was nevertheless a usurpation.  She triumphed in consequence of the weakness of her husband more than by her own strength; and the nation never forgave her.  She outraged the honor of the King, and detracted from the dignity of the royal station.  Louis XIV. certainly had the moral right to marry her, as a nobleman may espouse a servant-girl; but it was a faux-pas which the proud idolaters of rank could not excuse.

And for this usurpation Madame de Maintenon paid no inconsiderable a penalty.  She was insulted by the royal family to the day of her death.  The Dauphin would not visit her, even when the King led him to the door of her apartments.  The courtiers mocked her behind her back.  Her rivals thrust upon her their envenomed libels.  Even Racine once so far forgot himself as to allude in her presence to the miserable farces of the poet Scarron,—­an unpremeditated and careless insult which she never forgot or forgave.  Moreover, in all her grandeur she was doomed to the most exhaustive formalities and duties; for the King exacted her constant services, which wearied and disgusted her.  She was born for freedom, but was really a slave, although she wore gilded fetters.  She was not what one would call an unhappy or disappointed woman, since she attained the end to which she had aspired.  But she could not escape humiliations.  She was in a false position.  Her reputation was aspersed.  She was only a wife whose marriage was concealed; she was not a queen.  All she gained, she extorted.  In rising to the exalted height of ruling the court of France she yet abdicated her throne as an untrammelled queen of society, and became the slave of a pompous, ceremonious, self-conscious, egotistical, selfish, peevish, self-indulgent, tyrannical, exacting, priest-ridden, worn-out, disenchanted old voluptuary.  And when he died she was treated as a usurper rather than a wife, and was obliged to leave the palace, where she would have been insulted, and take up her quarters in the convent she had founded.  The King did not leave her by his will a large fortune, so that she was obliged to curtail her charities.

Madame de Maintenon lived to be eighty-four, and retained her intellectual faculties to the last, retiring to the Abbey of St. Cyr on the death of the King in 1715, and surviving him but four years.  She was beloved and honored by those who knew her intimately.  She was the idol of the girls of St. Cyr, who worshipped the ground on which she trod.  Yet she made no mark in history after the death of Louis XIV.  All her greatness was but the reflection of his glory.  Her life, successful as it was, is but a confirmation of the folly of seeking a position which is not legitimate.  No position is truly desirable which is a false one, which can be retained only by art, and which subjects one to humiliation and mortifications.  I have great admiration for the many excellent qualities of this extraordinary and gifted woman, although I know that she is not a favorite with historians.  She is not endeared to the heart of the nation she indirectly ruled.  She is positively disliked by a large class, not merely for her narrow religious intolerance, but even for the arts by which she gained so great an influence.  Yet, liked or disliked, it would be difficult to find in French history a greater or more successful woman.