a child, the Duke had been weak in health and lame. SaintSimon-always his detractor-calls him deformed, but, thanks to the indefatigable care of Madame de Maintenon, he had developed into a healthy and pleasing though timid and reserved youth-the very antithesis of his wife. One affinity there was, and one only, to draw them together. This was a common love of letters, and several works by the Duke, for the most part maxims religious or moral, show alike his literary leanings and the influence of Madame de Maintenon.

The grief and chagrin of this lady will be understood when she discovered that the doll was stuffed with sawdust -for so it must have struck her ascetic sense, as the want of religious feeling in the young Duchess became more and more marked; and in a letter to Madame de Brinon, her assistant at Saint-Cyr, she complained that she had therein been deceived.

'J'ai un chapitre à traiter avec vous,' she wrote, 'qui est celui de Madame la Duchesse du Maine. Vous m'avez trompée sur son sujet dans l'article principal qui est celui de la piété : elle n'a veine qui y tende, et veut faire en tout comme les autres. Je n'oserais rien dire à une jeune princesse élevée par la vertu même; je ne voudrais point la faire dévote de profession; mais j'avoue que j'aurais bien voulu la voir régulière, prendre un train de vie qui seroit agréable à Dieu, au Roi, et à Monsieur le Duc du Maine, qui a assez de bon sens pour vouloir sa femme plus sage que certaines autres. Je lui avois donné une dame d'honneur qui est une sainte; mais il paraît qu'elle est peu autorisée, et ne fait que la suivre. Elle est enfant. Elle auroit plus besoin d'une gouvernante que d'une dame.' *

But, in spite of disillusion on the score of religion, the Duke's fond friend was still ready and anxious to love his wife, as is proved in the same letter:

'Du reste,' she continued, 'elle est telle que vous me l'avez dépeinte jolie, aimable, gaie, spirituelle, et pardessus tout cela, aime fort son mari, qui, de son côté, l'aime passionnément, et la gâtera plutôt que de lui faire la moindre peine. . . . J'avoue que je voudrois aimer la Duchesse du Maine pardessus tout, étant ce qu'elle est à un homme qui est la tendresse de mon cœur.' *

Sad to relate, as time went on there proved to be even less community of thought and feeling between the Duchess and Madame de Maintenon than between the Duchess and her husband. Madame du Maine was bent on pleasure to an inordinate degree, and were her freaks and fancies for a moment

* La Duchesse du Maine,' par Le Général de Piépape, page 23.

threatened, she would fly into such a passion that, mindful of the mental aberrations of her father, the Duke gave his wife her own way, no matter how much ridicule that way might call down upon both.

And other difficulties arose. The marriage, which had been celebrated with a splendour and display unusual even for Princes, had aroused on either side of the family a jealousy which never ceased to exist and which was manifested in increasing ill-will. The Duchess, as by this time will well be understood, was not one to be patient under any show of disdain or want of consideration; so without delay she set to work to conquer a position for themselves which would place them above innuendoes in respect to their rank and rights. Ungovernable and unconquerable, her unceasing complaints were finally heeded by the King, and a bill providing a degree between that of the peers and the legitimate Princes was passed by the Parliament for their benefit.

The Duke was well pleased. Not so the Duchess, whom no act would have satisfied short of one which would bestow the rights and honours in full possessed by the legitimate Princes, and she did not hesitate to signify her discontent, abruptly absenting herself from all Court functions, and immuring herself in her private apartments. Hardly the character, however, to live the life of a hermit, she soon turned from one excess to another, from mad pleasures to the most serious and arduous study, throwing into it all that vehemence and energy formerly given to amusements. La Bruyère again became her guide, to whom was added the Duke's former preceptor, Malézieu. In her own rooms, also, were received other savants and men of letters, and this short interval, the prelude to the literary distractions at Châtenay, Sceaux and Anet, was the period when, assisted by a remarkable memory, she gained her considerable knowledge of science and literature. But withdrawal from the gay world, and all that it might have signified, was of short duration.

The Duke's letters-patent, secured through his wife's efforts, were registered in May 1694, but before the year was out the Duchess, now more than ever impatient of surveillance and restraint, had persuaded her husband to forsake the royal roof and to take up their abode elsewhere, and in the meantime her former giddy life had been resumed and with increased extravagance.

Undue gaiety at the Court of Louis XIV. under the strict discipline of Madame de Maintenon was not countenanced, and the Duchess's expenditure, which threatened to be ruinous,

at last brought a warning from the King. In addition, it was the Duke's misfortune to be continually reminded by his wife how much he had gained by his marriage with a Princess of the blood, and how much she had lost in allying herself with a man who had no claim to birth at all. It is not surprising, therefore, that he soon found it convenient to absent himself, taking up his command on the frontier, a post for which, peaceableminded and studious, he had small natural inclination. In such manner was spent the first years of their marriage.

No doubt the primal cause of the youthful Duchess's vagaries and waywardness was an incurable disappointment in regard to her marriage. It was only after marriage that she realised the true status of the illegitimate children of the King, and holding opposite views to her father, she henceforth looked upon her marriage as a mésalliance. Of harder fibre than her husband, she no longer pretended to any respect for him, and in after years showed few marks of tenderness for him or for her children.

When, in the second year of their marriage, Madame de Montespan proposed to her son that he and his wife should occupy the château of Clagny, the magnificent residence at the gates of Versailles, built expressly for her by the King, the Duchess was eager to seize the opportunity of freedom thus offered, and here, the five following years, the ill-assorted pair nominally made their home. Here the Duke suffered a painful shock, for the Duchess poorly requited the hospitality of Madame de Montespan, and it was his strange fate to be the witness of his mother's final disgrace and banishment from her home, effected through the efforts of his wife and of the woman who was his oldest and his best friend. He no longer cared to inhabit Clagny; his wife was dissatisfied too, from its proximity to the Court, and in 1699 Sceaux was purchased. Five years again, while this grand domain was in course of transformation, were spent near Sceaux at Châtenay in a house belonging to Malézieu, and in this modest domicile, set in the hillside village prettily embowered in vines and fruit trees, Madame du Maine probably passed her happiest years.

Twelve kilomètres from Paris, Châtenay was also well removed from the Court, and here was found that which she needs must have-and to which most intelligent persons must aspire -independence. Never before had she been so well satisfied. with her lot, by reason of which the Duke on his side enjoyed unwonted domestic tranquillity.

The first visit to Châtenay was of short duration, but the next year the house was put into shape for their regular occu

pancy, and here their two sons, the Prince des Dombes and the Comte d'Eu, were born.

The celebrated circle of grands seigneurs and bels esprits which Madame du Maine attracted to Sceaux and to Anet, and which is her chief claim to remembrance in these days, had its début at Châtenay. This so-called 'Court' filled a double function, combining the personnel and occupations common to a Court with those proper to a literary salon. It existed throughout the first half of the century over the long period of fifty years, the first which was divided into two distinct periods, that before the arrest and imprisonment of Monsieur and Madame du Maine on December 29, 1718; the second, from which politics were eliminated—and when old friends were to some extent superseded by new-having still no little in common with the first.

Throughout the first part the predominant figure is Malézieu. The name of Nicolas de Malézieu is now less often heard than those of others who in that day had less reputation. A member of the French Academy and of the Academy of Sciences, savant and bel esprit, he was also a man of most amiable disposition and of many friends; he, and he alone, it was said, was able to bring about a reconciliation between Fénelon and Bossuet. For more than twenty-five years Malézieu was at hand to supply Madame du Maine with that endless procession of changing amusements and intellectual pursuits demanded by her restless and insatiable nature, and it was Malézieu she had chiefly to thank for the éclat her Court enjoyed. That the great households of the period found it pleasant and useful to have beaux esprits attached to them may be readily perceived, but it is less easy to understand how such an occupation could be congenial to a scholar. We have to recollect that the eighteenth century was a period which, in its vivid contrasts and in its extremes, both good and bad, has no counterpart in history, and that this quixotic age provides many instances of singular friendships and of similar devotion between clever men and women. One may take, for example, the well-known affectionate relations which existed between Madame du Deffand and Horace Walpole, so many years her junior; and so again, in the close and long intercourse between Malézieu and Madame du Maine may be seen at work that spirit peculiar to the time, which drew men and women more familiarly together intellectually in platonic friendships than at any other period. And the lasting and helpful nature of this social feature which the eighteenth century evoked is thrown into stronger relief by the light

and ephemeral character of the love-making of the time, equally a feature of the age.

As Malézieu had assisted in Madame du Maine's intellectual developement, he looked upon her attainments, no doubt, as primarily his own product, and upon her and her career with the sympathy and interest natural to the master who sees his pupil respond to his efforts.

As to her husband, his piteous plight anticipated that of another unfortunate husband of a well-known ruler of a later salon, Madame Geoffrin, of whom a constant visitor, pointing out Monsieur Geoffrin, inquired his name!

Possessed of such an amenable husband and such a capable friend, even the disappointed and egotistical Duchess, one might think, could now have congratulated herself as a woman favoured of fortune. But circumstances do not alter the nature of individuals. With a brilliant intellect, this singular woman had none of the strength and solidity which forms the groundwork of a thoughtful mind, and which tends to create serenity of spirit. She did not love study for its own sake; to be diverted was her aim, and the diversions required by her must be at once amusing and clever. Malézieu, hard pressed, sought a coadjutor among his academical confrères to assist him in this double task, and it was the clergy which produced the Court jester.

The Abbé Genest, ex-chaplain of the Duchesse d'Orléans, was one among the large number of those accomplished and epicurean abbés who flourished in this period-degenerate products of a decadent Church-a man risen from below, whose character was not equal to his brains. The abbé mingled much learning with little piety, living a life of mere pleasure, but many and witty were the couplets improvised by him for Madame du Maine and her company, and his success was instantaneous. The abbé was the fortunate possessor of a prominent nose-fortunate as it gave opportunity to the Duchess to play upon his name, which was immediately changed from Genest to Large Nez. Anything but sensitive, such a man furnished a mark for her wit, and between Large Nez and Malézieu a dull moment was never suffered at Châtenay.

Novel amusements were constantly in course of preparation by the indefatigable pair. Marvellous fireworks were invented, and the enchanted villagers, in the happy fashion of preRevolutionary days, joined them in rustic dances, and before these simple pastimes were permitted to pall entertainments on a magnificent scale were organised. Of one of these, given on August 16, 1704, we have a detailed description.