Madame de Maintenon: The Secret Wife of Louis XIV

Françoise d'Aubigné was born to an aristocratic rogue of a father and his young wife in a prison cell in 1635. Much of her childhood was spent begging at the doors of convents for a bowl of soup. Yet young Françoise, a large-eyed beauty, eventually found herself in the household of the Baron de Saint-Hermant in Paris, next door to the poet Scarron. Their eventual marriage was more pragmatic than romantic, but Scarron taught Françoise a great deal about history and politics, and she became in his company the perfect hostess - attentive, discreet and amusing. When Scarron died, Françoise was still just twenty-five. Moving in the circles that the salon had introduced her to, she became close to the Marquise de Montespan, the King's bewitching mistress, whose pregnancies were becoming a worry to the court. Soon, at Louis's request, Françoise was running a kind of kindergarten for his illegitimate offspring. As he grew to know her the King began to succumb to Françoise's understated charms, and at the age of forty-five, she was recognised as Louis's new mistress, and they eventually married in secret.