The King's Way: Recollections of Francoise D'Aubigne, Marquise De Maintenon, Wife to the King of France

This book has been read, some wear to dust jacket, no wear to covers, no markings inner pages. Spine intact, no creases. "Françoise Chandernagor has written the fictionalized memoirs of Françoise d'Aubigné, known to history as Madame de Maintenon, the morganatic second wife of Louis XIV. Using a wide variety of sources, but chiefly the surviving correspondence of Mme. de Maintenon, Chandernagor has fashioned a vivid and convincing account of one woman's rise to the top, in this case the very top, of the 17th Century French social heap.

Among the most appealing features of this book (call it a novel for convenience sake, or a semi-fictional autobiography) one must count the voice of the narrator. It is a firm and measured voice, which carries the force of hard-won experience, gained in a variety of exotic locales, ranging from the French provincial prison where her feckless father was confined during her earliest days, to the Caribbean island wilderness where she spent her formative years, and followed by the Bohemian circles in Paris she presided over as wife to the famed but severely crippled author, Scarron.

Eventually she arrived at the opulent court of Versailles (easily the most menacing of all her surroundings, so far as her reputation was concerned) as governess to some of the king's out-of-wedlock children, but one where she ultimately acquired the lofty though shadowy position of France's "unofficial queen" for thirty years. Given that her marriage to the king could never be publicly acknowledged, owing to her status as a commoner by birth (she was "ennobled" only by fiat of the king), Madame de Maintenon could never presume to emulate the exalted rank of Louis' first wife, the blue-blooded Marie-Thèrese of Spain, whom he had married for dynastic reasons. Louis' marriage to Françoise d'Aubigné, "the widow Scarron," was a love match, no doubt, but not one which, as this novel makes clear, brought his second wife contentment or peace of mind, however much it fulfilled her desire to rise above the meanness of her origins. And with the king's death,
Madame de Maintenom "vanished from the sight of men, and from their memories," or so she died believing.

Readers who know of Madame de Maintenon,primarily through the memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon (excellently translated by Sanche de Gramont in his anthology of the Duke's writings, "The Age of Magnificence"), will be startled by the difference between the way she is portrayed in the actual memoirs of Saint-Simon and the fictionalized ones written by Chandernagor. Whereas in Saint-Simon, she is presented as a clever, scheming woman who longs to wield power through her influence over the king, in Chandernagor, Madame de Maintenon is a wise but circumspect woman with a deep ambivalence toward political power. True, she does try to steer the king in the direction she thinks best for France, chiefly by shielding him from what she considers unworthy counselors and proposing he name those she believes will be a positive force, but her influence is far more
subtle and her purposes much less self-serving than those Saint-Simon attributes to her.

In the end, it becomes a case of "he said/she said" (He being the Duke, and she, Chandernagor, speaking through her character.) So whom are we to believe? In the Duke's favor it must be said that he lived at the time of the morganatic marriage between king and commoner, and knew both of them quite intimately. On the other hand, it is widely acknowledged that the Duc de Saint-Simon can not be relied upon for objectivity, especially concerning those persons he held a grudge against. Madame de Maintenon was one such person. Whether because of her rapid ascension from lowly beginnings (he was a snob of the first order when it came to rank and position;one most be born to it, like himself, to meet with his approval), or whether because she championed the cause of Louis' bastard sons, when it came to official recognition in the line of succession, a thing Saint-Simon was adamantly, even violently opposed to, he did all that he could to blacken her reputation.

Chandernagor, on the other hand, in Madame de Maintenon has written a character that is so altruistic, even noble, in her intentions and dedication to those she feels she has been called upon to look after, including the king, that, at times, The King's Way comes a little too close to hagiography.

In the end, it must be for the reader to make the call. The truth about Françoise d'Aubigné, alias Madame de Maintenon, must be in the eye of the beholder, or in this case, the reader. Ideally, one should read both Chandernagor's enthralling account (scrupulously and sensitively translated by Barbara Bray), as well as the sometimes truculent but always penetrating observations found in the memoirs of the Duc de Saint-Simon." Stephen John Vogel