Word: maintenon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...limit to my desires," Mme. de Maintenon confided in a letter to a friend. Few women in history have brought that kind of ambition to such a satisfactory climax. Born in prison in 1635, the daughter of a well-born conman and habitual murderer reached for the moon from earliest childhood. By the age of 48 she had embraced the sun. Her marriage to his Coruscating Magnificence, the Sun King, Louis XIV, lasted for 32 years...
When the royal hunt of Mme. de Maintenon was turned into a piece of popular fiction in The King's Way (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; 497 pages; $15.95), it reigned for 80 weeks on France's bestseller list. Françoise Chandernagor, 38, a French judge, has been more fortunate than most first novelists in the wealth of sources available for her imaginative reconstruction. She has drawn from the writings of two of France's great literary stylists and keenest chroniclers of the age, Mme. de Sévigné and the Due de Saint-Simon, as well...