the day used to discuss and arrange all the business to be done with the king beforehand with her, and it was all done in her cabinet and in her presence, but the king in more important matters often chose not to consult her. Such mistakes as, for instance, the replacing of Catinat by Villeroi may be attributed to her, but not whole policies--notably, according to Saint-Simon, not the policy with regard to the Spanish succession. Even the revocation of the edict of Nantes and the dragonnades have been laid to her charge, but recent investigations have tended to show that in spite of ardent Catholicism, she at least opposed, if not very vigorously, the cruelties of the dragonnades, although she was pleased with the conversions they procured. She was apparently afraid to imperil her great reputation for devotion, which had in 1692 obtained for her from Innocent XII. the right of visitation over all the convents in France. Where she deserves blame is in her use of her power for personal patronage, as in compassing the promotions of Chamillart and Villeroi, and the frequent assistance given to her brother Comte Charles d'Aubigné. Her influence was on the whole a moderating and prudent force. Her social influence was not as great as it might have been, owing to her holding no recognized position at court, but it was always exercised on the side of decency and morality, and it must not be forgotten that from her former life she was intimate with the literary people of the day. Side by side with this public life, which wearied her with its shadowy power, occasionally crossed by a desire to be recognised as queen, she passed a nobler and sweeter private existence as the foundress of St Cyr. Mme de Maintenon was a born teacher; she had so won the hearts of her first pupils that they preferred her to their own mother, and was similarly successful later with the young and impetuous duchess of Burgundy, and she had always wished to establish a home for poor girls of good family placed in such straits as she herself had experienced. As soon as her fortunes began to mend she started a small home for poor girls at Ruel, which she afterwards moved to Noisy, and which was the nucleus of the splendid institution of St Cyr, which the king endowed in 1686, at her request, out of the funds of the Abbey of St Denis. She was in her element there. She herself drew up the rules of the institution; she examined every minute detail; she befriended her pupils in every way; and her heart often turned from the weariness of Versailles or of Marly to her "little girls" at St Cyr. It was for them that Racine wrote his _Esther_ and his _Athalie_, and it was because he managed the affairs of St Cyr well that Michel Chamillart became controller-general of the finances. The later years of her power were marked by the promotion of her old pupils, the children of the king and Mme de Montespan, to high dignity between the