MAINTENON, FumccoisE D'AunicricL, Marquise De, was the daughter of Constant d'Aubigne and of Jeanne de Cardillac, and granddaughter of Theodore Agrippa d'Aubigne, well-known fel. his writin7s, his attachment to Protestantism, and his ener getic eliaracter. FrancoiSe was born Nov. 27, 1635, iv the prison at Niort, where her father was then imprisoned. On obtaining his release, he went (1639) with his wife and daughter to Martinique in the West Indies, where he died in 1645. After her father's death, Francoise returned, with her mother, to France; and her mother also dying, her father's sisters took her under their care, and educated her in a convent, where her con version to the Roman Catholic religion was accomplished at the age of about 14 years— after an obstinate resistance, in which the brave little child, to use her own words, fateguait les pretres la Bible ci la main. It is singular to reflect what a zealot she after wards became. When she was 16, she became acquainted with the poet Scarron (q.v.), who, struck by her beauty, intelligence, and helpless condition, offered her his hand, or, if she should prefer it, a sum of money sufficient for her entrance into a nunnery.
Scarron was lame and deformed, she chose to marry him, and now lived in the midst of the refined and intellectual society which frequented the house of the poet. On his death, in 1660, she was reduced to great poverty, and proposed to go as a gover ness to Portugal, when 3ladame de Montespan (q.v.) obtained her a pension from the king. Four years afterwards, she was intrusted with the education of the two sons whom Madame de 3Iontespan had borne to Louis XIV., and in this capacity displayed a patient tenderness and sleepless care that no mother could have surpassed; and now becoming acquainted with the king, soon fascinated him, so that he bestowed on her 100,000 livres, with which she bought the estate of Maintenon; and at last she succeeded in supplanting Madame de Montespan. It is difficult to describe her relation to the king.
She was not, it is believed, his mistress in the ordinary sense of the term, but from that time to the end of his life, she exercised an extraordinary ascendency over him. She had a passion for being thought "a mother of the church ;" but while she confessed the strength of her desire to Romanize the Huguenots, she earnestly denied that she approved of the detestable dragonnades. In 1684, about 18 months after the death of the queen, Louis privately married her. She was much disliked by the people, but the courtiers sought her favor, and her creatures were made ministers and generals. In the midst of splendor, and in the possession of great power, she was confessedly very unhappy. She carefully brought up the children of Madame de Montespan; and it was at her instiga tion that Louis attempted to legitimize them. When he died in 1715, she retired to the former abbey of St. Cyr, which, at her wish, had been changed 30 years before, into a convent for young ladies. Here she died, April 15, 1719. Site received to the end of her life, the honors of a king's widow. Her pretended memoirs are spurious, but her Lettres (9 vols. Amst. 1756, etc.) are genuine. By far the best edition is that published by M. Lavallec (1854 et seq.), entitled aluvres de Mine. de Maintenon publiees pour la premiere fois d'apres les Manuscrits et Copies autkentigues, ave..c un Commentain et des Xotes.