ed,
finally to be recovered and deposited again in the chapel where a simple
black marble slab marks them in these graven words:

Cy-Git Madame De Maintenon
1635-1719-1836

Napoleon I established the Ecole Militaire at Saint Cyr, from which are
graduated each year more than four hundred subaltern officers.

The ancient gardens of Madame de Maintenon's time now form the "Champs
de Mars," or drill ground, of the military school.

South from Saint Cyr runs the great international highroad, the old
Route Royale of the monarchy. It rises and falls, but mostly straight as
the flight of the crow, until it crosses the great National Forest of
Rambouillet. Following the valley of the Eure almost to its headwaters
it finally comes to Maintenon, a town of a couple of thousand souls,
whose most illustrious inhabitant was that granddaughter of
Theodore-Agrippa d'Aubigne, named Francoise, and who came in time to be
the Marquise de Maintenon.

The Chateau de Maintenon was royal in all but name. The Tresorier des
Finances under Louis XI, Jean Cottereau (a public official who made good
it seems, since he also served in the same capacity for Charles VIII,
Louis XII, and Francis I), had a single daughter, Isabeau, who, in 1526,
married Jacques d'Angennes, who at the time was already Seigneur de
Rambouillet.

As a dot this daughter acquired the lands of Maintenon. The property was
afterwards sold to the Marquis de Villeray, from whom Louis XIV bought
it in 1674 and disposed of it as a royal gift to Francoise d'Aubigne,
the fascinator of kings, who was afterwards to become (in 1688) Madame
La Marquise de Maintenon.

This ambitious woman subsequently married her niece to the Duc d'Ayen,
son of the Marechal de Noailles, and as a marriage portion--or possibly
to avoid unpleasant consequences--turned over the property of Maintenon
to the young bride and her husband to whose family, the Noailles, it has
ever since belonged.

To-day the Duc and Duchesse de Noailles make lengthy stays in this
delightful seigneurial dwelling, and since the apartments are full to
overflowing of historical souvenirs of their family it may be truly said
that their twentieth century life is to some considerable extent in
accord with the traditions of other days.

The existence of this princely residence is an agreeable reminder of the
life of luxury of the olden time albeit certain modernities which we
to-day think necessities are lacking.

Mainteno