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Madame de Maintenon

The story of M

Jul 24th 2008
From The Economist print edition

AS THE Marquise de Maintenon—mistress and for 30-odd years morganatic wife of Louis XIV—lay dying in 1719, in the tranquil setting of Saint-Cyr, a charitable institution she had set up for the education of impoverished young noblewomen, she must have reflected on what surely counts as one of the most extraordinary rags-to-riches stories of all time. She herself had described her life as a miracle.

Born Françoise d’Aubigné in a prison in Niort, in western France, in 1635, she was the unwanted daughter of Constant d’Aubigné, an improvident and unscrupulous minor nobleman. D’Aubigné had been condemned as a traitor and a murderer, and he continued throughout his life to exchange his Protestant faith for the Catholic as circumstances dictated in a period of great religious unrest. Her mother, Jeanne de Cardilhac, a Catholic, was the daughter of d’Aubigné’s former jailer.

Veronica Buckley gives a lively account of Françoise’s progress from the house of her loving Huguenot paternal aunt and uncle, via the Caribbean with her unloving mother and two brothers, to a convent from which, at the age of 15, she married the 42-year-old Paul Scarron, a horribly disfigured poet and wit. From her mother Françoise had inherited beauty, intelligence, a strong will and iron self-discipline; from her father a good dose of the adventurer.

With these advantages she made her way in her husband’s raffish and bohemian salon in the Marais district of Paris, managing to maintain her reputation in spite of a lifelong friendship with Ninon de Lenclos, the most famous courtesan of the time. When in 1669 another friend, the ravishingly beautiful Marquise de Montespan, then Louis XIV’s favourite mistress, chose the, by then, widowed Françoise Scarron as governess for her growing brood of royal bastards, she also offered her the opportunity of a lifetime.

As Louis XIV moved from his palace of Saint-Germain to the glories of Versailles, south-west of Paris, Françoise, serious, intelligent and obliging, in stark contrast to the passionate and demanding Marquise de Montespan, increasingly provided the king with a quiet refuge. A title and her own estate of Maintenon, “beautiful and grand”, soon followed. Before long, she was appointed second lady–in-waiting to the new dauphine. With the court increasingly under the influence of Bishop Bossuet and other dévots (ultra-Catholic priests), Madame de Maintenon set out to ensure her own future by saving the king’s soul.

So it was that soon after the queen’s death at the age of 45 in 1683, Louis was persuaded that he should no longer live in sin. To the horror of his ministers he married Françoise de Maintenon, by then his mistress of 11 years. Her morganatic marriage to the king was to be a well-kept secret for the next three decades.

Ms Buckley has written an admirably balanced life with a wealth of biographical detail and great sympathy for her subject. This is not always easy to share, particularly when the reader learns that Madame de Maintenon once had a real scaffold set up (though never used) as a means of controlling the girls at Saint-Cyr. But the author’s thorough knowledge of the history of France’s grand siècle is not always matched by a feel for it. An over-domesticated Louis XIV is rarely convincing as the Sun King, and the twists and turns that lead Françoise ever upwards are sometimes recounted with a prosaic inevitability that robs such an extraordinary adventure of real excitement.

法国国王路易十四的第二任妻子曼特农夫人于1719年在她生前建立的圣希尔校园里长眠于世。曼特农曾是路易十四出身卑微的情妇，后一跃成为伴其身边三十年之久的正统夫人--曼特农女侯爵，这经历在她自己看来都是一段奇迹。

1635年，原名弗朗索瓦奥比涅的曼特浓夫人出生在法国南部城市Niort的一座监狱里，父亲康斯坦奥比涅是个臭名昭著的没落贵族，曾经落下叛国和杀人的罪名，作为一个新教徒，在那段动荡的日子里大肆鼓吹天主教徒加入他们的阵营，她的母亲则是康斯坦之前狱守的女儿。

幼年的弗朗索瓦先后跟随她的亲戚辗转各处，最终在修道院中以十五岁的年华嫁给了残疾诗人做妻子，两人相差二十八岁。继承了母亲的美貌、机智和自律以及父亲的探索精神，弗朗索瓦的地位丝毫未受到丈夫负面影响的干扰，还与当时最有名气的妓女尼农朗克洛交往甚密，一生保持深切的友谊。后机缘巧合结友当时路易十四的情妇，并为他们的私生子做女家教。

而后成为寡妇的弗朗索瓦以自己的美貌、智慧与品德给予即将继承帝位的路易十四以支持和鼓励，（做好宗教调查后再做评论）。

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