mon are interesting, but the odious picture
he has drawn of Mme. de Maintenon is hardly in accord with later
appreciations. M. Saint-Amand sums up the two classes of critics thus:

"The revolutionary school which likes to drag the memory of the great
king through the mire, naturally detests the eminent woman who was
that king's companion, his friend and consoler. Writers of this
school would like to make of her a type not only odious and fatal, but
ungraceful and unsympathetic, without radiance, charm or any sort of
fascination. She is too frequently called to mind under the aspect
of a worn old woman, stiff and severe, with tearless eyes and a
face without a smile. We forget that in her youth she was one of
the prettiest women of her time, that her beauty was wonderfully
preserved, and that in her old age she retained that superiority of
style and language, that distinction of manner and exquisite tact,
that gentle firmness of character, that charm and elevation of mind,
which, at every period of her life, gained her so much praise and so
many friends."

Mme. de Maintenon was born in prison. Her maiden name was Francoise
d'Aubigne. She was the granddaughter of Agrippa d'Aubigne, the
historian. Her father had planned to settle in the Carolinas, and
his correspondence with the English government, to that effect,
was treated as treason; he was thrown into prison, where his wife
voluntarily shared his fate and where the future Mme. de Maintenon
was born. After the death of her father, she was confided to her aunt,
Mme. de Villette, a Calvinist, who trained her in the principles of
Protestantism. Because of the refusal of her daughter to attend mass,
her mother put her in charge of the Countess of Neuillant who, with
great difficulty, converted Francoise back to Catholicism.

At the home of the Countess of Neuillant, she often met Scarron, the
comic poet--a paralytic and cripple--who offered her money with which
to pay for admission to a convent, a proposition which she refused;
subsequently, however, the countess sent her to the Ursulines to be
educated. When, after 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