ior radiance of wisdom and virtue. La Valliere had
wearied and Montespan had disgusted even a sensual king, with all their
remarkable attractions; but Maintenon, by her prudence, her tact, her
wisdom, and her friendship, retained the empire she had won,--thus
teaching the immortal lesson that nothing but respect constitutes a sure
foundation for love, or can hold the heart of a selfish man amid the
changes of life. Whatever the promises made emphatic by passion,
whatever the presents or favors given as tokens of everlasting ties,
whatever the raptures consecrating the endearments of a plighted troth,
whatever the admiration called out by the scintillations of genius,
whatever the gratitude arising from benefits bestowed in sympathy, all
will vanish in the heart of a man unless confirmed by qualities which
extort esteem,--the most impressive truth that can be presented to the
mind of woman; her encouragement if good, her sentence to misery if bad,
so far as her hopes centre around an earthly idol.

Now, Madame de Maintenon, whatever her defects, her pharisaism, her
cunning, her ambition, and her narrow religious intolerance, was still,
it would seem, always respected, not only by the King himself,--a great
discerner of character,--but by the court which she controlled, and even
by that gay circle of wits who met around the supper-tables of her first
husband. The breath of scandal never tarnished her reputation; she was
admired by priests as well as by nobles. From this fact, which is well
attested, we infer that she acted with transcendent discretion as the
governess of the Duke of Maine, even when brought into the most
intimate relations with the King; and that when reigning at the court
after the death of the Queen, she must have been supposed to have a
right to all the attentions which she received from Louis XIV. And what
is very remarkable about this woman is, that she should so easily have
supplanted Madame de Montespan in the full blaze of her dazzling beauty,
when the King was in the maturity of his power and in all the pride of
external circumstance,--she, born a Protestant, converted to Catholicism
in her youth under protest, poor, dependent, a governess, the widow of a
vulgar buffoon, and with antecedents which must have stung to the quick
so proud a man as was Louis XIV. With his severe taste, his experience,
his discernment, with all the cynical and hostile influences of a proud
and worldly court, and after a