Maintenon not only appears austere and inflexible, but everything with her is conventional and calculated. Her piety is not ardent in its outbursts, like La Vallière’s, but restrained and deliberate, and her scruples always turn to the advantage of her fortune. Not false, but of consummate prudence; not perfidious, but always ready, if not to sacrifice, at least to abandon her friends; loving the appearance of good as much as good itself; without imagination, and consequently without illusions, this woman, superior by the intellect much more than by the heart, was armed against all allurements, and the fear of compromising her reputation placed her beyond all perils. “There is nothing more clever than an irreproachable conduct,” said she. This sentence paints her perfectly, and allows one to penetrate to the bottom of her soul. It explains and enlightens the whole of her life, and by its aid one can understand how this woman managed to live amidst the dangers of a light and frivolous society without succumbing, traverse youth without experiencing its temptations, undergo poverty with honour, hold her own at court, be constant mistress of herself, and end by irrevocably securing in the heart of the King a place which neither La Vallière, despite her disinterested devotion, Fontanges, despite her powers of fascination, nor Montespan, despite her legitimated children, had known how to preserve. To a sound judgment, to a dignity imposing, but devoid of arrogance, to that marvellous art of being queen without appearing to pretend to it, and of receiving the homage of the court with quite a Christian humility; to all these qualities, by which, as Louis XIV.’s wife, she showed herself worthy of her destiny, Madame de Maintenon had added, from her most tender infancy, that proud desire “for a good reputation,” in which lay her strength. “This was my hobby,” she said later.[457] “I did not trouble myself about riches; I was infinitely above interest. But I wished for honour. I did not seek to be loved privately by any one whatever. I wanted to be loved by everybody.”