Volume 1 — From The Dublin Review. MADAME DE MAINTENON. (continued 2)

Such was the woman of whom the worldly and sceptical speak jeeringly as the proud widow of Scarron; the intriguing, austere, ambitious Marquise de Maintenon; the persecutrix of Huguenots, and the despot of her royal spouse. They know not what they speak, nor whereof they affirm; for they are incapable of estimating the character of the righteous. Outward acts are to them an enigma and a stumbling-block, because the soul and its guiding principles cannot be seen. A true Christian, such as Madame de Maintenon, is an object of faith, as is the Church, and as was the Church's Lord in the days of his humiliation. Seated, to say the least, on the footstool of the throne, and surrounded by all the pomp and circumstance of royal life, she was to jaundiced eyes but one in a crowd of princes and courtiers, and differing from them only in that she was more astute; but, seen as the prelates of Cambray and Meaux saw her—seen as her letters and conversations with the nuns of Saint-Cyr exhibit her—seen as the Duc de Noailles describes her, and "time, the beautifier of the dead," has rendered her—she was using this world and not abusing it; seeking society only to improve it, and solitude only to pray; holding all she possessed in fealty to her unseen King, and making every occupation subordinate to that of loosening her affections from earthly vanities, and fastening them wholly upon God. The Duc de Noailles' history does not end with the fourth volume. It leaves Madame de Maintenon in her sixty-second year—two-and-twenty years before her death. To trace her intercourse with Louis during the long and disastrous war with Spain, called the War of the Succession—her counsels and influence during the defeats by Marlborough and Prince Eugene, and the triumphant reprisals of Vendôme and Villars—her grief at the king's death in 1715, when she had reached her eightieth year—her retirement to the long-loved shades of Saint-Cyr—her devotion and zeal heightening as age advanced, and the celestial goal was neared—her conversations with the sisters, and her letters to the Princesse des Ursins—to analyze her correspondence, and her vade-mecum as published by M. Bonhomme—to record the pillage of Saint-Cyr, and the outrage done to her venerable remains, as to those of the royal dead in St. Denis, by the frantic revolutionists of 1792—would supply ample materials for another article, but would only confirm the views already formed of her prevailing character and principles. Enough, perhaps, has been said to place our readers on their guard against the malice and fictions of the Duc de Saint-Simon and a host of detractors who rely too readily on his word, and to dispose them favorably toward a most judicious and remarkable history, which does honor to the French Academy and the illustrious house of de Noailles.

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