Portrait Françoise d'Aubigné Marquise de Maintenon lady
Françoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon (27 November 1635 – 15 April 1719) was the second wife of King Louis XIV of France. She was known during her first marriage as Madame Scarron, and subsequently as Madame de Maintenon. Her marriage to the king was never officially announced or admitted. In her excursion with Madame de Neuillant, Françoise met Paul Scarron, who was 25 years older than she, and with whom began to correspond. Scarron suffered from acute and crippling rheumatoid arthritis. This was hardly a good match that was envisioned, though, as an impoverished girl, she had little choice. However, Scarron proposed either to pay her dowry so that she might enter a convent, or marriage. She accepted him, and became Madame Scarron in 1651. For nine years, she was his wife, nurse, and a fixture in his social circle. On the death of Scarron in 1660, Anne of Austria continued his pension to his widow, even increasing it to 2000 livres a year, thus enabling her to remain in literary society. Following the dowager queen's death in 1666, Louis XIV suspended the pension. Once again in straitened circumstances, Mme Scarron prepared to leave Paris for Lisbon as a lady-in-waiting to the new Queen of Portugal, Marie-Françoise de Nemours. Before setting off, however, she met Madame de Montespan, who was secretly already the king's lover. Madame de Montespan took such a fancy to Mme Scarron that she had the king reinstate her pension, an act which enabled Françoise to stay in Paris. In 1669, when Madame de Montespan's first child by Louis was born, she gave Mme Scarron a large income and staff of servants at Vaugirard to raise the child in secrecy. Françoise would take care to keep the house well guarded and discreet, even doing the domestic duties herself. Due to her hard work, the King rewarded her with a large sum of money, and she purchased a property at Maintenon.
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Photo credit: © SOTK2011 / Alamy / Afripics
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