Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/578

 LOVE 554 proved most beneficial. Louis was delighted. On the day of his son's return he dined en famille, and devoted his attention entirely to Madame de Maintenon. Madame de Monte- span was furious, and, perhaps, not without reason ; she now saw in Madame de Main- tenon a rival, and, moreover, a rival who was poisoning the king's mind against her. Indeed, Madame de Maintenon now addressed the king with the utmost candour, and from her he accepted rebuffs which he would not have tolerated from any other being alive. " Sire," she said to him one day, " Madame de Montespan is dear to you, and gave herself to you by excess of love ; but it was selfish love, which wounded her husband and your wife, dishonoured herself and her son, and connected scandal with your name, to the sorrow of all that is best in France." Next, Madame de Montespan became frightened ; she endeavoured to remove her rival from court, and strove to arrange for her some suitable marriage. But all in vain ; Madame de Maintenon was now a favourite of the king, and he preserved her presence at court by appointing her lady-in-waiting to the wife of the Dauphin. In this the queen encouraged him, for Marie Therese had the utmost respect for Madame de Maintenon, and on July 30th, 1683, when she lay on her death bed, she drew a ring from her finger and gave it to madame, exclaiming, " Adieu, dearest marquise, to you I confide the king." At this time, however, Louis fell under the influence of a certain Mademoiselle de Fontagnes, of whom Madame de Montespan once remarked, " God has never before made anything so beautiful." This affection on the part of the king, however, was purely superficial ; in his heart of hearts he was deeply in love with Madame de Maintenon, and nothing shows more clearly how indispens- able she had become to him than the fact that when she became ill, in March, 1683, he visited her three times a day. To this period, moreover, belongs the only one of Louis's love letters which has survived. Before her death, Madame de Maintenon most carefully destroyed all her private documents. " I take advantage of Montchevreuil's departure," he wrote, " to assure you of a truth that pleases me too much for me to tire of repeating it. It is that I cherish you always, and consider you to a point that I cannot express, and, in short, whatever friend- ship you have for me, I have more for you, being with my whole heart entirely yours. "Louis." Morganatic marriages nowadays are common occurrences, but Louis ruled in the hey-dey of monarchial power, at a time when kings were accredited with a divine right. In his own, moreover, and in the eyes of the world, the Grand Monarque was the human embodiment of kingship in its highest form. If Louis had given even a minute's con- sideration to the idea of marrying Madame de Maintenon, even then his affection for her would have been revealed as no ordinary attachment, but when we find him consulting his confessor, not merely as to the advisability of the action, but also as to whether madame would be likely to accept his offer, then and then only can we appreciate the true depths of his passion. Pere la Chaise, the con- fessor, approved warmly of the marriage, and promised to sound madame's feelings. She, however, on hearing of the king's desires, was overwhelmed. " Oh, God," she exclaimed, " for what a fate have you reserved me, what a spectacle I shall provide for the world ! What will France say ! And the royal family ! Even my own friends ! Of what intrigues will they not accuse me ! " However, she accepted Louis's offer; that offer was her king's request. At midnight, on January 12th, 1684, in the Royal Chapel at Versailles, Pere la Chaise conducted the marriage ceremony, and afterwards the bridal pair set out for Maintenon to receive the Communion. Madame de Maintenon was now a queen in all but name, and, until his death, she con- trolled Louis absolutely. Her courtiers addressed her with the title of majesty ; Louis merely as madame. She drove in the royal carriages ; at public functions she sat beside the king, and did not rise from her seat even to receive royal visitors. Louis always had been devout, but only as befitted one belonging to his creed and a great Catholic monarch. Madame de Main- tenon, however, made him truly humble, truly religious, almost fanatical. To her influence has been attributed the fatal error of the year 1685, the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the edict which had granted toleration to the Huguenots, the best and most loyal servants of the king. This accusation, however, is unjust. Madame de Maintenon always was opposed to persecution, and Louis revoked the edict merely because the Huguenot element in France jarred with his dogma of absolute authority. Indeed, it was at once the sorrow and tragedy of Madame de Maintenon's life that, as Louis improved as a man, he declined as a king. As a good man he proved a failure as a king ; as a bad man he had been the most magnificent of monarchs. And when Louis died, in 17 15, he died among the debris of his former greatness. During his last illness Madame de Main- tenon nursed her husband with great devotion ; it was only with much difficulty that she could be persuaded ever to leave his room, and sometimes she attended him for fourteen hours consecutively On August 26th, however, Louis begged her " to leave him and not to return, as her presence affected him too much." Madame de Maintenon, therefore, retired to St. Cyr, and did not return until September ist, the day on which France's greatest king breathed his last.