Vie de Sainte Thérèse, écrite par elle-même; Lettres de Sainte Thérèse; Les Ouvrages de Sainte Thérèse; Biographie Universelle; Fraser's Magazine, lxv. 59; Butler's Lives of the Saints; Digby's Ages of Faith; the Catholic Histories of the Church, especially Fleury's "Maxims of the Saints." Lives of Saint Theresa by Ribera, Yepez, and Sainte Marie. MADAME DE MAINTENON. * * * * * A. D. 1635-1719. THE POLITICAL WOMAN. I present Madame de Maintenon as one of those great women who have exerted a powerful influence on the political destinies of a nation, since she was the life of the French monarchy for more than thirty years during the reign of Louis XIV. In the earlier part of her career she was a queen of society; but her social triumphs pale before the lustre of that power which she exercised as the wife of the greatest monarch of the age,--so far as splendor and magnificence can make a monarch great. No woman in modern times ever rose so high from a humble position, with the exception of Catherine I, wife of Peter the Great. She was not born a duchess, like some of those brilliant women who shed glory around the absolute throne of the proudest monarch of his century, but rose to her magnificent position by pure merit,--her graces, her virtues, and her abilities having won the respect and admiration of the overlauded but sagacious King of France. And yet she was well born, so far as blood is concerned, since the Protestant family of D'Aubigné--to which she belonged--was one of the oldest in the kingdom. Her father, however, was a man of reckless extravagance and infamous habits, and committed follies and crimes which caused him to be imprisoned in Bordeaux. While in prison he compromised the character of the daughter of his jailer, and by her means escaped to America. He returned, and was again arrested. His wife followed him to his cell; and it was in this cell that the subject of this lecture was born (1635). Subsequently her miserable father obtained his release, sailed with his family to Martinique, and died there in extreme poverty. His wife, heart-broken, returned to France, and got her living by her needle, until she too, worn out by poverty and misfortune, died, leaving her daughter to strive, as she had striven, with a cold and heartless world.