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Ch. 12: Madame de Maintenon as a Political Woman, Pt. 1 · Women of Versailles: The Court of Louis XIV

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  Section sixteen of Women of Versailles, the Court of Louis the fourteenth by our
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  tour Leon Ambert de Saint Ammon, translated by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin. This librovox
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  recording is in the public domain. Read by Pamela and Agami, Chapter twelve,
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  Madame de Mantainant as a political woman, Part one, to write history
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  with the aid of pamphlets, To accept as verities all the inventions of malevolence
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  or hatred, to say with beau marchas calumniate, calumniate some trace of it
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  will always remain. To belittle what is great, to misinterpret what is noble,
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  to tarnish what is brilliant. Such are the tactics of the sworn enemies
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  of our traditions and our glories. Such is the pleasure of the iconoclasts,
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  who would like to efface from our annals all grandiose or majestic figures. The
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  revolutionary school, whose disciples they are, has already done much harm. It
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  has sapped the foundations of the edifice. It has aided to destroy that respect
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  which is indispensable to well organized societies. It has converted books into libels,
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  criticisms into infectives, portraits into caricatures. It has conspired with that essentially false
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  literature known as the historical novel, to travesty persons and things, and spread
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  abroad a massive exaggerations and fables which confuse facts and ideas and reverse the conceptions
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  of good sense and justice. One of the men whom this school holds most
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  in horror is Louis the fourteenth, because he was the representative, or better,
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  the living symbol of the principle of authority. It is tired of hearing
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  him called the grit r like that Athenian who was weary of hearing Aristides called
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  the just. It has fancied it would extinguish the royal son by breathing on
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  it an old potentate kept in leading strings by a bigoted and intriguing old woman.
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  Such is the image. It would delineate the characteristics it wishes to hand
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  down to posterity, as those of him who, to his last hour,
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  his latest breath, remained what he had been throughout his life, the very
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  type of royalty, the sovereign by excellence to dishonor Louis the fourteenth in the
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  woman whom he chose among all others as the companion of his maturity and his
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  old age. Such has been, and still is the thing aimed at by
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  writers of this school. They have based their judgments on those of the Duchess
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  of Orleans, the Princess Palatine, whose portrait we have just essayed to trace,
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  and on those of another equally objectionable witness, the Duc de Saint Simon.
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  It ought not to be forgotten that this hot headed Duke in Pierre,
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  who often talked like Filant, if he always thought like Alceste, was at
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  least frank enough to say of himself, the stoic is a fine and noble
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  chimera. I do not pique myself. Therefore, on impartiality, I should
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  do so in vain. It irritated him to be of no account in a
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  government where many a man of middling abilities had secured the sovereign's favor. To
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  be condemned to the idle existence of a courtier, to live in ante chambers
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  on staircases in the courts and gardens of Versailles and other royal residences, vexed
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  and displeased his vanity. He laid the blame of this on Louis the fourteenth
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  at first and afterwards on the woman, whom he considered as the arbiter of
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  all appointments. But it was only in his memoir written clandestinely and kept under
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  lock and key, that he dared give expression to his wrath. He was
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  all respect and docility in presence of the King. After bestirring himself a good
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  deal concerning a certain collection which had been a subject of litigation between the princesses
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  and the duchesses, he said humbly to the King that to please him he
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  would have passed around the plate like a village churchwarden. He added that Lewis
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  the fourteenth was, as king and as benefactor of all dukes, despotically master
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  of their dignities to a base, or to elevate them, to dispose of
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  them as a thing belonging to him and absolutely in his power. He was
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  not more haughty in the presence of her, whom he characterizes in his memoirs
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  as a notorious creole, the begging widow of a crippled poet. He even
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  tried to gain her over to the interests of his ambition and to obtain through
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  her means a captaincy of guards. Furious at not being called to the greatest
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  positions of state. He pleased himself with the posthumous revenge of describing Madame de
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  Manenau in the most odious colors. Relying on his imagination and default of other
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  proofs, he makes her a sort of ancient courtesan, living by debauchery in
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  her youth and by intrigue in riper years. What he says of her is
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  a tissue of inaccuracies. He assigns her birth to America, while it is
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  certain that she was born at Niorg. He will scarcely admit that her father
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  was a gentleman, while his nobility is absolutely incontestable. He accuses her of
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  having been supported by Villard, father of the Marshal, by the three Villasaus,
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  and Y several others. While it is positive that she never received a
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  farthing obliged to own that on Scarron's death she was reduced to the charity of
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  her parish of Saint Eustache, he does not perceive that such an assertion concerning
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  a woman whose beauty was celebrated throughout Paris, proves in an undeniable fashion the
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  virtue of that woman. He reproaches her for having been led astray by the
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  councils of Nino de Lanclo, whereas Nino herself says, Madame de Manino was
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  virtuous in her youth through weak mindedness. I wanted to cure her of it,
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  but she feared God too much. Every day increases the fame of Saint
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  Simon. Considered as a writer, one must admire a style which recalls by
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  turns the boldness of Bassuet, the brilliance of La Briere, and the ease
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  and freedom of Madame de Sevigne. But on the other hand, the more
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  one studies the Court of Louis the fourteenth, the more fully one recognizes that
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  the famous memoir are full of inaccuracies. In his remarkable critical study of Sassimon's
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  work, the learned Monsieur Cheerrouel has already refuted in an invincible manner a great
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  number of his errors, and Monsieur Souliers, curator of the Museum of Versailles,
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  is constantly discovering new ones in the course of his patient and indefatigable researches.
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  Monsieur Cherrouel has abundant reason to say Saint Simond's observation is subtle, sagacious,
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  penetrating when it is a question of sounding the recesses of the hearts of
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  courtiers, but it lacks breadth and grandeur. The court bounds his horizon.
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  All that lies beyond it is vague and indeterminate for him. While granting him
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  the perspicacity of an observer, one must deny him the impartiality of a judge
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  to listen to him. Madame de Mantineau is the sole mistress of France,
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  the omnipotent sultana, the Ponto Kraut, as the Princess Palatine calls her.
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  In her curious jargon. He describes with many details her incredible success, the
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  entire confidence, the rare dependence, the almightiness, the almost universal public adoration,
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  the ministers, the generals of the army, the royal family at her
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  feet, every boon and every advantage through her, everything rejected without her men,
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  affairs, things, appointments, justice, favors, religion, everything without
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  exception in her hands, and the King and the state her victims. Needless
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  to say that the revolutionary school has accepted this exaggerated assertion literally to believe it,
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  Louis the fourteenth is nothing but a mannequin of which Madame de Mantinon pulls
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  the strings, a sort of crowned jahant who lets himself be tricked like a
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  child by a jesuit and an old woman. It is thus they seek to
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  tarnish the oriole with which posterity has surrounded the most majestic of all instances of
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  old age. Let them say what they will. Louis the fourteenth always remained
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  master, and it was he who traced the great political lines of his reign.
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  Madame de Mantinon may have advised him, but it was he who gave
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  the final decision. We say willingly with Monsieur emil Schals, this intelligent woman,
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  far from being too much listened to, was not a nutso there was
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  in her a veritable love for the public welfare, a true sorrow in the
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  midst of our misfortunes. To day is necessary to retrench much from the grandeur
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  of her power, and add a great deal to that of her soul.
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  It is well worthy of remark that the woman who is now accused of a
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  mischievous meddling in everything, was reproached by the most eminent man of her time
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  of standing too much aside, Fenelon wrote to her. They say, you
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  take two little pardon affairs. Your mind is more capable of it than you
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  think. You are perhaps a little too distrustful of yourself, or rather you
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  are too much afraid to enter into discussions contrary to the inclination you have for
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  a tranquil and meditative life. That Madame de Mantineau may have influenced certain appointments
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  does not appear doubtful. But that she alone of her own motion control the
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  minister's is a pure invention. We believe her to have been sincere when she
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  wrote to Madame desur Sain. In whatever way matters turn, I conjure you,
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  Madame, to regard me as a person incapable of affairs, who heard
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  them talked of, too late to be skillful in them, and who hates
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  them more than she ignores them. My interference in them is not desired,
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  and I do not desire to interfere. They are not concealed from me,
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  but I know nothing consecutively, and am often badly informed, reading or working
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  at her tapestry while the King was working with one or another of his ministers.
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  Madame de Mantinan never timidly hazarded a word, except formally when requested.
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  Her attitude toward Louis the fourteenth was that of respect, humility, and modesty.
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  True, the King said to her, they call the popes your holiness,
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  and kings your majesty. You, madame, should be called your solidity.
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  But this pray did not turn the head of so prudent and reasonable a
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  woman. And of Section sixteen