as she passed. She {786} was not mistaken; Kate had seen her from the
first turn in the road toward the house, and was all alive on her own
account. She had tact and vanity enough, however,--for she had plenty
of time before Winny came alongside of the house,--to slip in and put
on a decent gown, and brush her beautiful and abundant hair; and she
came to the door, as if by mere accident, but looking her very best,
as Winny approached. Kate knew that she was looking very handsome, and
Winny Cavana, at the very first glance, felt the same fact.

"Good morrow, Kate," said Winny; "that's a fine day."

"Good morrow kindly, Winny; won't you come in and sit down awhile?"

"No, thank you; the day is so fine, I'm out for a walk. You may as
well put on your bonnet, and come along with me; it will do you good,
Kitty."

"With all my heart; step up to the house, and I'll be ready in two
twos." But she was not so sure that it would do her good.

The girls then turned up to the house, for Kate had run down in her
hair to shake hands with her friend. Winny would not go in, but stood
at the door, ordering Bully-dhu not to growl at Captain, and begging
of Captain not to growl at Bully-dhu. Kate was scarcely the "two twos"
she gave herself until she came out ready for the road; and the two
friends, and the two dogs, having at once entered into most amicable
relations with each other, went off together.

Winny was resolved that no "awkward pause" on her part should give
Kate reason to suppose there was anything unusual upon her mind, and
went on at once, as if from where she had left off.

"The day was so fine, Kate," she continued, "that I was anxious to get
some fresh air. I have been churning, and packing butter, every day
since Monday, and could not get out. Biddy Murtagh is very clean and
honest, but she is very slow, and I could not leave her."

"It is well for you, Winny, that has the butter to pack."

"Yes, Kate, I suppose it will be well for me some day or other; but as
long as my poor father lives--God between him and harm!--I don't feel
the want of anything."

"God spare him to you, Winny _mavourneen!_ He's a fine hale old man,
and I hope he'll live to be at the christening of many a grandchild.
If report speaks thrue, Winny dear, that same is not unlikely to come
round."

"Report does not always speak the truth, Kate; don't you know that?"

"I do; but I also know that there's seldom smoke without fire, and
that it sometimes makes a good hit. And sure, nothin's more reasonable
than that it's right this time. Tom's a fine young fellow; an' like
yourself, sure, he's an only child. There wasn't such a weddin' this
hundred years--no, nor never--in the parish of Rathcash, as it will
be--come now!"

"Tom is a fine young man, Kate; I don't deny it--"

"You couldn't--you couldn't, Winny Cavana! you'd belie yoursel' if you
did," said Kate, with a little more warmth of manner than was quite
politic under the circumstances.

"But I don't, Kate; and I can't see why _you_ need fly at me in that
way."

"I beg your pardon, Winny dear; but sure everybody sees an' knows that
you're on for one another; an' why not?--wasn't he as cross as a bag of
cats at his father's party because he let 'that whelp' (as he called
him) Edward Lennon take you out for the first dance?"

"Emon-a-knock is no whelp; he couldn't call him a whelp. Did he call
him one?"

"Didn't you hear him? for if you didn't you might; it wasn't but he
spoke loud enough."

"It is well for him, Kate, that Emon did not hear him. He's as good a
man as Tom Murdock at any rate. {787} He didn't fall over the poker
and tongs as Tom did."

"That was a mere accident, Winny. I seen the fung of his pump loose
myself; didn't I help to shut it for him, afther he fell?"

"You were well employed indeed, Kate," said Winny sneeringly.

"You would have done it yourself if he axed you as he did me," replied
Kate.

"Certainly not," said Winny.

So far they seemed both to have the worst of it, in spite of all their
caution. What they wanted was to find out how the other's heart stood
between these two young men, without betraying their own--which latter
they had both nearly done.

There was a pause, and Kate was the next to speak.

"Not but I must admit that Emon-a-knock is a milder, better boy in
some respects than Tom. He has a nicer way with him, Winny, and I
think it is easier somehow to like him than to like Tom."

"Report says you do, Kate dear."

"But you know, Winny, report does not always spake thrue, as you say
yourself."

"Ay, but as you said just now, Kate, it sometimes makes a good hit."

"Well, Winny, I wish you joy at all events, with all my heart. Both
your fathers is anxious for your match; an' sure, when the two farms
is joined in one, with you an' Tom, you can live like a lady. I
suppose you'll hould your head too high for poor Kate an' Emon-a-knock
then."

There was a sadness in Kate's tone as she said this, which, from
ignorance of how matters really stood, was partly genuine, and, from
anxiety to find it out, was partly assumed.

But she had turned the key and the door flew open. Winny could fence
with her feelings no longer.

"Kate Mulvey," she exclaimed, "do not believe the reports you hear
about me and Tom Murdock. I'm aware of what you say about his father
and mine being anxious to unite the farms by our marriage. I don't
want to say anything against Tom Murdock; but he'll never call me
wife. There now, Kate jewel, you have the truth. I'll be well enough
off, Kitty, without Tom Murdock's money or land; and when I really
don't care for him, don't you think it would be much better and
handsomer of him to bestow himself and it upon some nice girl without
a penny" (and she glanced slyly at Kate, whose cheeks got rosy red),
"than to be striving to force it upon one that doesn't want it--nor
wish for it? And don't you think it would be much better and handsomer
for me, who has a nice little fodeen, and must come in for my father's
land,--God between him and harm!--to do the same, if I could meet with
a nice boy that really cared for myself, and not for my money? Answer
me them questions, Kate."

Kate was silent; but her eyes had assumed quite a different
expression, if they had not altogether turned almost a different
color. The weight of Winny's rich rivalry had been lifted from her
heart, and so far as that obstacle had been dreaded, the coast was now
clear. Of course she secretly agreed in the propriety of Winny's
views, and it was only necessary that she should now do so openly.

"You didn't answer me them questions yet, Kate."

"Well I could, Winny, if I liked it; but I don't wish to have act,
hand, or part in setting you against your father's wishes."

"You need not fear that, Kitty; my father won't force me to do what I
really do not wish to do. He never put the matter to me plainly yet,
but I expect it every day. He's always praising Tom Murdock, and
hinting at the business, by saying he wishes he could see me
comfortably settled; that he is growing old and is not the man he used
to be; and all that. I know very well, Kate, what he means, both ways;
and, God between him and harm! I say again; but he'll never see me Tom
Murdock's wife. {788} I have my answer ready for them both."

"Well, Winny, as you seem determined, I suppose I may spake; and, to
tell you the truth, I always thought it would be a pity to put them
two farms into one, and so spoil two good establishments; for sure any
one of them is lashings, Winny, for any decent boy and girl in the
parish; an' what's more, if they were joined together tomorrow, there
is not a gentleman in the county would think a bit the better of them
that had them."

"Never, Kitty, except it was some poor broken-down fellow that wanted
to borrow a couple of hundred pounds, and rob them in the end. And
now, Kitty, let us be plain and free with one another. My opinion is
that Tom could raise you--I won't say out of poverty, Kate; for,
thanks be to God, it is not come to that with you, and that it never
may--but into comfort and plenty; and that I could, some day, do the
same, if I could meet with a nice boy that, as I said, would care for
myself and not for my money. If Tom took a liking to you, Kitty, you
might know he was in earnest for yourself; I _know_ he's only put up
to his make-belief liking for me by his own father and mine. But,
Kitty dear, I'm afraid, like myself, you have no fancy for him."

"Well, Winny, to tell you the truth, I always believed what the
neighbors said about you an' him; an' I tried not to think of him for
that same reason. There's no doubt, Winny dear, but it would be a fine
match for me; but I know he's out an' out for you: only for that,
Winny, I could love every bone in his body--there now! you have it
out."

"He'll soon find his mistake, Kate dear, about me. I'm sure the thing
will be brought to a point before long between us, and between my
father and me too. When Tom finds I'm positive, he can't be blind to
your merits and beauty, Kitty--yes, I will say it out, your
beauty!--you needn't be putting your hand to my mouth that way;
there's no mistake about it."

"Ah, Winny, Winny dear, you're too lenient to me entirely; sure I
couldn't sit or stand beside you in that respect at all, an' with your
money; sure they'll settle it all between themselves."

"They may settle what they like, Kitty; but they can't make me do what
I am determined not to do; so as far as that goes, you have nothing to
fear."

"Well, Winny dear, I'm glad I know the truth; for now I won't be
afeard of crossing you, at any rate; and I know another that wouldn't
be sorry to know as much as I do."

"Who, Kitty? tell us."

"Ah, then now, Winny, can't you guess? or maybe it's what you know
better than I do myself."

"Well, I suppose you mean Emon-a-knock; for indeed, Kitty, he's always
on the top of your tongue, and the parish has it that you and he are
promised. Come now, Kitty, tell us the truth. I told you how there was
no truth in the report about me and Tom Murdock, and how there never
could be."

If this was not leading Kate Mulvey to the answer most devoutly wished
for, I do not know what the meaning of the latter part of the sentence
could be. It was what the lawyers would call a "leading question." The
excitement too of Winny, during the pause which ensued, showed very
plainly the object with which she spoke, and the anxiety she felt for
the result.

Kate did not in the least misunderstand her. Perhaps she knew more of
her thoughts than Winny was aware of, and that it was not then she
found them out for the first time; for Kate was a shrewd observer. She
had gained her own object, and it was only fair she should now permit
Winny to gain hers.

"Ah, Winny dear," she said, after a contemplative pause, "there never
was a word of the kind between us. {789} You know, Winny, in the first
place, it wouldn't do at all--two empty sacks could never stand; and
in the next place, neither his heart was on me, nor mine on him. It
was all idle talk of the neighbors. Not but Emon is a nice boy as
there is to be found in this or any other parish, and you know that,
Winny; don't you, now?"

"Kitty dear, there's nobody can deny what you say, and for that
self-same reason I believed what the neighbors said regarding you and
him."

"Tell me this now, Winny,--you know we were reared, I may say, at the
door with one another, and have been fast friends since we were that
height" (and she held her hand within about two feet of the ground, at
the same time looking fully and very kindly into her friend's face),--
"tell me now, Winny dear, did it fret you to believe what you heard?
Come now."

"For your sake, and for his, Kitty, it could not fret me; but for my
own sake--there now, don't ask me."

"No, _avourneen_, I won't; what need have I, Winny, when I see them
cheeks of yours,--or is it the sun that cum suddenly out upon you,
Winny _asthore?_"

"Kate Mulvey, I'll tell you the truth, as I believe you have told it
to me. For many a long day I'm striving to keep myself from liking
that boy on your account. I think, Kate, if I hadn't a penny-piece in
the world no more than yourself, I would have done my very best to
take him from you; it would have been a fair fight then, Kitty; but I
didn't like to use any odds against you, Kitty dear; and I never gave
him so much as one word to go upon."

"I'm very thankful to you, Winny dear; an' signs on the boy, he
thought you were for a high match with rich Tom Murdock; an' any
private chat Emon an' I ever had was about that same thing."

"Then he has spoken to you about me! O Kitty, dear Kitty, what used he
to be saying of me? do tell me."

"The never a word I'll tell you, Winny dear. Let him spake to
yourself; which maybe he'll do when he finds you give Tom the go-by;
but I'm book-sworn; so don't ask me."

"Well, Kitty, I'm glad I happened to come across you this morning; for
now we understand each other, and there's no fear of our interrupting
one another in our thoughts any more."

"None, thank God," said Kitty.

By this time the girls had wandered along the road to nearly a mile
from home. They had both gained their object, though not in the
roundabout _sounding_ manner which we had anticipated, and they were
now both happy. They were no longer even the imaginary rivals which it
appears was all they had ever been; and as this light broke upon them
the endearing epithets of "dear" and "jewel" became more frequent and
emphatic than was usual in a conversation of the same length.

Their mutual confidences, as they retraced their steps, were imparted
to the fullest extent. They now perfectly "understood each other," as
Winny had said; and to their cordial shake-hands at the turn up to
Kate Mulvey's house was added an affectionate kiss, as good as if they
swore never to interfere with each other in love-affairs.

CHAPTER XI.

Winny Cavana, as far as her own feelings and belief were concerned,
had not made a bad morning's work of it. Hitherto she had supposed
that Kate Mulvey had forestalled her in the affections of
Emon-a-knock. The neighbors had given them to each other, and she
feared that Emon was not free from the power of her charms. With these
doubts, or almost with this belief, upon her mind, she could not have
met her father's {790} importunities about Tom Murdock with the same
careless and happy determination which matters, as they now stood,
would enable her to do. Being assured, from her conversation with
Kate, that there was nothing between her and Emon, she could "riddle"
more easily some circumstances and expressions which, to say the least
of it, were puzzling, with a belief that these two persons were
mutually attached. Winny knew now how to reconcile them; and the view
she took of them was anything but favorable to her father's wishes or
Tom Murdock's hopes.

She could not hope, however,--perhaps she did not wish,--for any
interview with Emon just then, when her change of manner, emanating
from her knowledge of facts, might draw him out, for her heart now
told her that this would surely come. She had some fears that her
father might sound her about Emon, and she wished to be able to say
with a clear conscience that he had never spoken, or even hinted at
the subject, to her; but she was determined, nevertheless, to act
toward her father, and subsequently toward Tom Murdock, as if her
troth and Emon's had been already irrevocably plighted. She was in
hopes that if she had an interview with her father upon the subject of
Tom Murdock in the first instance, the unalterable dislike which she
would exhibit to the match might save her the horrible necessity of
going through the business with the man himself. But poor Winny had
settled matters in her own mind in an order in which they did not
occur; and it so happened that, although she thought her heart had
gone through enough excitement for one day, and that she would, for
the rest of that evening, hide beneath the happiness which was
creeping over her, yet she was mistaken.

Tom Murdock had seen her pass down the road; and hastily putting on
one of his best coats and his very best hat, he followed her,
determined to have good news in return for his father's advice; but he
was disappointed. Before he could overtake her, he perceived that she
had been joined by Kate Mulvey, and that they went coshering away
together. Of course he saw that it was "no go," as he said, for that
time; but he would watch her returning, when he could not fail to meet
her alone.

"Hang me," said he, as he saw them walking away, "if I don't think
Kate Mulvey is the finest girl of the two, and very nearly as handsome
as ever she was--some people say handsomer. If it was not for her
money, and that grand farm she'll have, I'd let her see how soon I
could get a girl in every other respect as good, if not better, than
she is. Look at the two of them: upon my faith, I think Kate is the
lightest stepper of the two."

Tom paused for a few moments, if not in his thoughts, at least in the
expression of them; for all the above had been uttered aloud. Then, as
if they had received a sudden spur which made him start, he muttered
with his usual scowl, "No, no; I'll follow it up to the death if
necessary. That whelp shall never have it to say that Tom Murdock
failed, and perhaps add, where he did not. I'll have her, by fair
means if I can; but if not, by them five crosses," and he clasped his
hands together, "she shall be mine by foul. Sure it is not possible
they are going to meet that whelp this blessed moment!" And he dogged
them at so long a distance behind that, even if their conversation had
been less interesting, they would not have been aware of his stealthy
espionage.

When they turned to return, he turned also, and was then so far before
them that, with the bushes and the bends in the road, he could not be
perceived. Thus he watched and watched, until, to his great
satisfaction, he saw them part company at Kate's house. Winny Cavana,
as we have seen, had still some distance to walk ere she reached the
lane turning up to her father's; and Kate having gone in and shut the
{791} door, Tom strolled on, as if by mere accident, until he met
Winny on the road.

Tom was determined to be as mild and as bland, as cordial and
good-natured, as possible. He felt there had always been a sort of
undefined snappish battle between him and Winny; and he had the
honesty of mind, as well as the vanity, to blame his own harsh and
abrupt manner for this. Perhaps it arose no less from a consciousness
of his personal advantages than from a belief that in his position as
an only son, and heir to his father's interest in a rich and
profitable farm, he had no great need of those blandishments of
expression so generally requisite in making way to a young and
unhackneyed heart. He resolved, therefore, upon this occasion to give
Winny no cause to accuse him of uncouthness of manner; neither was he
inclined to be uncouth when he beheld the glowing beauty of her face,
heightened, as he thought, solely by the exercise of her walk; but not
a little increased, without his knowledge of the fact, by the new
light which had just dawned upon the horizon of her hopes.

Her heart bounced in her bosom as she saw him approach.

"Good morning, Winny," he said, holding out his hand.

"Good morrow kindly, Tom," she replied, wishing to be civil, and
taking it. She knew she was "in for it," as she expressed it to
herself; but encouraged "by the hope within her springing," and
softened by the anticipation of its fulfilment, she was determined to
be kind but firm.

"Have you been walking far, Winny? Upon my life, it seems to agree
with you. It has improved your beauty, Winny, if that was possible."

"Tom, don't flatter me; you're always paying me compliments, and I
often told you that I did not like it. Beside, you did not let me
answer your question until you begin at your old work. I walked about
a mile of the road with Kate Mulvey."

"Kate Mulvey is a complete nice girl. You are not tired, Winny, are
you?"

"Ah, then, what would tire me? is it a mile of a walk, and the road
under my feet? I could walk to _Boher-na-Milthiogue_ and back this
minute."

By this time they had come to the end of the lane turning up to
Rathcash House.

"I'm glad to find you are not tired, Winny. You may as well come on
toward the cross; I have something to say to you."

"And welcome, Tom; what is it?"

Winny felt that the thing was coming, and she wished to appear as
careless and unconscious as possible. When she recollected all Kate
Mulvey had said to her, she was just in the humor to have it over.
Upon reflection, too, she was not sorry that it should so happen
before the grand passage between her and her father upon the same
subject. She could the more easily dispose of the case with him,
having already disposed of it with Tom himself. She therefore went on,
past the end of her own lane; and Tom, taking this for an unequivocal
token in his favor, was beginning to get really fond of her--at least
he thought so.

"Well, Winny, I'm very glad I happened to meet you, and that you seem
inclined to take a walk with me; for to tell you the truth, Winny, I
can't help thinking of you."

"Perhaps you don't try, Tom."

"True for you, Winny dear; I wouldn't help thinking of you if I could,
and I couldn't if I would."

"Is that the way with you, Tom?"

But Winny did not smile or look at him, as he had hoped she would have
done.

"You know it is, Winny dear; but I can keep the truth, in plain
English, from you no longer."

"See that now! Ah, then, Tom, I pity you."

And Tom could not tell from her manner, or from the tone of her voice,
whether she was in earnest or {792} only joking. He preferred the
former.

"Well, Winny Cavana, if you knew how much I love you, you would surely
take pity on me, my own _colleen dhass_."

"Faith, Tom, I believe it's in earnest you are, sure enough."

"In earnest! Yes, Winny, by the bright sky over me--and it is not
brighter than your own eyes--I am in earnest! It is a long day now
since I first took to loving you, though it was only of late you might
have picked it out of my looks. Ah, Winny dear, if you hadn't a
penny-piece but yourself, I would have spoken to you long ago. But
there was a great deal of talk among the neighbors about the joining
of them two farms together, and I was afraid you might think--"

"I understand. You were afraid I might think it was my money and the
farm you were after, and not myself. Was not that it, Tom?"

"Just so, Winny. But I am indeed in earnest, and for yourself alone,
Winny dear; and I'm willing to prove my words by making you my wife,
and mistress of all I have coming Shraftide, God willing." And he took
her by the hand.

She withdrew it at once, after a slight struggle, and replied, "Tom
Murdock, put such a thing totally out of your head, for it can never
be--never, by the same oath you swore just now, and that is the blue
heaven above me!" And she turned back toward the lane.

"I cross, Winny. Don't say that. I know that your father and mine
would both be willing for the match. As to what your father would do
for you, Winny _mavourneen_, I don't care a _boughalawn lui_; for I'm
rich enough without a cross of his money or his land. My own father
will make over to me by lawful deed, the day you become my wife, his
house and furniture, together with the whole of his land and cattle.
Your father, I know, Winny, would do the same for you, for he has but
yourself belonging to him; and although your fortune or your land has
nothing to say to my love, yet, Winny, dear, between us, if you will
consent to my prayer, for it is nothing less, there's few grandees in
the country could compare to you,--I'll say nothing for myself, Winny
dear, only say the word."

"No, Tom, I'll say no word but what I'm after saying; and you are only
making matters worse, talking of grandeur and riches that way. You
would only be striving at what you would not be able for, nor allowed
to keep up, Tom, and as for myself, I'd look well, wouldn't I? stuck
up on a new sidecar, and a drawn bonnet and feathers, coming down the
lane of a Sunday, and the neighbors thronging to mass,--aping my
betters, and getting myself and yourself laughed at. Devil a one, Tom,
but they'd call you Lord _Boher-na-Milthiogue_. No, Tom; put it out of
your head; that is my first and last word to you." And she hastened
her step.

"No, Winny, you won't leave me that way, will you? By all the books
that were ever shut and opened, you may make what you please of me.
I'll never ask to put yourself or myself a pin's-point beyond what we
always were, either in grandeur or anything else. But wouldn't it be a
fine thing, Winny dear, to have our children able to hold up their
heads with the best in the county, in a manner?"

"Ay, in a manner, indeed. No, Tom; they would never be anything but
the Murdocks of Rathcashmore--grandchildren of ould Mick Murdock and
ould Ned Cavana, the common farmers."

"And what have you to say against old Mick Murdock?" exclaimed Tom,
beginning to feel that his suit was hopeless, and flaming up inwardly
in the spirit which was most natural to him.

"Nothing indeed, Tom; you need not be so angry, I meant no offence; I
said as much against my own father as against yours, if there was
anything against either. But we must soon {793} part now, Tom, and let
us part friends at all events, living as we do within a stone's-throw
of each other." She held out her hand, but he took it coldly and
loosely. He felt that his game was up.

"Take my advice, Tom Murdock"--this was the second time she had found
it necessary to overcome her antipathy to pronounce the name--"take
my advice, and never speak to me again upon the subject. Sure, there's
many a fine handsome girl would be glad to listen to you; and I'll now
ask you one question before we part. Wouldn't it be better and fitter
for you to bestow yourself and your land upon some handsome young girl
who has nothing of her own, and was, maybe, well inclined for you, and
to rise her up to be independent, than to be striving to force
yourself and it upon them that doesn't want your land, and cannot care
for yourself? Why don't you look about you? There's many a girl in the
parish as handsome, and handsomer, than I am, that would just jump at
you."

Winny had no sooner uttered these latter words than she regretted
them. She did not wish Tom Murdock to know that she had overheard him.
She was glad however to perceive that, in his anger, he had not
recognized them as a quotation from his conversation with his father
at the gate.

There was a silence now for a minute or two. Tom's blood was 'up; his
hopes of success were over, and he was determined to speak his mind in
an opposite direction.

"Have I set you thinking, Tom?" said Winny, half timidly.

"I'm d--d but you have, Winny Cavana; and I'll answer your question
with one much like it. And would not it be better and fitter for
_you_--of course it would--to bestow yourself and your fortune and your
land upon some handsome young fellow that has nothing but his day's
wages, and was well inclined for you, and to rise him up out of
poverty, than to spoil a good chance for a friend by joining yours to
them that has enough without it? Why didn't you follow up your first
question with that, Winny Cavana?" And he stopped short, enjoying the
evident confusion he had caused.

Winny thought, too, for a few moments in silence. She was considering
the probability of Tom Murdock's having overheard her conversation
with Kate Mulvey from behind some hedge. But the result of her
calculations was that it was impossible.

She was right. It was a mere paraphrase of her own question to him,
and only shows how two clever people may hit upon the same idea, and
express it in nearly the same language. And the question was prompted
by his suspicions in the quarter already intimated.

"Yes, I see how it is," he exclaimed, breaking the silence, and giving
way to his ungovernable temper. "But, by the hatred I bear to that
whelp, that shall never be, at all events. I'll go to your father this
moment, and let him know what's going on--"

"And who do you dare to call 'a whelp,' Tom Murdock? If it be Edward
Lennon, let me tell you that his little finger is worth your whole
head and heart--body and bones together."

"There, there--she acknowledges it. But I'll put a spoke in that
whelp's wheel,--for it was him I called a whelp, since you must
know,--see if I don't; so let him look out, that's all."

"I have acknowledged nothing, Tom Murdock. A word beyond common
civility never passed between Edward Lennon and myself; and take care
how you venture to interfere between my father and me. You have got
your answer, and I have sworn to it. You have no right to interfere
further."

By this time they had reached the end of the lane again; and Winny,
with her heart on fire, and her face in a flame, hurried to the house.
Fortunately, her father had not returned {794} from the fields, and
rushing to her own room, she locked the door, took off her bonnet and
cloak, and "threw herself" (I believe that is the proper expression)
upon the bed. Perhaps a sensation novelist would add that she "burst
into an agony of tears."

CHAPTER XII.

Winny lay for nearly an hour meditating upon the past, the present,
and the future. Upon the whole she did not regret what had occurred,
either before or after she had met Tom Murdock, and she cooled down
into her accustomed self-possession sooner than she had supposed
possible.

One grand object had been attained. Tom Murdock had come to the point,
and she had given him his final and irrevocable answer, if she had
twenty fathers thundering parental authority in her ears. A spot of
blue sky had appeared too in the east, above the outline of Shanvilla
mountain, in which the morning-star of her young life might soon
arise, and shine brightly through the flimsy clouds--or she could call
them nothing but flimsy--now which had hitherto darkened her hopes.
What if Tom Murdock was a villain?--and she believed he was: what
dared he--what could he do? Pshaw, nothing! But, oh that the
passage-of-arms between herself and her father was over! "Then,"
thought she, "all might be plain sailing before me."

But, Winny, supposing all these matters fairly over,--and the battle
with your father is likely to be as cranky and tough upon his part as
it is certain to be straightforward and determined upon yours,--there
will still be a doubtful blank upon your mind and in your heart, and
one the solution of which you cannot, even with Kate Mulvey's
assistance, seek an occasion to fill up. Ah, no, you must trust to
chance for time and opportunity for that most important of all your
interviews. And what if you be mistaken after all, and, if mistaken,
crushed for ever by the result?

Let Winny alone for that. Women seldom make a bad guess in such a
case.

Winny's mental and nervous system having both regained their ordinary
degree of composure, she left her room, and proceeded through the
house upon her usual occupations. She was not, however, quite free
from a certain degree of anxiety at the anticipated interview with her
father. He had not in any way intimated his intention to ask certain
questions touching any communication she might have received from Tom
Murdock, together with her answers thereto; and yet she felt certain
that on the first favorable occasion he would ask the questions,
without any notice whatever. She had subsided for the day, after a
very exciting morning upon two very different subjects. Yes; she
called them different, though they were pretty much akin; and she
would now prefer a cessation of her anxiety for the remainder of that
afternoon at least.

So far she was fortunate. Her father did not come in until it was very
late; and being much fatigued by his stewardship of the day, he did
not appear inclined to enter upon any important subject, but fell
asleep in his arm-chair after a hasty and (Winny observed)
scarcely-touched dinner.

Winny was an affectionate good child. She was devotedly fond of her
father, with whose image were associated all her thoughts of happiness
and love since she was able to clasp his knees and clamber to his lap.
Even yet no absolute allegiance of a decided nature claimed the
disloyalty of her heart; but she felt that the time was not far
distant when either he must abdicate his royalty, or she must rebel.

{795}

"It is clearly my duty now," she said to herself, "not to delay this
business about Tom, upon the chance of his being the first to speak of
it: to-morrow, before the cares and labors of the day occupy his mind,
and perhaps make him ever so little a bit cross, I will tell him what
has happened. I am afraid he will be very angry with me for refusing
that man; but it cannot be helped: not for all the gold they both
possess would I marry Tom Murdock. I shall not betray his sordid
villany, however, until all other resources fail; but I know my father
will scorn the fellow as I do when he knows the whole truth--but ah, I
have no witness," thought she, "and they will make a liar of me."

If the old man could have ever perceived any difference in the kind
and affectionate attention so uniformly bestowed upon him by his fond
daughter, perhaps it might have been upon that night after he awoke
from a rather lengthened nap in his easy chair.

Winny had sat during the whole time gazing upon the loved features of
the sleeping old man. She could not call to mind, from the day upon
which her memory first became conscious, a single unkind or even a
harsh word which he had uttered to her. That he could be more than
harsh to others she knew, and she was now in her nineteenth year;
fifteen clear years, she might say, of unbroken memory. She could
remember her fifth birthday quite well, and so much as a snappish word
or a commanding look she had never received from him; not, God knows,
but he had good reason, many's the time, for more than either. And
there he lay now, calm, and fast asleep, the only one belonging to her
on the wide earth, and she meditating an opposition in her heart to
his plans respecting her--all, she knew, arising from the great love
he had for her, and the frustration of which, she was aware, would vex
him sore. "Oh, Tom Murdock, Tom Murdock, why are you Tom Murdock? or
Emon-a-knock, why did I ever see you?" was the conclusion to this
train of thought, as she sat still, gazing on her sleeping father.

Then a happier train succeeded, and a fond smile lit up her handsome
face. "Ah no, no! I am the only being belonging to him, the only one
he loves. The father who for nearly twenty years never spoke an unkind
word--and if he had reason to reprove me did so by example and
request, and not the rod--has only to know that a marriage with Tom
Murdock would make me miserable to make him spurn him, as I did
myself. As to the other boy, I know nothing for certain myself about
him, and I can fairly deny any accusation he may make; and I am
certain he has been put up to it by old Murdock through his son. Yet
even on this score I'll deny as little as I can."

Here it was her father awakened; and Winny had only time to conclude
her thoughts by wondering how that fellow dare call Emon "a whelp."

"Well, father dear," she said, "you have had a nice nap; you must have
been very tired. I wish I was a man, that I might help you on the
farm."

"Winny darlin', I wouldn't have you anything but what you are for the
world. I have not much to do at all on the farm but to poke about, and
see that the men I have at work don't rob me by idling; and I must say
I never saw honester work than what they leave after them. But, Winny,
I came across old Murdock shortly after I went out, and he came over
my land with me, and I went over his with him, so that we had rather a
long walk. I'll engage he's as tired as what I am. I did not think his
farm was so extensive as it is, or that the land was so good, or in
such to-au-op caun-di-shon." And poor old Ned yawned and stretched
himself.

Winny saw through the whole thing at once. The matter of a marriage
between herself and Tom Murdock, and a union of the farms, had
doubtless been discussed between her father and old Mick Murdock, and
a final arrangement, so far as they were concerned, had been arrived
at. A hitch upon her part she was certain neither {796} of them had
ever dreamt of; and yet "hitch" was a slight word to express the
opposition she was determined to give to their wishes.

She knew that if her father had got so far as where he had been
interrupted by the yawn when he was fresh after breakfast, the whole
thing would have come out. She was, however, a considerate girl; and
although she knew there was at that moment a good opening, where a
word would have brought the matter on, she knew that the result would
have completely driven rest and sleep from the poor old man's pillow
for the night, tired and fatigued as he was. She therefore adroitly
changed the conversation to his own comforts in a cup of tea before he
went to bed.

"Yes, _mavourneen_" he said, "I fell asleep before I mixed a tumbler
of punch, and I'll take the tea now instead; for, Winny, my love, you
can join me at that. Do you know, Winny, I'm very thirsty?"

"Well, father dear, I'll soon give you what will refresh you."

While Winny was busying herself for the tea, putting down a huge
kettle of water in the kitchen, and rattling the cups and saucers
until you'd think she was trying to break them, the old man wakened up
into a train of thought not altogether dissimilar to that which Winny
herself had indulged in over his sleeping form.

Winny was quite right. The whole matter had been discussed on that day
between the old men during their perambulations round the two farms;
the respective value and condition of the land forming a minute
calculation not unconnected with the other portion of their
discourse--settlements, deeds of conveyance, etc., etc., had all been
touched upon.

Winny was right in another of her surmises, although at the time she
scarcely believed so herself. Old Murdock, taking his cue from Tom,
told old Ned that if he found Winny at all averse to marrying Tom, he
was certain young Lennon would be at the bottom of it--at least Tom
had more than hinted such to him.

Old Ned was furious at this, declaring that if Tom Murdock was never
to the fore, his daughter should never bestow his long and hard
earnings upon a pauper like that, looking for a day's wages here and
there, and as often without it as with it; how dare the likes of him
lift his eyes to his little girl! But he'd soon put a stop to that, if
there was anything in it, let what would turn up. Every penny-piece he
was worth in the world was in his own power, and there was a very easy
way of bringing Miss Winny to her senses, if she had that wild notion
in her head.

Poor old Ned, in his indignation for what he thought Winny's welfare,
forgot that she was the only being belonging to him in the world, and
that when it came to the point he would find it impossible to put this
threat of "cutting her off" into execution.

Old Murdock was delighted with this tirade against young Lennon, whom
he looked upon as the only real obstacle to Tom's acquisition of land
and money, to say nothing of a handsome wife.

"Be studdy with her, Ned," said he, "she has a very floostherin' way
wid her where you're concerned; I often remarked it. Don't let her
come round you, Ned, wid her pillaverin' about that 'whelp,' as Tom
calls him."

"An' he calls him quite right. If he daars to look up to my little
girl, he'll soon find out his mistake, I can tell him."

"Nothin' would show him his mistake so much as to have Tom's business
an' hers settled at Shraft, Ned."

"I know that, Mick; an' with the blessing I'll spake to her in the
mornin' upon the subjict. I dunna did Tom ever spake to herself,
Mick?"

"If he didn't he will afore to-morrow night; he's on the watch to meet
with her by accident; he says it's betther nor to go straight up to
her, an' maybe frighten her."

"Very well, Mick; I'll have an eye to them; maybe it would be betther
{797} let Tom himself spake first. These girls are so dam' proud; an'
I can tell you it is betther not vex Winny."

Of course these two old men said a great deal more; but the above is
the pith of what set old Ned Cavana thinking the greater part of the
night; for the tea Winny made was very strong, and, as he said, he was
thirsty, having missed his tumbler of punch after dinner. He fell
asleep, however, much sooner than he would have done had the sequel to
his plans become known to him before he went to bed.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

From The Book of Days.

YOUNG'S NARCISSA.

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 Prévôt 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 inédits._ Par
HONORÉ BONHOMME. Paris: Didier. 1863.

_Histoire de Madame de Maintenon, et des principaux Evénements du Règne
de Louis XIV_. Par M. le DUC DE NOAILLES, de l'Académie Française.
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.

Mémorial 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 Sévigné, de
Maintenon, de Genlis, and Récamier; 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 Murçay, about a league from
the prison. The prisoner, Constant d'Aubigné, 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'Aubigné'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'Aubigné, 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'Aubigné 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'Aubigné 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'Aubigné, 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 abbé.
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 beauté
  Qui tieut ton esprit enchaîné,
  Marquis, j'ai raison de te plaindre;
  Car son humeur est fort à craindre:
  Elle a presque autant de fierté
  Qu'elle a de grâce et de beauté."

  [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 Condé 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, Molière, 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'éveille;
  Car voilà la première 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 Hôtel 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 Sévigné, Madame de Coulanges, Louvois' cousin, and Madame
de Lafayette, the novelist, were, with the hôtels 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 £50 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 Maréchal d'Albret's offer of a home in her hôtel,
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 Hôtel 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 fête 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 Abbé 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 Vallière. 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 Hôtel 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: "_Deuxième Entretien à 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 Barèges, 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.

Barèges 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'Aubigné, 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 Abbé 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 Sévigné 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 Vallière, 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 Père 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 Abbé 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: _"Siècle 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 Abbé 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'Aubigné; "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 à M. d' Aubigné_, 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 Fénelon 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 tirée 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 Sévigné 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
Fénelon.

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 Fénelon 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 Fénelon.  [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
Fénelon, 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] Fénelon, 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 Fénelon.]

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
Fénelon, 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. Fénelon, 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
Fénelon 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 Fénelon's errors. The temper and ability
with which Fénelon 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 Fénelon 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 Père
{817} la Chaise, had instigated the persecution of the Protestants;
she had set fire to the chateau of Lunéville; 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 Condé 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 Fléchier and
Fleury; there La Fontaine, Boileau, and Molière; there Rapin and Huet,
La Bruyère 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 Condé. There, too, after the general's death, she saw her
former pupil, the king's daughter, Mademoiselle de Nantes, espoused to
Condé'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 Sévigné, "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 Fénelon 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 Fénelon 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 saäy 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 Félix 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 Hôtel 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'état, 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.