The spell of the heart of France: the towns, villages and châteaux about Paris — A Reader’s Guide

As to the portrait of Charles X, it is placed here to call to memory the fact that in 1830 the last of the Bourbons, flying from Rambouillet, came hither, "in the midst of the dismal column which was scarcely lighted by the veiled moon" (Chateaubriand), and that he found asylum for a night in the chamber of Madame de Maintenon.

It was on December 27, 1674, that Madame Scarron became owner of the château, and the domain of Maintenon, for the sum of two hundred and fifty thousand livres. Louis XIV gave her this present in recognition of the care which she had given for five years to the children of Madame de Montespan. At this time the mission of the governess, at first secret, had become a sort of official charge. The illegitimate offspring had been acknowledged in 1673. Madame Scarron had then left the mysterious house in which she dwelt "at the very end of the Faubourg Saint-Germain... quite near Vaugirard." She appeared at court. But she had calculated the danger of her position; she dreamt of putting herself out of reach of changes of fortune and of acquiring an "establishment."

The letters which she then addressed to her spiritual director, Abbé Gobelin, were full of the tale of her fears and her sorrows. She desired a piece of property to which she could retire to lead the life of solitude and devotion, to which she then aspired. She finally obtained from Madame de Montespan and the King the gift of Maintenon, and, two months later, she wrote to her friend, Madame de Coulanges, her first impressions as a landed proprietor:

"I am more impatient to give you news of Maintenon than you are to hear them. I have been here two days which seemed only a moment; my heart is fixed here. Do you not find it admirable that at my age I should attach myself to these things like a child? The house is very beautiful: a little too large for the way I propose to run it. It has very beautiful surroundings, woodlands where Madame de Sévigné might dream of Madame de Grignan very comfortably. I would like to live here; but the time for that has not yet arrived."

It never came. Madame de Maintenon--the King had given this name to Scarron's widow--remained at court to carry out her great purpose: the conversion of Louis XIV. Not that this project was then clearly formed in her mind. But, little by little, she saw her favor increase, the King detach himself from Madame de Monte-span, and all things work together to assure her victory, which was to be that of God. So it was necessary for her to abandon her project of living in retirement, and to remain at Versailles upon the field of battle. She had hours of weariness and sadness; but, sustained by pride and devotion, she always returned to this court life, which, as La Bruyère expresses it, is a "serious and melancholy game which requires application."

At first it was necessary that she should struggle against the caprices, the angers and the jealousies of Madame de Montespan; for a profound aversion separated the two women. "It is a bitterness," says Madame de Sévigné, "it is an antipathy, they are as far apart as white is from black. You ask what causes that? It is because the friend (Madame de Maintenon) has a pride which makes her revolt against the other's orders. She does not like to obey. She will mind father, but not mother." At one time, the preaching of Bourdaioue and the imprecations of Bossuet had determined the King to break with Madame de Montespan (during Lent of 1675), and, before departing for the campaign in Flanders, Louis XIV had bidden farewell to the favorite in a glazed room, under the eyes of the whole court. But when the King returned the work of the bigots was in vain. Madame de Montespan regained her ascendancy. "What triumph at Versailles! What redoubled pride! What a solid establishment! What a Duchess of Valentinois! What a relish, even because of distractions and absence! What a retaking of possession!" (No one has expressed like Madame de Sévigné the dramatic aspect of these spectacles of the court.) After this dazzling reentry into favor, every one expected to see the position of Madame de Maintenon become less favorable. But she had patience and talent. Her moderation and good sense charmed the King, who wearied of the passionate outbursts of his mistress and who was soon to be troubled by the frightful revelations of the La Voisin affair. It is true that the Montespan was succeeded by a new favorite, Mlle, de Fontanges. But she was "as beautiful as an angel and as foolish as a basket." She was little to be feared; her reign was soon over. And Madame de Maintenon continued to make the King acquainted with "a new country which was unknown to him, which is the commerce of friendship and conversation, without constraint and without evasion." But how many efforts and cares there still were before the day of definite triumph, that is, until the secret marriage!

In going through her correspondence, we find very few letters dated from Maintenon. During the ten years which it took her to conquer and fix the King's affection, she made only rare and brief visits to her château. It is true that Louis XIV had commissioned Le Nôtre "to adjust this beautiful and ugly property." The domain had been increased by new acquisitions. But her position as governess, and later when she was lady of the bed-chamber to the Dauphiness, the wishes of Louis XIV kept Madame de Maintenon at court.

The only time when she remained several months at Maintenon seems to have been in the spring of 1779; Madame de Montespan, whom the King was neglecting at the moment for Mile, de Ludres, had come to beg shelter of the friend of her friend, in order to be delivered under her roof of her sixth child, Mlle, de Blois. This memory has a special value, if we wish to become well acquainted with the characteristic morality of the seventeenth century. Observe, in fact, that this child was adulterous on both sides; that Madame de Montespan, abandoned, could only hate Madame de Maintenon, more in favor than ever; that, five years later, Madame de Maintenon was to marry Louis XIV, and finally that, in spite of this curious complaisance, Madame de Maintenon had none the less the most sure and vigilant conscience in regard to everything which touched on honor.... It is most likely that others will discover some day terrible indelicacies in acts which we today think very innocent. There is an evolution in casuistry.

From the epoch of the foundation of Saint Cyr, Madame de Maintenon had less time than ever for her property. She lived her life elsewhere, divided between the King and the House of St. Louis. When her niece married the Duke of Ayen she gave her Maintenon, but reserved the income for herself but it was to St. Cyr that she retired and there she died.

Under the great trees of the park, where the verdure is already touched with pale gold, in the long avenue which is called the Alley of Racine, because the poet is supposed to have planned Athalie there (I do not know if tradition speaks the truth), I recall that letter to Madame de Coulanges which I transcribed a little way back. "My heart is fixed here," said Madame de Main-tenon. But, the more I think of it the less it seems to me that her heart was ever capable of becoming attached to the beauty of things. The "very beautiful surroundings" of Maintenon pleased her because this château was the proof of the King's favor, because, after the miseries of her childhood, after the years of trials and anxieties, she finally felt that her "establishment" was a fact. But there is something like an accent of irony in her way of vaunting the "woodlands where Madame de Sévigné might dream of Madame de Grignan very comfortably," for there never was a woman who dreamed less and scorned dreaming more than this beautiful tutoress, possessed of good sense, sound reason and a poor imagination.

She was very beautiful and remained so even to an advanced age. She was about fifty when the Ladies of Saint Cyr drew this marvelous portrait of her: "She had a voice of the most agreeable quality, an affectionate tone, an open and smiling countenance, the most natural gestures of the most beautiful hands, eyes of fire, such affectionate and regular motions of a free figure that she outshone the most beautiful women of the court.... Her first glance was imposing and seemed to conceal severity.... Her smile and her voice opened the cloud...." (This is better than all the Mignards.) Her conversation was delightful: Madame de Sévigné bears witness to it, and that at a time when her testimony cannot be questioned, since nothing could then cause her to foresee the prodigious destiny of Madame Scarron. She had a sovereign grace in her apparel, although the material of her clothing was always of extreme simplicity; and this amazed her confessor, the excellent and respectful Abbé Gobelin, who said to her: "When you kneel before me I see a mass of drapery falling at my feet with you, which is so graceful that I find it almost too much for me."

She knew that she was irresistibly beautiful, and her confessor had assuredly taught her nothing by telling her that her commonest robes fell into folds about her with royal elegance. There was no coquettishness in her.

No one today can have any doubt of her integrity and her virtue. Bussy-Rabutin has certified this and he was not accustomed to give such a brevet without good reasons. But, to refute the calumnies of Saint-Simon, nothing more is required than to read the letters of Madame de Maintenon. They have a turn and an accent which cannot deceive.

The whole rule of her conduct was double. She was virtuous from devotion and from care for her reputation. The second sentiment was certainly much more important to her than the first. She has herself confessed it: "I would like to have done for God all that I have done in the world to keep my reputation."

"I wanted to be somebody of importance," she said. This explains everything: her ambition, her prudence, her moderation and her scruples. She cares little for the advantages which her high position could give her; she seeks neither titles, nor honors, nor donations. She wishes for the approbation of honest men; she desires "good glory, _bonne gloire_," as Fénelon has expressed it. We find in her, mingled in proportions which it is impossible to measure, a passion for honor quite in the manner of Corneille, and a much less noble apprehension of what people will say about her. But if this is truly her character--and, when we have read her letters, it is impossible to retain a doubt on this point--she is incapable of the weaknesses of which she has been accused. "I have a desire to please and to be well thought of, which puts me on my guard against all my passions." That is truth itself, and good psychology. But even more fine and more penetrating appears to me the remark once made about Madame de Maintenon by a woman of intellect: "This is what has passed through my mind... and has made me believe that all the evil they have said about her is quite false: it is that if she had had something to reproach herself about in regard to her morals, if she had had weaknesses of a certain kind, she would have had to fight less against vainglory. Humility would have been as natural to her as it was-; foreign to her, I mean in the bottom of her heart; for externally every appearance denied that secret pride of which she complains to her spiritual director. It was therefore necessary that this should have been a secret esteem for herself. Now how could she esteem herself, with the uprightness which was part of her, if she had not known herself to be estimable, she who in her conversations paints so well those whose reputation has been tarnished by evil conduct.... I do not know if my thought is good; but it has pleased me." Thus in the eighteenth century, Madame de Louvigny wrote to La Beaumelle, the first historian of Madame de Maintenon. The analysis is just and delicate.

One of the grievances of Saint-Simon against Madame de Maintenon is the manner in which she used her credit to displace certain prelates of noble birth, preferring to them "the crass ignorance of the Sulpicians, their supreme platitude... the filthy beards of Saint-Sulpice." Chance has brought to my notice a copy of the letters of Madame de Maintenon which belonged to Scherer and which he annotated when reading it. I find there this remark penciled upon a page: "Neither Jesuit, nor Jansenist, but Sulpician." It is impossible to give a better definition of the devotion of Madame de Maintenon. She had the reasonable piety which is the mark of Saint Sulpice. From her family and from her infancy she had preserved a sort of remnant of Calvinism: she did not like the mass and was pleased with psalm singing. This was to estrange her from the Jesuits. On the other hand, Jansenism had an air of independence, almost of revolt, which must have displeased her intelligence, with its love of order. She was wisely and irreproachably orthodox. Her grave, tranquil, active piety reveals a conscience without storms and an imagination without fever.

Thus she had great pride and little vanity, great devotion and little fervor. She had much common sense in everything. She loved her glory passionately and her God seriously. She was charitable, as was enjoined by the religion which she practiced with a submissive heart. But we know neither a movement of sensitiveness nor an outburst of tenderness in her life. She had a very lofty soul, a very clear intelligence, a very rigid will. She was desperately dry.

Did this Sulpician, spiritual, cold and ambitious, ever feel the charm of the great trees of her park? I doubt it.

|RACINE was about twelve years old when he left La Ferté-Milon, to go first to the college of Beauvais and later to Port-Royal des Champs. He passed his infancy there in the house of his paternal grandmother, Marie des Moulins, the wife of Jean Racine, controller of the salt warehouse; he was thirteen months old when his mother died and three years old at the death of his father. Of these early years we know nothing except that the grandmother loved the orphan more than any of her own children, an affection of which Racine retained the most tender memory.

He later often returned to the town of his birth, where his sister Marie had remained and had married Antoine Rivière. The two families remained united; Racine handled the interests of his brother-in-law at Paris; the Rivières sent Racine skylarks and cheeses; and when Racine's children were ill, they were sent to their aunt to be cared for in the open air. And these were almost all the bonds between Racine and La Ferté-Milon.

It is therefore probable that almost nothing at La Ferté-Milon today will awaken reminiscences of the poet. However, let us seek.

At the exit from the station a long street, a sort of _faubourg_ of low houses, with their naïve signs swinging in the wind, leads us to the bridge across the Ourcq. On the opposite bank, the little old town with its little old houses clambers up the abrupt slope of a hill which is crowned by the formidable ruin of the stronghold. Here and there, at the water's edge are remnants of walls, towers and terraced gardens, which, with the meadows and the poplars of the valley, compose a ravishing landscape.

Once across the bridge, behold Racine. It is a statue by David d'Angers. It is backed by the mayoralty and surrounded by a portico. Racine wears a great wig, which is not surprising; but, notwithstanding his great wig, he is half naked, holding up with his hand a cloth which surrounds his body and forms "harmonious" folds. It is Racine at the bath. Near him stands a cippus, on which are inscribed the names of his dramatic works, from _Athalie to Les frères ennemis_, the title of which latter is half concealed by the inevitable laurels.

While I was contemplating this academic but ridiculous image, a peasant, carrying a basket on his arm, approached me and delivered the following discourse: "This is Jean Racine, born in 1639, died in 1699. And you read upon this marble the list of his dramatic works. He was bom at La Ferté-Milon and I have at home parchments where one may see the names of the persons of his family; I possess also his baptismal font. I am, so to speak, the keeper of the archives of La Ferté.... The _Comédie française_ will come here April 23.... Racine had two boys and five girls.... There was a swan in his coat of arms; the swan is the symbol of purity. Fénelon, Bishop of Cambrai, has been compared to a swan. Fénelon, born in 1651 and dead in 1715, is the author of _Télémaque_ and of the _Maximes des Saints_. This last work embroiled him with Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, in Latin Jacobus Benignus, Bishop of Meaux, who wrote _Oraisons funèbres and the Discours sur V histoire universelle_, which he was unfortunately unable to finish.... My name is Bourgeois Parent, and here is my address. And you, what is your name? You would not belong to the _Comédie française?_" All this uttered in the voice of a scholar who has learned his lesson by heart, with sly and crafty winks.... I thank this bystander for his erudition; I admit humbly that I do not belong to the _Comédie française_ and I take leave, not without difficulty, of this extraordinary "Ra-cinian," who truly has the genius of transition, in the manner of Petit-Jean.

In what house was Racine born? The accepted tradition is that his mother was brought to bed at No. 3, Rue de la Pescherie (now Rue Saint-Vaast); in this house lived the Sconin couple, the father and mother of Madame Racine. The old house has been demolished, and there remains of it nothing more than a pretty medallion of stone which represents the _Judgment of Paris_. This is inserted above a door in the garden of the new house. But, in the same street, there stands another house (No. 14) which belonged to the paternal grandparents of Jean Racine; it is here, according to other conjectures, that the author of _Athalie_ was born. And these two houses are not the only ones at La Ferté which dispute the honor of having seen the birth of Racine.... I will not get mixed up in the search for the truth. I have heard that the people of Montauban recently had recourse to an ingenious means of ending a quarrel of the same kind. No one knew in which house Ingres had been born; a furious controversy had arisen between various proprietors of real estate. It was ended by a referendum. Universal suffrage gave its decision. Now the question is decided, irrevocably.

There is another monument to the poet. Behind the apse of the church, in a little square, on top of a column, is perched an old bust more or less roughly repaired; at its foot has been placed a tawdry cast-iron hydrant. This is called the Racine Fountain. Decidedly La Ferté is a poor place of pilgrimage: few relics, and the images of the saint are not beautiful!