questions were embarassing, and ask, "What does your Solidity think?"
The opinions she gave were generally moderate and discreet. "I did not
manage to please in my conversation about the buildings," she wrote to
Cardinal Noailles, "and what grieves me is to have caused vexation to no
purpose. Another block of chambers is being built here at a cost of a
hundred thousand francs; Marly will soon be a second Versailles. The
people, what will become of them?" And later on: "Would you think
proper, monsignor, to make out a list of good bishops? You could send it
me, so that, on the occasions which are constantly occurring, I might
support their interests, and they might have the business referred to
them in which they ought to have a hand, and for which they are the
proper persons. I am always spoken to when the question is of them; and
if I were better informed, I should be bolder." "It is said that you
meddle too little with business," Fenelon wrote to her in 1694; "your
mind is better calculated for it than you suppose. You ought to direct
your whole endeavors to giving the king views tending to peace, and
especially to the relief of the people, to moderation, to equity, to
mistrust of harsh and violent measures, to horror for acts of arbitrary
authority, and finally to love of the Church, and to assiduity in seeking
good pastors for it." Neither Fenelon nor Madame de Maintenon had seen
in the revocation of the edict of Nantes "an act of arbitrary authority,
or a harsh and violent measure." She was not inclined towards
persecution, but she feared lest her moderation should be imputed to a
remnant of prejudice in favor of her former religion, "and this it is,"
she would say, "which makes me approve of things quite opposed to my
sentiments." An egotistical and cowardly prudence, which caused people
to attribute to Madame de Maintenon, in the severities against the
Huguenots, a share which she had not voluntarily or entirely assumed.

Whatever the apparent reserve and modesty with which it was cloaked, the