two years, she lost her mother and was thus left
without home, fortune, or future prospects, she consented, at the age
of seventeen, to marry the poet. Thus, born in a prison, without even
a dowry, harshly reared by a mother who was under few obligations
to life, more harshly treated in the convent, introduced as a poor
relation into the society of her aunt and to the friends of her
godmother, the Countess of Neuillant, she early learned to distrust
life and suspect man, and to restrain her ambitions.

Exceedingly beautiful, graceful, and witty, she soon won her way to
the brilliant and fashionable society of the crippled wit, buffoon,
and poet, who was coarse, profane, ungodly, and physically an
unsightly wreck. In this society, which the burlesque poet amused by
his inexhaustible wit and fancy, and his frank, Gallic gayety, she
showed an infinite amount of tact and soon made his salon the most
prominent social centre of Paris. There, Scarron, never tolerated a
stupid person, no matter of what blood or rank.

When asked what settlement he proposed to make upon his wife, he
replied: "Immortality." At another time, he remarked: "I shall not
make her commit any follies, but I shall teach her a great many." On
his deathbed he said: "My only regret is that I cannot leave anything
to my wife with whom I have every imaginable reason to be content." In
this free-and-easy salon, a young noble said, soon after the marriage
of Scarron: "If it were a question of taking liberties with the queen
or Mme. Scarron, I would not deliberate; I would sooner take them with
the queen."

The reputation made by the young Mme. Scarron gained her many
influential friends, especially among court people. At the death of
her husband, in 1660, to avoid trouble with his family, she renounced
the marriage dowry of twenty-four thousand livres. Her friends
procured her a pension of two thousand livres from the queen. Thus
freed from care, she lived according to her inclination, which tended
toward pleasing and doing good; taking good cheer and her services
voluntarily and unaffectedly to all families, she gradually made
herself a necessity among them--thus she laid the foundation of her
future greatness. She was received by the best families, grew in favor
everywhere, and even won over all her enemies. Modest, complaisant,
promptly and readily rendering a favor, prudent, practical and
virtuous, her one desire was to make friends, not so much for the