The Secret Wife of Louis XIV: Françoise d'Aubigné, Madame de Maintenon

by Veronica Buckley

  “I had just put my doll”: Ibid., 17–18.

  “Let him eat up”: Letter of June 2, 1646, quoted in Lavallée, Théophile, La Famille d’Aubigné et l’enfance de Madame de Maintenon (Paris: Henri Plon, 1863), 80–2. It is surprising that Jeanne found the food so bad, given the general profusion of easily available fruits and birds, etc., on the island at this time. Perhaps her slaves were new to the Caribbean and did not know how to prepare the local food, or perhaps they had all been sold by now, leaving Jeanne and her French maid to (mis)manage the cooking alone.

  “a very hard thing”: D’Aumale, 17.

  “two or three types of parrot”: The descriptions of food in the Caribbean islands are from Moreau (ed.), 115–57. The anonymous buccaneer spent ten months in the islands between 1618 and 1620. Many foods now considered native to the Caribbean were in fact introduced later in the century by Europeans travelling from Asia or from elsewhere in the Americas.

  “When the sea waves rise”: Maurile de Saint-Michel, 8.

  up for sale: M. S. Anderson writes that “the seas swarmed, in peace as well as wartime, with actual or potential corsairs, many of whom were hardly distinguishable from outright pirates,” and notes, for example, that “the remains of the English royalist fleet degenerated from the later 1640s into little more than a gang of pirates.” See Anderson, M. S., War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime 1618–1789 (Guernsey, Channel Islands: Sutton Publishing, 1998), 57.

  “At least if we’re captured”: D’Aumale, 16.

  Three: Terra Infirma

  “You’re a fine fellow”: Letter to the comte de Bussy-Rabutin, March 15, 1648, in Sévigné, Marie, marquise de, Lettres, 3 vols (Paris: Pléiade, 1960), I, no. 6, 99.

  “some little allowance”: Letter of June 10, 1647, quoted in Merle, Louis, L’Étrange beau-père de Louis XIV: Constant d’Aubigné 1585–1647, le père de Madame de Maintenon (Paris: Beauchesne, and Fontenay-le-Comte: Lussaud, 1971), 133 ff.

  “Pastors and Elders”: The consistory’s certification of January 9, 1650, is quoted in ibid., 135 ff.

  William II: Prince of Orange (1626–50) and father of William III of England (1650–1702).

  islands in 1644: Benjamin de Villette’s letter of April 12, 1647, is referred to in Merle, 128.

  “I knew for a reasonable certainty”: Tallemant des Réaux, writing on October 1, 1647, quoted in ibid., 136.

  “went to England”: Esprit Cabart de Villermont, quoted in Boislisle, M. A. de, “Paul Scarron et Françoise d’Aubigné,” La Revue des questions historiques, juillet–octobre 1893, 127.

  “a thorny discussion”: Desprat, Jean-Paul, Madame de Maintenon, ou le prix de la réputation Paris: Perrin, 2003), 41. In Langlois, Marcel, Madame de Maintenon (Paris: Plon, 1932), the author suggests that during this autumn the family was taken to the home of their Parabère relatives in Angoulême, and later to the Magallan family, but it seems rather that it was only later, in 1648, that Charles went to the Parabère family (in fact in Poitiers), and Constant would have gone to the Magallan family, had he survived, 6. Langlois also suggests that it was a M. d’Alens, a Huguenot, who took Françoise to Mursay.

  in the land: The English Civil War(s), which also involved Scotland and Ireland, lasted from 1642 to 1651, including two periods of uneasy peace. The causes were a mixture of constitutional and religious grievances. In Norman Davies’s summary, “Catholics and High Church Anglicans felt the greatest loyalty for the King, whose monarchical prerogatives were under attack. English Puritans and Calvinist Scots provided the core support of Parliament, which they saw as a bulwark against absolutism.” See Davies, Norman, Europe: A History (Oxford: OUP, 1997), 551. The Commonwealth was initiated after the execution of Charles I in January 1649; Cromwell became Lord Protector in 1653. The monarchy was restored in 1660.

  “subtle and full of trickery”: La Rochefoucauld, Mémoires (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1993), 101. Subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from ibid., 120. Cardinal Mazarin (1602–61), born Giulio Mazzarini, became prime minister of France in 1643, at the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV and the regency of his mother, Anne of Austria. Mazarin had formerly been a protégé of Cardinal Richelieu’s.

  Battle of Rocroi: On May 19, 1643, at Rocroi, in the Ardennes, Condé (then duc d’Enghien and aged just twenty-one) defeated the Spanish Habsburg army under Don Francisco Melo. See Pujo, Bernard, Le Grand Condé (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995), 59 ff. Davies (565) writes that Rocroi “ended the Spanish military supremacy which had lasted since…1525.” The battle was part of the Thirty Years War of 1618–48, which the French had entered formally in 1635.

  felt himself entitled: In fairness to the young prince, it should be noted that at this time “the distinction between military and naval commands was still blurred.” See Anderson, M. S., War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime 1618–1789 (Guernsey, Channel Islands: Sutton Publishing, 1998), 57.

  “the pittance”: Langlois, 6. In Bonhomme, Honoré (ed.), Madame de Maintenon et sa famille: Lettres et documents inédits… (Paris: Didier, 1863), the author writes (226) that “[s]ome Jesuits came here some time ago saying that in her childhood Madame de Maintenon was so poor that she would go with a bowl to get soup which was being distributed at a particular place…” However, Bonhomme did not believe this.

  “gallows meat”: See Rapley, Elizabeth, The Dévotes: Women and the Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 78. The secret group of the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement (Company of the Holy Sacrament) was known to its enemies as the cabale des dévots. See Chill, E., “Religion and Mendicity in Seventeenth-Century France,” International Review of Social History 7, no. 3 (1962): 400–25.

  only turnips: See the Instruction pour le soulagement des pauvres, produced by the chapter of Notre-Dame, quoted in Saint-Germain, Jacques, La Reynie et la police au grand siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1962), 256.

  “All her tenderness”: D’Aumale, Marie-Jeanne, Souvenirs sur Madame de Maintenon: Mémoire et lettres inédites de Mademoiselle d’Aumale, 2e ed. (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1902), 16.

  “and I wasn’t revolted”: “Instruction aux demoiselles de Saint-Cyr. Sur les amitiés,” May 1714, in Leroy, Pierre-E. et Marcel Loyau (eds), Comment la sagesse vient aux filles: Propos d’éducation (Paris: Bartillart, 1998), no. 3, 42.

  “the meanest and most avaricious pair”: The genealogist Guillard, quoted in Boislisle, 95.

  Madame de Neuillant’s brother: It is in fact not certain whether Pierre Tiraqueau, baron de Saint-Hermant, was the brother or the cousin of Madame de Neuillant.

  “Everyone knows what money-grubbers”: The genealogist Guillard, quoted in Boislisle, 95. Suzanne became demoiselle d’honneur to the duchesse de Montpensier, later known as la Grande Mademoiselle. Suzanne’s husband was the duc, and later maréchal, de Navailles.

  “They had been intending”: Wicquefort, A. de, Chronique discontinue de la Fronde, 1648–52, ed. Robert Mandrou (Paris: Fayard, 1978), 101.

  their own capital: For eyewitness accounts of la Fronde du Parlement (1648–49) and la Fronde des Princes (1650–53), see Wicquefort; La Rochefoucauld; Retz, Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de, Mémoires (Paris: Garnier, 1987); Patin, Guy, La France au milieu du XVII siècle, 1648–1661 (Paris: Armand Collin, 1901); Montpensier, Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, duchesse de, Mémoires de la Grande Mademoiselle, ed. Bernard Quilliet, 2 vols (Paris: Mercure de France, 2005).

  “doing without everything”: Montpensier I, 108.

  “a jealous, unthinking”: Leca, Ange-Pierre, Scarron: Le malade de la reine (Paris: KIMÉ, 1999), 82.

  “Since Cardinal Mazarin”: Wicquefort, 113–14.

  a few days later: The Peace of Rueil was signed on March 11, 1649, and was ratified by the parlement on April 1.

  “a lot of wretched fields”: Lewis, W. H., The Splendid Century: Life in the France of Louis XIV New York: Morrow, 1954), 242.

  young girls: See Rapley, and see Jégou, Marie-Andrée,
Les Ursulines du Faubourg Saint-Jacques à Paris 1607–1662: Origine d’un monastère apostolique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981), Appendix 1, Le contrat de fondation.

  “reading, writing, needlework”: From a papal bull addressed to the Ursulines of Toulouse, quoted in Dubois, Elfrieda, “The Education of Women in Seventeenth-Century France,” French Studies 32, no. 1 (1978), 4.

  “Young girls will reform”: See Rapley, 157.

  “confine her intellect”: Re Mère Madeleine in 1646. See Jégou, 135.

  “The girls got up at 6”: Drawn from a Grenoble Ursuline convent in 1645. See Dubois, 4. Jégou describes the almost identical daily routine at the Ursuline convent in the rue Saint-Jacques in Paris, where Françoise later stayed, 148ff.

  “Well of course”: D’Aumale, 22–3.

  “I loved her more”: “Instruction aux demoiselles de Saint-Cyr. Sur les amitiés,” May 1714, quoted in Leroy, Pierre-E. et Marcel Loyau (eds), Comment la sagesse vient aux filles: Propos d’éducation (Paris: Bartillart, 1998), 41.

  “the girls liked me”: Ibid.

  “Little by little”: D’Aumale, 23.

  “I thought I’d die”: “Instruction aux demoiselles de Saint-Cyr. Sur les amitiés,” May 1714, quoted in Leroy et Loyau (eds), 42.

  “They gave us big sticks”: Ibid., 39.

  “Changeable are the blessings:” Guy du Faur de Pibrac (1529–84), quoted in Maugin, Georges, La Jeunesse mystérieuse de Madame de Maintenon (Vichy: Wallon, 1959), 24. In his Sganarelle of 1660, Act I, scene i, Molière pokes fun at “Pibrac, et [autres] doctes tablettes.”

  “The girl was a relative”: Tallemant des Réaux, Gédéon, Les Historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux: Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du XVIIe siècle, 6 vols (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale Française, 1995), V, 259–60.

  “with very beautiful black eyes”: D’Aumale, 36, note 1.

  Blaise Pascal: (1623–62). Forbidden as a boy to study mathematics owing to his delicate health, Pascal became one of the greatest of all mathematicians. At the age of eighteen he invented an “arithmetical machine,” the forerunner of the computer; his contributions to geometry and probability theory were equally remarkable. In his late twenties he underwent a religious conversion, becoming one of the leading lights of the controversial Catholic Jansenist movement and a fierce opponent of the Jesuits.

  Pierre de Fermat: (1601–65). A lawyer by profession, Fermat insisted on remaining an “amateur” mathematician, generally refusing to publish his work or to provide proofs of his theorems. He is nonetheless regarded as the founder of number theory and a major contributor to the development of modern calculus. His famous “last theorem” remained unproven for 358 years, until 1995.

  probability theory together: Their correspondence was first published in 1654. See Pascal, Blaise, La Correspondance de Blaise Pascal et de Pierre de Fermat: La géometrie du hasard ou le calcul des probabilités (Fontenay-aux Roses: École Normale Superieure, 1983).

  “She understood Spanish”: D’Aumale, 189.

  “If you were simply”: Letter to Mademoiselle*** [d’Aubigné], undated, in Chamaillard, Edmond, Le Chevalier de Méré, rival de Voiture, ami de Pascal, précepteur de Madame de Maintenon (Niort: Clouzot, 1921), 2e partie, 22–4.

  “I would really like her”: Letter to Madame la duchesse de Lesdiguières, probably 1652, in ibid., 24–6.

  “the first to give you”: Quoted in Madame de Maintenon, Lettres, ed. Langlois, Marcel, Vols II–V (Paris: Letouzy et Ané, 1935–59), II, note 233, 381–2.

  “between the hard-boiled eggs”: Magne, Émile, Scarron et son milieu, 6e ed. (Paris: Émile-Paul Frères, 1924), 177.

  “before anyone could tell me”: Desprat, 49.

  “beaten you to it”: D’Aumale, 23.

  “I think God will change His mind”: Ibid., 16.

  Palais d’Orléans: Built in the earlier seventeenth century by Marie de’ Medici, mother of Gaston, duc d’Orléans, this is now the Palais du Luxembourg, the seat of France’s Senate.

  Four: Burlesque

  “Paris…is…one”: Evelyn, John, The Diary (London: Macmillan, 1908). Entry for December 24, 1643, 29–30. Evelyn arrived in Paris in mid-November 1643 and remained there until April 19, 1644, before setting off for the French provinces and Italy. His diary entries for these months contain detailed descriptions of the city as he saw it.

  “All the same”: Gui Patin’s letter of October 18, 1650, to Charles Spon, in Patin, Guy, La France au milieu du XVIIe siècle, 1648–1661 (Paris: Armand Collin, 1901), 96. Patin was a famous opponent of the theory of the circulation of the blood.

  a hundred years of building: The original Louvre, a fortress constructed between 1190 and 1202 by King Philippe Auguste, was demolished early in the fifteenth century before being rebuilt by François I and Henry II in the sixteenth century. The exterior of the palace as it is today was not completed until the mid-nineteenth century.

  “most unpleasant for those on foot”: Saint-Germain, Jacques, La Reynie et la police au grand siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1962), 10, quoting Locatelli’s Voyage de France of 1664–65.

  “not to spit inside”: See Castiglione, Baldassar, Le Livre du Courtisan (Paris: Flammarion, 1991). First published in 1580, it remained popular reading for courtiers and gentlefolk in France until the eighteenth century.

  “Monsieur Scarron’s house”: D’Aumale, Marie-Jeanne, Souvenirs sur Madame de Maintenon: Mémoire et lettres inédites de Mademoiselle d’Aumale, 2e ed. (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1902), 26.

  “My body, it’s true”: Letter to the comtesse de Brienne, August 7, 1657, in Scarron, Paul, Oeuvres, 7 vols (Paris: Bastien, 1786), I, 195–6.

  “This is for you”: From the Portrait de Scarron, fait par lui-même, au Lecteur, qui ne m’a jamais vu, in Scarron I, 129–31.

  “To look him in the face”: Tallemant des Réaux, Gédéon, Les Historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux: Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du XVIIe siècle, 6 vols (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale Françoise, 1995), V, 258.

  had begun: This story may have originated with biographer and editor la Beaumelle in the eighteenth century. One of Scarron’s contemporaries attributed his condition simply to a maladie des garçons (venereal disease), but at the time there was no consensus as to its cause.

  “admired by all”: From Scarron’s Epitre à Mademoiselle de Neuillant, in Scarron VII, 102–4.

  Mademoiselle, I had my suspicions: Undated letter, probably written during the summer of 1651, to Françoise d’Aubigné, in ibid., I, 170–1.

  “I should have been more wary”: Undated letter to Françoise d’Aubigné, in ibid., 179–82.

  “You say,” he writes: La Beaumelle, Laurent Angliviel de, Lettres de Madame de Maintenon, nouvelle édition, 9 vols (Amsterdam: Pierre Erialed, 1758), I, 10.

  “white, plump, naked body”: Undated letter to Françoise d’Aubigné, in Scarron I, 179–82.

  “Come back”: Ibid.

  “little tigress”: La Beaumelle (ed.), Lettres I, 8.

  “where the earth yields wealth”: From Scarron’s Réflexions politiques et morales, quoted in Leca, Ange-Pierre, Scarron: Le malade de la reine (Paris: KIMÉ, 1999), 127.

  “my own dear town”: Ibid.

  “the fruit of seventeen years”: Mazarin’s librarian Gabriel Naudé, quoted in Pujo, Bernard, Le Grand Condé (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995), 201.

  young Queen: See Buckley, Veronica, Christina, Queen of Sweden (London: Fourth Estate, 2004).

  “five hundred écus”: Scarron VII, 339–40.

  “Richelieu’s monkey”: La Mazarinade of February 10, 1651, in Scarron I, 283 ff.

  “In a month’s time”: Letter to Scarron’s friend, the poet Sarrazin, written during the winter of 1651–52, in ibid., 169–70.

  “a badly behaved woman”: Letter to the poet Gilles Ménage, quoted in Desprat, Jean-Paul, Madame de Maintenon, ou le prix de la réputation (Paris: Perrin, 2003), 54.

  “damned his soul”: Undated letter t
o Françoise d’Aubigné, in Scarron I, 179–82.

  “She’s caused me”: Letter to Monsieur de Marillac, quoted in Magne, Émile, Scarron et son milieu, 6e ed. (Paris: Émile-Paul Frères, 1924), 188, note 1.

  10,000 livres: See Rapley, Elizabeth, The Dévotes: Women and the Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 181 and passim.

  “very low figure”: From Furetière’s Dictionnaire, quoted in Duchêne, Roger, Être femme au temps de Louis XIV (Paris: Perrin, 2004), 117.

  “I preferred to marry him”: Tallemant des Réaux V, 259.

  “She’ll be the most useless”: See the undated letter from the chevalier de Méré to la duchesse de Lesdiguières, in Chamaillard, Edmond, Le Chevalier de Méré, rival de Voiture, ami de Pascal, précepteur de Madame de Maintenon (Niort: Clouzot, 1921), 2e partie, 24–6.

  Five: Marriage of True Minds

  “the lady Jeanne”: Boislisle, M. A. de, “Paul Scarron et Françoise d’Aubigné,” La Revue des questions historiques, juillet–octobre 1893, 138. The procuration was dated February 19, 1652.

  “for fear they should bring”: Jégou, Marie-Andrée, Les Ursulines du Faubourg Saint-Jacques à Paris 1607–1662: Origine d’un monastère apostolique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1981), 151.

  “before the King’s notaries”: Boislisle, 141 ff.

  “two big eyes”: Quoted in Desprat, Jean-Paul, Madame de Maintenon, ou le prix de la réputation (Paris: Perrin, 2003), 58.

  “one thousand livres”: Boislisle, 141 ff.

  “setting the courtiers’ hearts on fire”: For Scarron’s poem in praise of Marie-Marguerite, see Scarron VII, 102–4.

  “He liked teasing”: Segrais, Jean Regnault de, Segraisiana, ou mélange d’histoire et de littérature (Amsterdam: Compagnie des libraires, 1722), I, 139.

  “Why, Father,” replied Scarron: Desprat, 59.

  “He really was”: Segrais I, 87.

  “He couldn’t even turn”: Letter of 1691 to Madame de Lesdiguières, quoted in Magne, Émile, Scarron et son milieu, 6e ed. (Paris: Émile-Paul Frères, 1924), 197.