Page:A cyclopaedia of female biography.djvu/504

 no new impulse to genius, she assisted its development, and had enough taste to feel the superiority of Voltaire. Her most extraordinary quality appears to have been her conversational style.

MAINTENON, MADAME DE, extraordinary wonian, who, from a low condition, was elevated to the honour of becoming the wife of Louis the Fourteenth, was descended from the ancient family of d'Aubigné her proper name being Frances d'Aubigné. M. d'Aubigné her grandfather, was a Protestant, and a man of great merit and high standing; bat his son, Constance d'Aubigné the father of Madame de Maintenon, was a man of most infamous character, and actually murdered his first wife. He married afterwards the daughter of Peter de Cardillac, lord of Lane, at Bordeaux, December 27th., 1627. Going to Paris soon after his second marriage, he was, for some very great offence, thrown into prison, Madame d'Aubigné in vain solicited his pardon. Cardinal Richelieu told her, that "to take such a husband from her, was to do her a friendly office." Madame d'Aubigné shut herself up in prison with him, and there her two eldest sons were born. She then obtained leave to have her husband removed to the prison at Niort, that they might be near their relations. In that prison her only daughter, Madame de Maintenon, was born, November 27th., 1635. Her aunt, Madame Villette, took compassion on the poor infant, and gave it to the care of her daughter's nurse.

M. d'Aubigné was at length released, on condition that he should become a Roman Catholic; and, in 1639, he embarked for America with his family. He died at Martinico in 1646, leaving his life in the greatest poverty. She returned to France, leaving her daughter in the hands of the principal creditor, as a pledge for the payment of her debts; but he soon sent her to France after her mother, who, being unable to support her, her aunt Villette offered her a home, which she thankfully accepted. But Madame Villette was a Protestant, and instructed her niece in the peculiar tenets of that faith. This alarmed another relation of Frances d'Aubignés, Madame de Neuillaut, a Catholic, who solicited and obtained an order from the court, to take her out of the hands of Madame Villette; and, by means of threats, artifices, and hardships, she at length made a convert of her.

In 1651, Madame de Neuillaut took her to Paris, where, meeting the famous wit, the abbé Scarron, she married him, notwithstanding his being infirm and deformed; preferring this to the dependent state she was in. She lived with him many years; and Voltaire says that these were undoubtedly the happiest part of her life. Her beauty, but still more her wit, though her modesty and good sense preserved her from all frivolity, caused her society to be eagerly sought by all the best company in Paris, and she became highly distinguished. Her husband's death in 1660 reduced her to the same indigent state as before; and her friends used every effort to prevail on the court to continue to her the pension which Scarron had enjoyed. So many petitions were sent in, beginning "The widow Scarron most humbly prays," that the king exclaimed with irritation, "Must I always be tormented with the widow Scarron?" At last, however, he settled a much larger pension on her, as a mark of esteem for her talent.

in 1671, the birth of the Duke of Maine, the son of Louis the