Mme. de Montespan was possibly the most arrogant and despotic of all French mistresses and she was, also, the most humiliated.  She had inspired no confidence, friendship, love, or respect in Louis XIV., who eventually looked with shame and remorse upon his relations with her.  It took her sixteen years to overcome her terrible passion and to give up the court forever.  Not until 1691 did she become reconciled to departure from Versailles; thenceforth, penitence conquered immoral desires.  M. Saint-Amand says she not only “arrived at remorse, but at macerations, fasts, and haircloths.  She limited herself to the coarsest underlinen and wore a belt and garters studded with iron points.  She came at last to give all she had to the poor;” she also founded a hospital in which she nursed the sick.

While at the convent, she tried, in vain, to effect a reconciliation with her husband; not until every avenue to a social life was cut off from her, did she entirely surrender herself to charity and the service of God.  In her latest years, she was so tormented by the horrors of death that she employed several women whose only occupation was to watch with her at night.  She died in 1707, forgotten by the king and all her former associates; Louis XIV. formally prohibited her children, the Duke of Maine, the Comte de Toulouse, the Comte de Vexin, and Mlles. de Nantes, de Blois, and de Tours, from wearing mourning for her.

A striking contrast to Mme. de Montespan in character, disposition, morality, and birth was Mme. de Maintenon, one of the greatest and most important women in French history.  What is known of her is so enveloped in calumny and falsehood and made so uncertain by dispute, that to disentangle the actual facts is almost an impossibility, despite the glowing tribute paid to her in the immense work published recently by the Comte d’Haussonville and M. Gabriel Hanotaux.

It would seem that the more the history of Mme. de Maintenon is studied, the more one is led away from a first impression—­which usually proves to be an erroneous one.  Thus, M. Lavallee, in his first work, Histoire des Francais, wrote that she “was of the most complete aridity of heart, narrow in the scope of her affections, and meanly intriguing.  She suggested fatal enterprises and inappropriate appointments; she forced mediocre and servile persons upon the king; she had, in fine, the major share in the errors and disasters of the reign of Louis XIV.”  A few years later he wrote, in his Histoire de la maison royale de Saint-Cyr:  “Mme. de Maintenon gave Louis XIV. none but salutary and disinterested counsels which were useful to the state and instrumental in making less heavy the burdens of the people.”

Opinion in general, especially French opinion, has been very bitter toward her.  History has even reproached her with having been a usurper, a tyrant, and a selfish master.  The great preacher, Fenelon, wrote to her: