in his gardens as usual, and then slept soundly through the

night, as if nothing were to happen. On waking he commended himself to

God, and submitted to the painful operation with the utmost coolness.

Louvois held his hand, and Madame de Maintenon was in the room. In the

afternoon he sent for his ministers, and continued to hold councils

daily, though the surgeon's knife cruelly renewed the incisions

several times. "It is in God," wrote Madame de Maintenon, "that we

must place our trust; for men know not what they say, nor what they

do." The fourteen physicians of {819} Charles II. were still more

unskilful in his last illness, [Footnote 189] and justify equally the

opinion of the Northern Farmer:

"Doctors, they knaws nowt, for a says what's nawways true:

Naw soort a' koind o' use to saaey the things that a do."

[Footnote 189: "The king was in a chair--they had placed a hot iron

on his head, and they held his teeth open by force." Agnes

Strickland's "Lives of the Queens of England;" vol. viii., p. 447.

"A loathsome volatile salt, extracted from human skulls, was forced

into his mouth." Macaulay's "History of England," chap. iv.. 1685.]

In the case of Louis, however, the operator Felix answered to his

name. A cure was effected, and the kingdom was filled with

demonstrations of joy. "Every one," as Madame de Maintenon wrote, "was

in raptures. Father Bourdaloue preached a most beautiful sermon.

Toward the close he addressed the king. He spoke to him of his health,

his love for his people, and the fears of his court. He caused many

tears to be shed; he shed them himself. It was his heart that spoke,

and he touched all hearts. You know well what I mean." After dining

with the citizens of Paris at the Hotel de Ville, Louis drove through

every quarter amid the loudest acclamations. "The king," wrote his

wife again, "has never been in such a good humor as since he has

witnessed the enthusiastic love the capital bears toward him. I very

much like his sentiments: perhaps they will inspire him with the

design of relieving his people." Absolute as the sovereignty of Louis

was, his subjects delighted in his rule. He was the last of a long

line who, century after century, had formed the nation out of the

confusion of feudal times, and had, of all kings, the best right to

say, if indeed he ever did say, [Footnote 190] _"L'etat, c'est

moi!"_

[Footnote 190: See _"Duc de Noailles," tome_ iii., p. 668.]

In him the state was summed up, and the kingdom was impersonated in

him. The soldier expiring on the battlefield cried _"Vive le roi!"_

and vessels have gone down at sea with the entire crew shouting the

same words; for _"Vive le roi!"_ was, in their minds, equivalent to

_"Vive la France!"_ The government of Louis XIV., though despotic,

was, on the whole, marked by moderation, particularly after the death

of Louvois; and if sometimes, seduced by the glory of foreign

conquests and the love of regal display he forgot the interests of his

people and the misery his magnificence entailed on them, Madame de

Maintenon was always near to counteract the arrogant minister, urge

counsels of peace, and heal the bleeding wounds of a loyal population.

Yet she was far from being a meddling politician, Her advice was not

offered, but asked. She abstained from entering into details, and

confined herself to general suggestions of a moral character, dictated

by conscience, not ambition. If she guided, or, rather, gently

disposed, the king to this or that measure, she was in turn guided

herself. Her correspondence with the Abbe Gobelin, Fenelon, and the

Bishop of Chartres sufficiently proves that her highest ambition was

to be a servant of God. That Racine, of whom she was the friend and

patroness, should extol her in his verse [Footnote 191] is not

surprising; but the satirist Boileau, be it remembered, was no less

her eulogist. If Byron's beautiful lines on Kirke White had the more

weight because they occurred in his most biting satire, something of

the same kind may be said of Boileau's testimony to Madame de

Maintenon:

[Footnote 191: "Esther," act ii., scene vii.]

"J'en sais une, cherie et du monde et de Dieu;

Humble dans les grandeurs, sage dana la fortune:

Qui gemit comme Esther de sa gloire importune;

Que le vice lui-meme est contraint d'estimer,

Et que, sur ce tableau, d'abord tu sais nonmer."

[Footnote 192]

[Footnote 192: "I know one beloved of God and man, who is humble in

her grandeur and wise in her good fortune; who groans like Esther

over her trying glory; whom vice itself is compelled to respect; and

whom, on seeing this picture, you will name in an instant." Satire

X.]

The Duc de Noailles is not the only member of the French Academy who

has arisen of late years to refute the calumnies of Saint-Simon. M.

Saint-Marc Girardin has ably defended the {820} victim of his

malignity in the _Journal des Debats_, [Footnote 193] and Messieurs

Rigault, de Pontmartin, Monty, Chasles, and Hocquet, have pursued

successfully the same generous and equitable course.

[Footnote 193: 4th and 16th October, 1856.]

When James II., in December, 1688, fled from his kingdom, the

sympathies of more than half the French people were enlisted on his

side. Ignorant of the British constitution, they knew little of the

peril it had incurred through the king's extraordinary extension of

the dispensing power, and they saw in the landing and success of the

Prince of Orange nothing but a horrible domestic tragedy, in which,

through personal ambition and hatred of the true religion, a Catholic

sovereign was hurled from his throne by an unnatural daughter and

son-in-law. They joined, therefore, without any misgiving, in the

cordial reception given to the royal fugitives by Louis, and desired

nothing so much as to make common cause with them, and take vengeance

on their foes. Madame de Maintenon was not among those who pressed

with all ceremony into the presence of the exiled king and queen; but

she visited them in private, and was received as became her station.

The compassion she felt for their fate, her respectful address and

Christian consolations, so won upon Mary Beatrice, that a lasting

friendship was formed between the queen in name, not in reality, and

the queen in reality, not in name. It continued without interruption

during five-and-twenty years, and was cemented by unity of sentiments

and mutual services. The ex-queen had married in her fifteenth year,

and had overcome, by the advice of her mother and the Pope, her desire

to devote herself to a religious life. [Footnote 194] Whatever may

have been her trials in a convent, they could hardly have equalled

those which befel her as queen. A hundred and forty-five of her

letters to Madame de Maintenon are extant, and the readers of Miss

Strickland's "Lives" are familiar with the Chaillot correspondence, in

which the desolate and sorrowful queen pours forth the fulness of her

sensitive heart, and never tires of expressing her love and esteem for

that remarkable friend whom Providence has led across her thorny path.

Often Madame de Maintenon repaired to Saint-Germain to visit her, and

still more frequently the latter came to Versailles to see Madame de

Maintenon. It was some relief to escape for a time from that downcast,

dreary court in exile, where a crowd of poor but faithful followers

gathered around a master equally wrong-headed and unfortunate. The

semblance of royalty which was there kept up only increased the

sadness of the place, and fostered those jealousies, intrigues, and

cabals of which a banished court is so often the parent and victim.

[Footnote 194: _"Duc de Noailles," tome_ iv., p. 231.]

A powerful coalition, in the creation of which the Prince of Orange

was the chief agent, had long been menacing France, and was now

actually formed. Louis found himself opposed to the greater part of

Europe, for the Emperor Leopold, the Germanic and Batavian

federations, the kings of Spain and Sweden, and the Pope himself,

obliged to act on the defensive, adhered to the league of Augsburg.

[Footnote 195]

[Footnote 195: _"Duc de Noailles,"_ p. 253. ]

Three powerful armies were sent by the king of France to the seat of

war. The mission of one of them was to capture Philipsburg; and from

the camp before that stronghold the king's brother wrote many letters

to Madame de Maintenon, describing the operations in progress. The Duc

du Maine also, once her pupil, and now in his eighteenth year, wrote

to her from time to time, and received thankfully the advice she

offered him with all a mother's solicitude. The second of the three

armies was charged with the devastation of the Palatinate, and

fulfilled the part assigned it with distressing precision. If its soil

was not to supply the French, it must {821} furnish nought to the

Germans. It was a perfect garden, and Duras received orders to reduce

it to a wilderness. Half a million of human beings were warned that in

three days their houses would be burned and their fields laid waste.

Fiercely the flames went up from city and hamlet, and the fugitives

sank with fatigue and hunger in the snow, or, escaping beyond the

borders, filled the towns of Europe with squalid beggary. Every

orchard was hewn down, every vine and almond tree was destroyed. The

castle of the Elector Palatine was a heap of ruins; the stones of

Manheim were hurled into the Rhine. The cathedral of Spires and the

marble sepulchres of eight Caesars were no more; and the fair city of

Treves was doomed to the same cruel fate. It was time for the voice of

mercy to speak. Marshal Duras had already written to Louvois,

[Footnote 196] to remonstrate against the barbarous orders he was

compelled to execute, and Madame de Maintenon herself is said to have

interceded with Louis for the suffering people of the Rhine. The Duc

de Noailles, indeed, does not state this, like Macaulay, [Footnote

197] as matter of history, though he allows that it is probably true;

and this variety in the views of the two historians, each anxious to

do justice in this particular to the king's wife, proves how difficult

it is for even the most sagacious and unprejudiced writers to arrive

at the exact truth in reference to bygone days. Macaulay is certainly

inclined to attribute to Madame de Maintenon a much larger measure of

political power than she really exercised; and it is curious to

observe the chain of pure assumptions by which, having taken it for

granted that she "governed" Louis, he arrives at the conclusion that

she induced him to recognize the Pretender as James III. [Footnote

198] In a letter written [Footnote 199] soon after the taking of

Philipsburg, she seems to disclaim all active interference in state

affairs. In speaking of Louvois, she says that she never contradicted

him, and adds, "People think that I govern the kingdom, and they do

not know that I am convinced God has bestowed on me so many favors

only that I may seek more earnestly the king's salvation. I pray God

daily to enlighten and sanctify, him." But it is evident how

completely an earnest recommendation to Louis to spare Treves, and

stay the ravages in the Palatinate, may have tallied with that unique

and hallowed purpose. Have not those from whom such truculent orders

emanate a terrible account to render? Has not she who dissuades a

ruler from an iniquitous measure done something toward saving his

soul?

[Footnote 196: 21st May, 1689.]

[Footnote 197: Hist., chap, xi., 1689.]

[Footnote 198: Hist, chap, xxv, 1701.]

[Footnote 199: 4th October, 1688.]

There are stories afloat respecting Madame de Maintenon, and in

everybody's mouth, which the Duc de Noailles scarcely condescends to

notice. That she who always spoke and wrote of Louis in terms of

affectionate homage should have seriously committed herself to such

assertions, as that her daily task ever since her marriage was to

amuse a king who could not be amused, and that he was so selfish that

he never loved anything but himself, is an improbability as

inconsistent with her character and policy as it is at variance with

the facts of the case. That in his latter years her life was

embittered by his fretful and querulous temper, and by the fits of

passion into which he often fell, and that in one of her letters

written at that period she complains of the difficulty of amusing him,

is undoubtedly true; but this and similar complaints ought not to be

stretched beyond their natural meaning, and made to tell too severely

against the king. When, in the early part of 1691, Louis appeared in

the camp before Mons, his wife, separated from him for the first time

since their marriage, retired to Saint-Cyr, alarmed at the dangers he

was about to incur, and unable to conceal her sadness. Consolatory

letters poured in upon her from all quarters, especially {822} from

her spiritual friends and advisers--the Abbe Gobelin, the Bishop of

Chartres, and Fenelon. But, "the selfish monarch who could not be

amused," did he, amid the bustle of a siege, find time to write to a

lady fifty-five years old, whose only business had been to amuse him

or fail in the attempt? He did; and that not once now and then; not

briefly and drily, as a matter of form; not like a man who had little

to say, and still less attachment, to the person to whom he said it.

No; every day in her solitude Madame de Maintenon was consoled by

seeing a royal dragoon ride into the court-yard with a letter for her

from his majesty, and almost every day with one from the king's

brother also. Nor was this all; the king, "who had never loved any one

but himself," proved that there was at least one exception to this

rule, and that he loved his wife. In 1692 she joined him at Mons, by

his command, in company with other ladies of the court, and followed

him to the siege of Namur. Amusements were not wanting in the royal

camp. The king and his courtiers dined to the music of timbrels,

trumpets, and hautboys, and he reviewed his troops in the presence of

carriages full of fair faces. But, with all this, he visited the

different quarters so diligently, and inspected so closely the works

and trenches, riding continually within range of the enemy's guns,

that his wife had almost as much anxiety for his safety as when she

pondered at a distance the cruel chances of war.

In spite of his many faults, there was much in Louis XIV. to captivate

the imagination of one like Madame de Maintenon. "No prince," says the

Duke of Berwick, [Footnote 200] "was ever so little known as this

monarch. He has been represented as a man not only cruel and false,

but difficult of access. I have frequently had the honor of audiences

from him, and have been very familiarly admitted to his presence; and

I can affirm that his pride is only in appearance. He was born with an

air of majesty, which struck every one so much, that nobody could

approach him without being seized with awe and respect; but as soon as

you spoke to him, he softened his countenance, and put you quite at

ease. He was the most polite man in his kingdom; and his answers were

accompanied by so many obliging expressions, that, if he granted your

request, the obligation was doubled by the manner of conferring it;

and if he refused, you could not complain."

[Footnote 200: Memoirs, vol. ii.]

Madame de Maintenon's campaigning life was not altogether free from

disagreeables. On one occasion, writing from Dinant, [Footnote 201]

she relates how they encountered more difficulty in retiring from

Namur than in approaching it. They were eleven hours and a half on the

road, and wholly unprovided with food. She arrived at her journey's

end exhausted with hunger and suffering also from rheumatism and

headache; but, it being an abstinence day, the only repast that

awaited her was oil-soup. The king likewise, though throughout the

campaign he dined ordinarily with all the sumptuousness of Versailles,

found himself obliged sometimes to partake of a cold collation under a

hedge, without quitting his travelling carriage. Warfare would be an

easy calling if such were its worst hardships.

[Footnote 201: 12th June, 1693.]

In Flanders, as in France, Madame de Maintenon continued to take the

most lively interest in the course of events, martial, political, and

social. Proximity to the scene of action did not induce her to exceed

those limits of reserve which she had long since marked out for

herself. Though informed of all that happened, and forming a sound

judgment on almost every occurrence, though earnestly desiring peace

rather than aggrandizement, and justice rather than glory, she

obtruded no views of her own in the cabinet of the king, nor even

influenced the choice of generals. It was her habit of close

observation, and her exact description {823} of all that passed, which

made Napoleon Bonaparte delight in reading her correspondence, and

pronounce it superior to that of Madame de Sevigne, because it had

more in it. Madame de Maintenon speaks in one place of her own style

as "dry and succinct;" and, indeed, were it not for the piety which

constantly breathes through them, her letters would often read like

the despatches of a general. She is brief, terse, sententious; her

mind being evidently bent on things rather than on words. As a

letter-writer, she resembles Napoleon himself more than any other

French authoress. Her style is free from that vacillation, that timid

adoption of a definite line, which always indicates a weak thinker and

a total absence of system in the mind. Had it been otherwise, she

would never have stood so high in the esteem of foreign courts, nor

would princes and sovereigns, such as the Elector of Cologne, the Duc

de Lorraine, and his mother, Queen Eleanor, have written to ask favors

at her hands.

The reign of Louis XIV. lasted so long, that neither his son nor

grandson ever sat on the throne. If the latter, the Duc de Bourgogne,

had not died in his thirtieth year, he might, as the once docile pupil

of Fenelon and Madame de Maintenon, have fulfilled his promises of

excellence, and have left to his successors a rich inheritance of

wisdom. "Telemachus" was not composed expressly for him in vain. He

was born in 1682, and at an early age was affianced to Marie-Adelaide

of Savoy. The princess was at that time only eleven years old, and

was, by the marriage contract, to remove to France, and be wedded in

the ensuing year. The union of the young couple was celebrated in

1697, but on account of their extreme youth they continued to live

apart two years longer. During this time, Madame de Maintenon

undertook to complete Marie-Adelaide's education. The instructress was

worthy of a princess destined, as it was believed, to govern France.

All day she sat by her when sick, and Racine read Plutarch's "Lives"

to her during the pauses of the night; Bossuet was her chaplain, and

Dangeau, whose manuscript memoirs of Louis' court have proved so

useful to historians, [Footnote 202] was her knight of honor. She was

the delight of all around, and so charmed the king, that he was never

willing to part with her. But there were no apartments Marie-Adelaide

so much loved to frequent as those of Madame de Maintenon. Severe as

her admonitions often were, she possessed in the highest degree the

art of attaching young persons to her, and inspired them insensibly

with taste, wisdom, and nobility of mind. She had long been convinced

that the education of princes was conducted, generally, in such a way

as to prepare them for habitual _ennui_. They learned and saw

everything in childhood, and, when grown up, had nothing fresh to see

or learn. She withdrew her, therefore, as far as possible from the

court, and submitted her to the simple and wholesome routine of

Saint-Cyr. The princess proved extremely docile, and her amiability

was as striking as her diligence. The society of the religious in

Saint-Cyr, so far from putting a constraint on her lively and winning

ways, seemed only to fit her more completely to be the pet companion

of Louis XIV. Her sprightly talk, her opening mind, her elegant

simplicity, amused him in his walks and drives, in the gardens, the

galleries, and the chase; and while he contrived daily some new

diversion for the fascinating child, he could not but trace in her the

happy results of Madame de Maintenon's unwearied attention. She

entered into all her childish pleasures, and even played hide-and-seek

with her, that she might, as she said afterward, gain her ear for

serious truths, and by yielding all she could, have the better reason

for withholding what would have been hurtful. At last--nor was the

time long--Marie-Adelaide quitted Madame de Maintenon's embrace, and

with her heavenly counsels {824} graven on her memory, and given in

writing into her hands, bidding farewell to the hallowed cloisters of

Saint-Cyr, and to her daily gambols and prattle with the loving and

indulgent king, she took her place beside her destined bridegroom, and

"entered other realms of love."

[Footnote 202: They were first published entire in 1856.]

Such was the woman of whom the worldly and sceptical speak jeeringly

as the proud widow of Scarron; the intriguing, austere, ambitious

Marquise de Maintenon; the persecutrix of Huguenots, and the despot of

her royal spouse. They know not what they speak, nor whereof they

affirm; for they are incapable of estimating the character of the

righteous. Outward acts are to them an enigma and a stumbling-block,

because the soul and its guiding principles cannot be seen. A true

Christian, such as Madame de Maintenon, is an object of faith, as is

the Church, and as was the Church's Lord in the days of his

humiliation. Seated, to say the least, on the footstool of the throne,

and surrounded by all the pomp and circumstance of royal life, she was

to jaundiced eyes but one in a crowd of princes and courtiers, and

differing from them only in that she was more astute; but, seen as the

prelates of Cambray and Meaux saw her--seen as her letters and

conversations with the nuns of Saint-Cyr exhibit her--seen as the Duc

de Noailles describes her, and "time, the beautifier of the dead," has

rendered her--she was using this world and not abusing it; seeking

society only to improve it, and solitude only to pray; holding all she

possessed in fealty to her unseen King, and making every occupation

subordinate to that of loosening her affections from earthly vanities,

and fastening them wholly upon God. The Duc de Noailles' history does

not end with the fourth volume. It leaves Madame de Maintenon in her

sixty-second year--two-and-twenty years before her death. To trace her

intercourse with Louis during the long and disastrous war with Spain,

called the War of the Succession--her counsels and influence during

the defeats by Marlborough and Prince Eugene, and the triumphant

reprisals of Vendome and Villars--her grief at the king's death in

1715, when she had reached her eightieth year--her retirement to the

long-loved shades of Saint-Cyr--her devotion and zeal heightening as

age advanced, and the celestial goal was neared--her conversations

with the sisters, and her letters to the Princesse des Ursins--to

analyze her correspondence, and her _vade-mecum_ as published by M.

Bonhomme--to record the pillage of Saint-Cyr, and the outrage done to

her venerable remains, as to those of the royal dead in St. Denis, by

the frantic revolutionists of 1792--would supply ample materials for

another article, but would only confirm the views already formed of

her prevailing character and principles. Enough, perhaps, has been

said to place our readers on their guard against the malice and

fictions of the Duc de Saint-Simon and a host of detractors who rely

too readily on his word, and to dispose them favorably toward a most

judicious and remarkable history, which does honor to the French

Academy and the illustrious house of de Noailles.

------

{825}

From All The Year Round.

A DUBLIN MAY MORNING.

When I look down on this gay May morning from a window into Great

Sackville street, where there is a huge column to Admiral Nelson, and

a golden shop-front board dedicated to O'Connell, on the site for his

statue, and which is by-and-by to be made into a French boulevard and

planted with trees--I say, on this May morning it is easy to see that

one of the many great days for Ireland has come round once more. For

the crowds in the great thoroughfares, and the "boys" sitting on the

bridges, and the flags and streamers, and the rolling carriages, and

the general air of busy idleness, tell me that a great festival is

toward; and placards in fiercely carbuncled letters proclaim in an

angry fit of St. Anthony's fire that the Prince of Wales is to "OPEN"

something: which something a still greater scorbutic operation of type

tells us is THE DUBLIN EXHIBITION OF 1865.

Not without charms, and marked and special features of its own, is

this Dublin city--to say nothing of the fresh and fair Irish faces and

violet eyes which pass by in streams, or of the cheerful voices and

the gay laughs heard at every turn; or of the giant policemen who wear

moustaches and beards, and thus compete on more favorable terms with

military rivals; or of the rollicking drivers, who stand up as they

drive, very like the _cocchieri_ of Rome, and who look out for "fares"

in a debonnaire indifferent fashion. There is a gay, busy, foreign,

particolored look about the place, which reminds one of a foreign

town. The background is composed of wide spacious streets, Grecian

buildings wonderfully classic in tone and shape, fitted into corners

with porticoes that belong _to_ the street, and under which the people

walk--pretty breaks where the bridges come, and the masts of shipping

seen in the sun half way down a long, long thoroughfare. There are no

warehouses or ugly business associations; but all is shops and

shopping, and color and liveliness, and carriages and walkers.

I think, as I look out on this May morning, that it is curious that a

people popularly supposed to want "self-reliance" and "independence,"

and who are utterly ignorant of the "self-help" principle, should,

after all, have done some few self-reliant things in this very matter

of exhibitions. Some one tells me that many decades of years before

glass palaces were thought of, and when the universal peace and

brotherhood glass palaces were mysteriously supposed to bring with

them were not quite believed in, this "un-self-reliant" people had

their regular triennial exhibition of manufactures, on the French

model. Further, that close on the footsteps of the Hyde Park

Exhibition came the great one of Cork, and closer again on the

footsteps of Cork the really great Dublin Exhibition of 1853, the

building of which cost nearly eighty thousand pounds, and which was

remarkable for the first international collection of pictures, and for

the first performance of Handel on a colossal scale. Not content with

this, I am told that this people, who were not self-reliant, went

further, had two more successful exhibitions on a smaller scale, and

have now finally girded themselves up for this yet more complete

effort of 1865. Not so bad, this, for our poor wo-begone sister with

the harp, especially when we consider that our well-to-do Scotch

sister has not "fashed" herself with such follies, justly considering

the margin of profit too uncertain or too slight to repay the trouble.

{826} But this is a grim and statistical ungracious view, not all

suited to this Dublin May morning.

It is known, then, on this gay Dublin May morning, that the young

prince, who in this island has always been looked to with an

affectionate interest, has been in the city since over-night, and out

at the pretty lodge, which lies out in the "Phaynix." Hence the flags

and the streamers. Hence, too, in front of the palace, the balconies

fringed with scarlet, and the softened and melodious buzz of distant

military music, with the staff officers flying north and south, and

the regiments tramping by. But the flags grow thicker, and the

balconies gayer, and the music more distinct, as I find myself at the

corner of the great _place_, or square dedicated to St. Stephen, which

is a good mile's walking all round, and near which I see the great

building, with the heavy porches and pillars, round which, and over

which, run delicately, the light entrance of a Moorish-looking glass

temple--a silver howdah on the back of a gray elephant. Such is the

rather novel design for this last comer in the long series of

exhibitions.

After all the miles of glass greenhouse, and the long protracted

repetitions of gorgeous decorated pillars and girders, I cannot but

think what a happy combination this is of solidity and lightness; and

acknowledge that in these days, when Paxton Palace succeeds Paxton

Palace with some monotony, there is something original in striking out

the idea of fitting the glass-house to a great solid building, with

huge halls, and long, cool passages, and spacious rooms, and

surrounding the whole with a garden, and greenery, and cascades.

There has been the usual crush and pressure, the tremendous toiling

against time, to get all done; the straining of every nerve, the

sitting up all night, the hammering and sawing, the stitching of a

hundred workmen and workwomen, changing the utter disorder and the

naked deal boards and the rude planks of five o'clock last evening to

perfect order--to the regularity of a drawing-room and acres of

scarlet cloth. And in a crowd of light May morning dresses we drift

into the huge concert hall, which is to hold thousands, and to echo to

brass throats, and where there are the great organ, and the orchestra

which holds the musical army a thousand strong: on the floor of which

have grown up beds upon beds of human lilies that flutter and flutter

again, whose flowers are white parasols and gossamer shawls. This

hall, as a feature, is not so remarkable, for there are many great

halls; but at its far end it is open and crossed half way by a

gallery: and through this opening we see far on into a Winter Garden

and Crystal Palace, where are the light airy galleries, with the old

familiar rimson labels, and the French trophies, and the bright

objects, and the great apse like a glass cathedral, and Mr. Doyle's

pale coloring, the faint lines of delicate green, chosen with rare

good taste, which in itself is a novelty.

Looking out through the open end of the concert hall, and facing the

organ, I see a grand marone velvet eastern canopy and dais, under

which the Pasha of Egypt is to sit a few months hereafter and receive

his tribes; and on this dais are the nobles and gentlemen gathering,

in the fine rich theatrical suits which give a coloring to a festival,

and of which we have not half enough. Judges in scarlet and ermine,

privy councillors with coats that seem "clotted" with gold, the

never-failing lords-lieutenant and deputy-lieutenants, knights of St.

Patrick, deans, doctors in scarlet, soldiers in scarlet, a lord

chancellor all black and gold, eastern dervishes (it may be, from the

pillow-case look of their caps), a lord mayor of York, a lord provost

of Edinburgh; in short, all shapes of particolored finery. Turning

round for a second, I see that the black musical army has debouched

and taken ground, and that {827} the great orchestra has spread like a

large dark fan from floor to ceiling. I can see "Ulster" in a gorgeous

tabard, flitting to and fro, marshalling grandees, as none so well

know how to marshal them, each according to his or her degree. That

marvellous tabard is so stiff and gorgeous, that when it is laid by,

it surely cannot be hung up or folded or put to sleep on its back like

other robes, but, I fancy, must stand up straight in a wardrobe on its

end, like a steel cuirass.

We seem to riot in mayors. The eye can be feasted on mayors; they can

become as the air we breathe if we so choose it. They have flowed in

from every town in the three kingdoms. And it does strike one, with

having such a municipal gathering brought together, that there is a

sort of corporate expression, a kind of municipal smirk or perk, a

kind of smiling burgess air of complacency which makes the whole of

this world akin. Every one, too, seems to be invested with the collar

of the Golden Fleece.

Here, also, are many known faces, who wear no scarlet nor gold nor

collars. Faces like that of the famous dog and animal painter whose

four-footed friends look down at him from the walls: faces like that

of the Sir David who invented the most popular toy in the world: faces

from the science and art: from South Kensington, which, as we all

know, is science and art: faces from France, from Canada, Rome, India,

and a hundred other places.

Now, I hear the hum of distant martial music, and the yet fainter but

more inspiriting sound of distant cheering. Then the scarlet and

ermine, the privy council clotted gold, the May morning bonnets,

glitter and rustle with excitement. The hum and chatter of voices full

of expectation travel on softly down the glass aisles and into the

great hall. There has been a grand plunging of military troopers

outside, a violent arrest of fiery horses pulled up suddenly, and the

prince and a royal duke and the vice-king and all their attendants

have descended. From the outside, the shouting creeps in gradually,

until at last it comes to its fullest pitch; when the crimson and gold

crowd parts a little, we see this prince standing modestly under the

Egyptian pasha's canopy, with thirty thousand eyes upon him. At this

moment a speck half way up the dark orchestra, but which is a very

skilful and most musical speck, gives a signal with what seems a white

pin, and the musical army advances with the fine Old Hundredth. The

grand Old Hundredth travels out in rising waves through the open end

of the hall into the glass cathedral, then loses itself up and down in

the aisles. For two verses the voices do the battle by themselves;

but, at the third, the trumpets and the grand brass and the rolling of

monster drums burst out, and every syllable is emphasized with a

stirring crash. It is like the deluge after a drought.

Then the sun gets up, and the gold and colored figures cross, and

crowd, and flit past, as some business is being transacted under that

Egyptian pasha's canopy; for there are addresses to be read and

spoken, and there is much advancing and backing to be done. Now, the

party under the pasha's canopy breaks up for a time, and the stiff

gold and scarlet and privy council strait-waistcoats, and the

corporate dressing-gowns, having formed themselves into a procession,

take the prince round to look at the place.

And there is a great deal to see. There are many charming pictures,

and among the choicest those of which the queen of Spain has stripped

her palaces, and sent here. Is there not a hint of many a Velasquez

most exquisite, and of Mr. Stirling, which are worth a journey to the

Escurial to worship? Here is many a rare Reynolds which Mr. Tom Taylor

might find worth making a note of, and here are walls covered with

noble cartoons of the severe Munich school. These, with the

photographs and water-colors, and mediaeval objects, are common to

many {828} an exhibition held before; but there is one feature

unique--a noble sculpture gallery, artistic, charmingly lighted,

sufficient to delight Mr. Gibson, and drive the Royal Academy to

despair. A sculpture-hall, on which you can look down from a

balustrade in a room overhead, as if into a Pompeiian court. A

sculpture-hall, in which you can look up to an arching glass roof,

and, half way down again, to the balustrade just mentioned, which is

dotted with small statutes. A sculpture-hall, where I can walk round

and think myself in a Roman palace, to which these fine objects

belong, and not in a temporary shed where some scattered objects that

have been lent are shown. For here I see that the Roman studios have

been emptied of their treasures; that Miss Hosmer has sent her Faun,

in toned yellow marble: a marvellous--if the speech be not impolite--

work for a woman. With Story's wonderful Judith, and a Baby Girl by

Mogni--a pendant for the now famous Reading Girl. But it is easy to

prophesy that this Baby Girl will be photographed, and stereoscoped,

and binocularized in a hundred ways, and watched over by policemen

specially, and visited by a steady crowd. This hall and its

contents--the like of which it is no boast to say has not been yet

seen in these kingdoms--is the feature of this exhibition.

Then, having seen all that is most curious and beautiful--in the

fashion in which such things _must_ be seen where there is only a

quarter of an hour to see them--the stiff' gold and crimson strands,

which we call the procession, came back to the pasha's dais. And then,

with a crash and a smash, and a thundering of monster drums, and the

rattle and rolling of little drums, and the sharp brassy bark of

trumpets, the true English national Old Hundredth, in which musical

and unmusical--people with ears, and people without, even people with

voices, and people without--can join, then God save the Queen is sung.

Sung! Rather fired off! Discharged! Salvoed!

And then the glittering mass begins to dissolve and fade away. The

stage, which has been laid out under the pasha's canopy, gradually

clears. At the door there is a struggle, and the scatter of new

gravel, with the frantic leaping up behind carriages of many footmen,

and the closing in of mounted soldiers. And then the pageant melts

away, and the work of the day is done.

As I walk and wander from the light glass arcades to the darker

courts, and from the courts to the open terraces, and hear the hum of

Saxons' voices, and from at least every third mouth the sharp "burr"

of some Saxon dialect, and when I meet burly shoulders and massive

chests which are not of the country, some out-of-place speculations

come into my mind, and I am tempted to make suppositions. First, I

speculate--of course shrinking away from the dry bones of

politics--whether there might not have been some mistake in the old

and constant treatment of a people who seem cheerful and grateful for

a kind word or a kinder act, and who are "willing" and even clever in

their way--and think whether the "want of progress" and want of

"capital" and of "self-reliance," and the want of a hundred other

things which puzzle and dispirit the political physician, may not in

some degree be laid to the account of old mistakes, old laws, old

errors, old harsh treatment, old jealousies and restraints, the folly

of which is now seen and admitted, but the fruits of which remain to

this day?

Just as the fruits of a bad education linger in a grown man, and the

marks of early hardship are stamped upon the face and constitution, it

will take many years yet, in the life of a nation, before old faults

are worked out of its constitution. And I think--still in the walks of

the Winter Garden--that if my friendly Briton tell me that his

experience of the lower orders of Irish is that "you can't depend upon

a word they say," I cannot but recollect that half a century ago they

were civilly slaves, without rights; {829} and that a century ago they

were a proscribed caste, against whom one-half the laws of the land

were directed. If we have found them indolent, and disinclined to

perseverance and the making of money, have we not dim recollections of

seeing acts of parliament passed again and again to cripple their

trade? A people must grow up, as a child must grow up; and it is hard

to expect that a child whose body has suffered by an unkind or an

injudicious nurse, should become at once strong under better

treatment. Then I speculate on the mysterious relation of Irishmen to

Irish land, through which the "bit" of land is as necessary as the

"bit" of bread; where a tenant holds his tiny scrap, on which he pays

his thirty-shilling rent; and during the whole year is struggling

desperately to work out of this great estate a few potatoes, and fewer

clothes for himself and family, beside the miserable thirty-shilling

margin for the landlord. I think how some estates have two, four, six,

eight thousand tenants of this valuable class--and think beside, in

answer to a natural objection, how this miserable system was created

for political ends, to multiply voters "to support government," If the

Palace and Winter Garden were twice as long and twice as broad, I

should not have half time or space enough for the speculations that

come crowding on me with reference to this perplexing country.