Out from Paris, on the old Route d'Espagne, running from the capital to the frontier, down which rolled the royal corteges of old, lie Maintenon and its famous chateau, some sixty odd kilometres from Paris and twenty from Rambouillet. Just beyond Versailles, on the road to Maintenon, lies the trim little townlet of Saint Cyr, known to-day as the West Point of France, the military school founded by Napoleon I giving it its chief distinction. Going back into the remote past one learns that the village grew up from a foundation of Louis XIV, who bought for ninety-one thousand _livres_ "a chateau and a convent for women," that Madame de Maintenon might establish a girls' school therein. She reserved an apartment for herself, and one suspects indeed that it was simply another project of the Widow Scarron to have a place of rendezvous near the capital. Certainly under the circumstances, taking into consideration the good that she was doing for orphaned girls, she might at least have been allowed the right of a roof to shelter her when she wished. She was absolutely dominant within, though never actually in residence for any length of time. It was here that "Esther" and "Athalie," which Racine had composed expressly for Madame de Maintenon's pensionnaires, were produced for the first time. [Illustration: Fauteuil _of_ Mme. _de_ Maintenon _Worked by the_ Demoiselles _of_ Saint Cyr] When not actually living at Saint Cyr it was Madame de Maintenon's custom to come hither from Paris each day, arriving between seven and eight in the morning, passing the day and returning to town for the evening, much as a celebrated American millionaire journalist, whose country-house overlooks the famous convent garden, does to-day. Madame de Maintenon actually went into retirement at Saint Cyr upon the death of Louis XIV, and for four years, until her death, never left it. She died from old age, rather than from any grave malady, in this "Maison d'Education," which she had inaugurated, and was buried in the chapel, beneath an elaborate tomb which the Duc de Noailles, who married her niece, caused to be erected. The tomb was destroyed during the Revolution and the "Maison Royale de Saint Cyr," of which nothing had been changed since its foundation, was suppressed, the edifice itself being pillaged and the remains of Madame de Maintenon sadly profaned, finally to be recovered and deposited again in the chapel where a simple black marble slab marks them in these graven words: Cy-Git Madame De Maintenon 1635-1719-1836 Napoleon I established the Ecole Militaire at Saint Cyr, from which are graduated each year more than four hundred subaltern officers. The ancient gardens of Madame de Maintenon's time now form the "Champs de Mars," or drill ground, of the military school.