Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/523

Rh cannot I make you sensible of that uneasiness which wears out the great, and of the difficulties they labour under to employ their time? Do not you see that I am dying with melancholy, in a height of fortune which once my imagination could scarce have conceived? I have been young and beautiful, have had a relish for pleasures, and have been the universal object of love. In my advanced age I have spent my time in intellectual amusements. I have at last risen to favour; but I protest to you, my dear girl, that every one of these conditions leaves in the mind a dismal vacuity." If any thing could shew the vanity of ambition, it would certainly be this letter. Madame de Maintenon could have no other uneasiness than the uniformity and constant restraint of her manner of living; and this made her say once to her brother, "I can hold it no longer; I wish I were dead." The way to please Lewis was never to be out of spirits or health, but the force she put upon herself for this purpose rendered her life a burthen. He was the politest of men, and always preserved for her the greatest respect; yet, as she herself complained, to "amuse a man who never can be amused," was the most perfect slavery.

They latterly lived a retired life at the convent at St. Cyr, and the court grew every day more serious. Here it was she requested Racine, who had renounced the theatre for Jansenism and the court, to compose a tragedy, and take the subject of it from the scriptures. He accordingly wrote Esther, which having been first represented at the house of St. Cyr, was several times after wards acted at Versailles, before the king, in the winter of the year 1689. At the death of Lewis, which happened in 1715, Madame de Maintenon retired wholly to the convent of St. Cyr, where she spent the der