MAINTENON (Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de).... Lot 13

MAINTENON (Françoise d'Aubigné, marquise de). AUTOGRAPH LETTER signed with her initials addressed to the Marquis de Villette. Saint-Germain, April 5 [1681]. 13 pages in-4 on 4 double ff. These ff. had previously been bound: old and tiny traces of binding and glue on the inside edge of the ff. LONG AND REMARKABLE LETTER FROM THE MARQUISE DE MAINTENON (1635-1719) to her cousin Philippe de VALOIS, marquis de Villette (1632-1707), in which she shows herself to be a supporter of the king in his drive to eradicate Protestantism. At the end of 1680, the Marquise de Maintenon had two of her cousin's Protestant children, her niece Mademoiselle de Mursay and her elder brother, abducted to convert them to Catholicism. "I have just received two letters from you and I see with sorrow that the least sweet is the last. However, I am not full of sorrow and with any other than you I would suffer greater bitterness. and your reason, which is what it takes to receive what I've done in the way you receive it. You are too right to doubt the motive that made me act, the one that concerns God is the first, but if I had been alone, other souls would have been as precious to him as those of your children, and I could have converted some who would have been less kind to me. So it was the pity I had for you all my life that made me so eager to be able to do something for what is most dear to you. I had your daughter kidnapped by the impatience of having her and kidnap her at my will and I deceived and afflicted Madame your wife so that she would never be suspected by you as she would have been if I had used any other means to ask her for my niece. Voilla mon cher cousin mes intentions qui sont bonnes et droittes qui ne peuvent être soupçonnées dauqu'un intérêt et que vous ne sauriez desaprouver dans le mesme temps quelles vous affligent [...]" She urges her cousin to do her justice and accept this proof of tenderness "puisque je fasche celuy que jayme et que jestime pour servir des enfans que je ne puis tant aymer que luy". The letter the Marquis de Villette wrote to her son brought tears to the eyes of all the people of honor and sense to whom she showed it. She suggests "let us never deal with controversy and let us govern your children in concert". She then paints a portrait of the son: "Your son has spirit and sense, he is gentle, well-born, full of good intentions, ambitious, hardy and, in a word, I have seen nothing wrong in him other than a great presumption, too full of his merit, always occupied with himself, never with others, always questioning, too much of a talker, worried, not fond of reading and, finally, all the faults of a man who has been admired"; but he quickly corrected himself. "I thought I was offending him by proposing lacademie, and that he would find it difficult to become an escollier after having been an officer on his good faith, and since then a court man. However, when I saw his good sense, he was delighted, and he behaved in such a way that Bernardy tells me every day that he has never seen a young man so gentle, so wise and so diligent as Luy. We had a little discussion about the fact that I demanded that he go out only to come to court. I know the rigor of this order, but I also know that nothing would be better for him in this country and that he can't be too wise if he wants to please the King. Mr de Fourbin lameine me tous les sepmaines cela luy est bon et plus utile que destre avec un prince du sang. We'll leave him at the academy for as long as you see fit, and write to him often, asking him to reply, as he writes badly and is lazy on the subject. His daughter has the same faults as her brother, but is quicker to correct them; she "thinks she's admirable, thinking only of herself, she's spoiled by the judgment of fathers and mothers, because she's certainly not beautiful and never will be. In any case, I'm very happy with her and am thinking of making her a person of merit". The Marquise assures us that she wants to treat her as a daughter and keep her close to her, in order to give her "spirit, reason and good grace". When the Marquise has to travel, she will place her niece in the Ursuline convent in Pontoise. She goes on to say that she does not want to give her children back to her cousin, but would like him to entrust the other two to her, because "if God preserves the King, there won't be a Huguenot in twenty years. She asserts to her cousin: "I have not rendered you any bad service to the King, and it pleases God that you do not have an insurmountable exclusion from serving him". The Marquise concludes her letter by saying