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

by Veronica Buckley

  “Scarron said of his wife”: Segrais I, 87.

  “someone would have had to”: 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, 258–9. However, Segrais said that Scarron’s family made over his inheritance to him on his marriage. See Segrais I, 140.

  “You can’t satisfy a woman”: Segrais I, 140. Unbeknown to him, Segrais’s anecdotes of the 1690s, related at the home of a friend, were being regularly recorded by a scribe hidden behind a tapestry. It is from these anecdotes that the Segraisiana was eventually compiled.

  “their taste is a cross”: Ibid., 183.

  “She and her mother”: Ibid., 135.

  “seven hundred men”: From a verse of the satirist Loret in La Muze historique of May 19, 1652, quoted in Leca, Ange-Pierre, Scarron: Le malade de la reine (Paris: KIMÉ, 1999), 126.

  family lands: These were the estates of Fougerets and La Rivière. See Magne, 200, note 2.

  “It’s a good enough work”: Scarron’s verse quoted in Desprat, 68.

  It isn’t true: From a verse of the satirist Loret in La Muze historique of October 5 and November 9, 1652, quoted in Magne, 202, note 2.

  “because there are twelve”: Segrais I, 78. And see Leca, 59.

  “in the Marais fashion”: Segrais I, 78–9.

  “a pleasant temperament”: Boislisle, 111. Saumaise (1588–1653) was one of the period’s most distinguished humanist scholars.

  “She likes men”: Segrais I, 78.

  She was tall: Desprat, 63.

  “They weren’t really”: Segrais I, 213. Molière’s celebrated play was first performed in November 1659 by the troupe belonging to the King’s brother.

  “Take every chance”: “Instruction aux demoiselles de la classe jaune,” quoted in Leroy, Pierre-E. et Marcel Loyau (eds), Comment la sagesse vient aux filles: Propos d’éducation (Paris: Bartillart, 1998), 1155 ff.

  “If you’ve made yourself”: Chamaillard, Edmond, Le Chevalier de Méré, rival de Voiture, ami de Pascal, précepteur de Madame de Maintenon (Niort: Clouzot, 1921), 1e partie, 155.

  “her advice”: Segrais I, 112–13.

  “I’ve always been a bit lazy”: From the Portrait de Scarron, fait par lui-même, au Lecteur, qui ne m’a jamais vu, in Scarron, Paul, Oeuvres, 7 vols (Paris: Bastien, 1786), I, 129–31.

  Roman Comique: Part I was published in 1651 and Part II in 1657. Scarron never completed Part III.

  rue Neuve-Saint-Louis: The house is still standing, though the street has been renamed. It is on the corner of the present rue Villehardouin and the rue de Turenne, in the Marais.

  “praying to the Lord”: From the Stances Chrétiennes, in Scarron VII, 244–6.

  “I support my ills”: From the Portrait de Scarron, 129–31.

  “That yellow damask”: Segrais I, 114.

  Saint Paul: Poussin’s Ravissement de Saint Paul, painted in 1649–50, is now in the Louvre in Paris.

  “The best way of conducting oneself”: Chamaillard, 1e partie, 154.

  “It’s the one where people talk”: Letter to the comte de Vivonne of June 12, 1660, in Scarron I, 198–200.

  “It’s one of the miracles”: Tallemant des Réaux V, 257.

  “Scarron’s house was the meeting place”: Segrais I, 114.

  “so extraordinarily ugly”: From Furetière’s Roman bourgeois, quoted in Leca, 133.

  “a little man”: Ibid., 133–4.

  “since my husband”: Duchêne, Roger, Ninon de Lenclos: ou la manière jolie de faire l’amour (Paris: Fayard, 2000), 247.

  “as good as cheeses can be”: Letter to d’Albret of December 2, 1659, in Scarron I, 213–14.

  “One foolish statement”: Chamaillard, 1e partie, 126.

  “Don’t talk too much”: “Avis à une demoiselle qui sortait de Saint-Cyr,” quoted in Leroy et Loyau (eds), 163 ff.

  “Don’t try to keep up”: “Instruction aux demoiselles des deux grandes classes” and “Lettre aux demoiselles de Saint-Cyr,” quoted in ibid., 189 ff. and 225 ff.

  “And what I admire”: Lettre à Madame la duchesse de Lesdiguières, probably 1652, in Chamaillard, 2e partie, 24–6.

  “And I have to admit”: D’Aumale, Marie-Jeanne, Souvenirs sur Madame de Maintenon: Mémoire et lettres inédites de Mademoiselle d’Aumale, 2e ed. (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1902), 26.

  “that her friends were ashamed”: Ibid., 27.

  “What I don’t like”: Lettre à Madame la duchesse de Lesdiguières, probably 1652, in Chamaillard, 2e partie, 24–6.

  “But I wasn’t doing these things”: D’Aumale, 27.

  “He shouldn’t have come”: Ibid., 28.

  “never turning her wit”: Lettre à Madame la duchesse de Lesdiguières, probably 1652, in Chamaillard, 2e partie, 24–6.

  “my idols”: Letter to the maréchal d’Albret of October 13, 1659, in Scarron I, 206–8.

  Six: End of the Beginning

  I’m not going to attempt: Letter of August 27, 1660, in Madame de Maintenon, Lettres, ed. Langlois, Marcel, Vols II–V (Paris: Letouzy et Ané, 935–59), II, no. 2, 18 ff.

  “I bring Your Majesty”: From Madame de Motteville’s Mémoires, quoted in Fraser, Antonia, Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2006), 40. The Treaty of the Pyrenees between France and Spain was signed on November 7, 1659.

  “She has very white skin”: See the Notice to the Oraison de Marie-Thérèse d’Autriche, in Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne, Oraisons Funèbres (Paris: Hachette, 1898), 214.

  “Scarron laughed at those”: Tallemant des Réux, Gédéon, Les Historiettes de Tallemant des Réaux: Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire du XVIIe siècle, 6 vols (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale Française, 1995), V, 262.

  “Up to this point”: Ibid.

  “Beauty can be”: “Instruction aux demoiselles de Saint-Cyr,” quoted in Leroy, Pierre-E. et Marcel Loyau (eds), Comment la sagesse vient aux filles: Propos d’éducation (Paris: Bartillart, 1998), no. 4, 43, ff.

  “months on end”: The memoirist La Fare, quoted in Duchêne, Roger, Ninon de Lenclos: ou La manière jolie de faire l’amour (Paris: Fayard, 2000), 244.

  “I can play the man”: Letter to Boisrobert, quoted in ibid., 245 and passim.

  “They had no reason”: Ibid., 245.

  “I might have guessed”: Quoted in Magne, Émile, Scarron et son milieu, 6e ed. (Paris: Émile-Paul Frères, 1924), 261.

  “My wife is most unhappy”: Letter to Monsieur de Villette of November 12, 1659, in Scarron, Paul, Oeuvres, 7 vols (Paris: Bastien, 1786), I, 263–4.

  “I find my wife”: Letter to the maréchal d’Albret of October 13, 1659, in ibid., 206–8.

  “I’m afraid that débauchée”: Quoted in Duchêne, Ninon de Lenclos, 246.

  “well known for her love of women”: Tallemant des Réaux V, 264.

  “I’ve always been a bit greedy”: From the Portrait de Scarron, fait par lui-même, au Lecteur, qui ne m’a jamais vu, in Scarron I, 129–31.

  “To my wife I bequeath”: From “Testament de Scarron, en vers burlesques,” in ibid., 133–4.

  “Come on, then, Monsieur”: Quoted in Desprat, Jean-Paul, Madame de Maintenon, ou le prix de la réputation (Paris: Perrin, 203), 100.

  “I’ll never make you weep”: Quoted in ibid.

  breathing his last: Scarron died in the night of October 6–7, 1660, not on October 14, as is often stated. See Leca, Ange-Pierre, Scarron: Le malade de la reine (Paris: KIMÉ, 1999), 186, note.

  This man knew every pain: Épitaphe, in Scarron I, 141.

  “the first thing I did”: Segrais, Jean Regnault de, Segraisiana, ou mélange d’histoire et de littérature (Amsterdam: Compagnie des libraires, 1722), I, 134.

  Pierre Mignard: This Mignard drawing has since been lost.

  “a furious number of people”: Tallemant des Réaux V, 263.

  “I have been so overwhelmed
”: Letter to Mme de Villette of October 23, 1660, in Langlois (ed.), Lettres II, no. 3, 23.

  Monsieur Scarron has left: Letter to M. de Villette of November 1660, in ibid., no. 4, 25.

  “They’ve staged a comedy”: Letter to M. de Villette of December 7, 1660, in ibid., no. 6, 27.

  “But what is there”: Letter to Mme de Grignan, June 24, 1676, in Sévigné, Marie, marquise de, Lettres, 3 vols (Paris: Pléiade, 1960), II, no. 437, 130.

  Seven: The Merry Widow

  “I’m a widow, thank God”: See Florent Carton Dancourt’s Le Chevalier à la mode of 1687; Molière’s Le Misanthrope of 1666; and Madame de Sévigné’s Lettres. All three quotations are from Duchêne, Roger, Être femme au temps de Louis XIV (Paris: Perrin, 2004), 249 ff.

  rue des Tournelles: Ninon de Lenclos’s house at no. 36 is still standing.

  “Quite tall, a brunette”: Taillandier, Madame Saint-René, La Princesse des Ursins: Une grande dame française à la cour d’Espagne sous Louis XIV (Paris: Hachette, 1926), 4.

  “something majestic in her whole bearing”: Saint-Simon, Louis de Rouvroy, duc de, Mémoires, 7 vols (Paris: Pléiade, 1953), I, 924.

  “Maréchal d’Albret and all the other gentlemen”: Caylus, Marthe-Marguerite, comtesse de, Souvenirs, ed. Bernard Noël (Paris: Mercure de France, 1965 et 1986), 27–8.

  “frighteningly tall”: Saint-Simon I, 327.

  “a bit mad, always herself”: Caylus, 67.

  “She met Madame de Montespan”: Montpensier, Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, duchesse de, Mémoires de la Grande Mademoiselle, ed. Bernard Quilliet, 2 vols (Paris: Mercure de France, 2005) I, 322.

  “blonde, with big azure blue eyes”: Visconti, Primi, Mémoires sur la Cour de Louis XIV, 1673–1681 (Paris: Perrin, 1988), 16.

  “of respectable conduct”: Caylus, 37.

  “You could have heard it”: The chevalier d’Arvieux, quoted in the Notice to Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, in Molière, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin de, Oeuvres Complètes, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), II, 697.

  “Her appearance was charming”: René de Saint-Léger, quoted in Desprat, Jean-Paul, Madame de Maintenon, ou le prix de la réputation (Paris: Perrin, 2003), 101.

  “Widowed a day”: “La jeune Veuve,” in La Fontaine, Jean de, Fables, ed. René Radouant (Paris: Hachette, 1929), Livre VI, no. 21, 219.

  “A widow is a most dangerous thing”: Quoted in Duchêne, Être femme au temps de Louis XIV, 254.

  “Three months in love”: Letter to Vassé, quoted in Duchêne, Roger, Ninon de Lenclos: ou la manière jolie de faire l’amour (Paris: Fayard, 2000), 165. Ninon frequently accepted a lover for three months’ duration, “infinity as far as I’m concerned.” See ibid., 114.

  “Madame Scarron went that spring”: 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, 263–4.

  “Ninon wasn’t at all concerned”: Quoted in Duchêne, Ninon de Lenclos, 242. Bret was Ninon’s first biographer.

  “Don’t the three of you”: Ibid., 244.

  “I often let Villarceaux”: Ibid.

  “as poor as church mice”: Saint-Simon I, 45.

  “Montchevreuil was a very good fellow”: Ibid., 45–6. Saint-Simon did not know the Montchevreuils at this time, having still fourteen years to wait until his own birth. His words are probably exaggerated in any case by his personal resentment of Françoise.

  “She would start talking about vespers”: D’Aumale, Marie-Jeanne, Souvenirs sur Madame de Maintenon: Mémoire et lettres inédites de Mademoiselle d’Aumale, 2e ed. (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1902), 49.

  “There is nothing so fine”: Chamaillard, Edmond, Le Chevalier de Méré, rival de Voiture, ami de Pascal, précepteur de Madame de Maintenon (Niort: Clouzot, 1921), 1e partie 148.

  “There’s no greater pleasure”: “Instruction aux demoiselles de la classe bleue,” quoted in Leroy, Pierre-E. et Marcel Loyau (eds), Comment la sagesse vient aux filles: Propos d’éducation (Paris: Bartillart, 1998), no. 5, 48–9.

  “The pleasure of doing good”: Chamaillard, 2e partie, 151.

  “No one has ever established”: Cordelier, Jean, Madame de Maintenon (Paris: Club des Éditeurs, 1959), 51.

  “A debauched girl”: From the treatise L’Honnête fille of 1639, quoted in Duchêne, Être femme au temps de Louis XIV, 121.

  “I wasn’t seeking the esteem”: “Entretien particulier avec Mme de Glapion,” Portraits-Souvenirs no. 1, in Leroy et Loyau (eds), 38.

  “a bit mad”: Caylus, 67.

  “as beautiful as the day”: Saint-Simon I, 327.

  “perhaps pushed by the maréchal”: Caylus, 87.

  “or so the gossips say”: Ibid.

  “The King…is only too susceptible”: Spanheim, Ezechiel, Relation de la cour de France, faite au commencement de l’année 1690 (Paris: Renouard [pour la Société de l’histoire de France], 1882), 10–11.

  “During all these affairs”: Saint-Simon VII, 355.

  “Man shall not quite be lost”: Milton, Paradise Lost, II, 173–5. Milton’s great poem was first published in 1667.

  “She’s desperate to make me”: Choisy, Abbé François-Timoléon de, Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Louis XIV, et Mémoires de l’abbé de Choisy habillé en femme, ed. Georges Mongrédien (Paris: Mercure de France, 1966), 266.

  “She was fond of Madame de Montespan”: Caylus, 82–3.

  “She so much enjoyed”: Visconti, 16.

  “hardly saying hello to her”: Choisy, 267.

  “expressed my affection”: Louis XIV, Mémoires, suivi de Réflexions sur le métier de Roi (Paris: Tallandier, 2001), 247.

  “though La Vallière complained”: Visconti, 16.

  “Only then did it seem”: Quoted in Dunlop, Ian, Louis XIV (London: Chatto and Windus, 1999), 67.

  “to which everyone swore”: The abbé de Choisy, quoted in Cornette, Joël (ed.), La France de la Monarchie absolue, 1610–1715 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997), 266.

  “The ministers of kings”: Louis XIV, Mémoires, 247.

  “He had come to work”: Letter to Anne of Austria of September 5, 1661, quoted in Déon, Michel, Louis XIV par lui-même (Paris: Gallimard, 1991), 295.

  “brilliant,” though not altogether: Saint-Simon I, 668.

  “I left him to investigate”: Louis XIV, Mémoires, 86.

  “Colbert had his own interests”: Choisy, 142.

  “Colbert’s ferociously active”: Visconti, 130.

  Spanish Netherlands: The southern part of the “low countries,” they comprised, broadly, today’s Belgium and Luxembourg, plus the Lille region of northern France.

  “When you act in contravention”: Louis XIV, Mémoires, 65.

  “perhaps the first genuine one”: Anderson, M. S., War and Society in Europe of the Old Regime 1618–1789 (Guernsey, Channel Islands: Sutton Publishing, 1998), 100.

  “Madame de la Vallière”: Letter to Madame de Grignan, February 20, 1671, in Sévigné, Marie, marquise de, Lettres, 3 vols (Paris: Pléiade, 1960), I, no. 84, 199–203.

  Eight: City of Light

  Trois-Pavillons: Now the rue Elzévir in the Marais district of Paris.

  “a very fashionable fabric”: Desprat, Jean-Paul, Madame de Maintenon, ou le prix de la réputation (Paris: Perrin, 2003), 111, and see d’Aumale, Marie-Jeanne, Souvenirs sur Madame de Maintenon: Mémoire et lettres inédites de Mademoiselle d’Aumale, 2e ed. (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 1902), 50–2.

  “highly esteemed”: D’Aumale, 50.

  “Why, you have a really beautiful bust”: Ibid.

  “But, monsieur,” she protested: Ibid., 52.

  “to try to bore everyone”: Ibid., 51.

  “The diocese would have to be”: Duchêne, Roger, Ninon de Lenclos: ou la manière jolie de faire l’amour (Paris: Fayard, 2000), 270.

  “Really, Madame,” he told her: D’Aumale, 51.

  “every morning at seven o’clock”: See
Saint-Germain, Jacques, La Reynie et la police au grand siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1962), 72–8 and passim.

  “they’re much more skilled in love”: The traveller Locatelli, quoted in ibid., 11.

  “It is the King’s mission”: A March 1672 letter patent of Louis XIV, quoted in ibid., 141.

  “My lazy Muse”: From the “Remerciement au Roi” of 1663, in Molière, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin de, Oeuvres Complètes, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), I, 631.

  “I am so constitutionally inclined”: Quoted in Cornette, Joël (ed.), La France de la Monarchie absolue, 1610–1715 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1997), 274. The “labouring ox” quotation is from the great nineteenth-century French historian Jules Michelet.

  “trumpets for the King’s virtues”: A. Viala quoted in Guy Thewes, “Peintre, théâtre et propagande” in Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon et Musée d’Histoire de la ville de Luxembourg, À la gloire du Roi: Van der Meulen, peintre des conquêtes de Louis XIV (Imprimerie Nationale, 1998), 263.

  “It’s the machinery”: Quoted in Saint-Germain, 141.

  “some gentlemen singing along”: This was the naturalist and physician, Martin Lister. See ibid., 141 ff.

  “a magnificent confirmation”: Louis XIV, Mémoires, suivi de Réflexions sur le métier de Roi (Paris: Tallandier, 2001), 277.

  “every person of quality”: Montigny, J. de, “La feste de Versailles du 18 juin 1668,” in Recuil de diverses pièces faites par plusieurs personnes illustres (The Hague: Jean et Daniel Steucker, 1669), 4.

  “strictly forbidden every sort”: Ibid., 4–5.

  “in heroic harmony”: Scudéry, Madeleine de, La Promenade de Versailles, ed. Marie-Gabrielle Lallemand (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002), 257 and see passim.

  “and you know he is”: Ibid., 256.

  Nine: Duty Calls

  “She became thin”: Caylus, 39.

  “the fight against debauchery”: Saint-Germain, Jacques, La Reynie et la police au grand siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1962), 26.

  “Praise the Lord”: Quoted in Hilton, Lisa, The Real Queen of France: Athénaïs and Louis XIV (London: Abacus, 2003), 88.

  “Jupiter had a son”: “Pour Monseigneur le duc du Maine,” in La Fontaine, Jean de, Fables, ed. René Radouant (Paris: Hachette, 1929), Livre XI, no. 2, 418.