In 1652, Françoise d'Aubigne married the poet Paul Scarron who was paralyzed except for the use of his tongue and the slight use of his fingers. Françoise was introduced to Paul Scarron when she was fifteen and he was forty-one. Their marriage was prompted by Francois's poverty and pity for the poet. Paul Scarron' s paralysis was caused by rheumatoid arthritis contracted during a carnival contretemps. At the annual carnival, Scarron covered his nude body with honey, rolled himself in feathers, and danced through the streets. When the carnival crowd started to pick off his feathers, Paul jumped in the near-freezing Seine and remained there until the rowdy crowd dispersed.

After Scarron became paralyzed, he asked Queen Marie Therese to create new post - the Queen's Invalid - with an annual pension that would  allow him to compose satiric verse. The Queen obliged and Scarron soon became the most popular satirist in Paris. However, he quickly lost his pension for criticized the minister Cardinal Mazarin.

In 1660 Scarron died. Through the influence of his friends, the pension he had lost was now granted to his widow, Françoise, who had preserved her virginity during this odd marriage. In 1669, her friend, the Marquise de Montespan, King Louis's XIV's mistress, needed someone to secretly care for the children she was having with King Louis XIV, Francoise was the ideal choice. For two years Françoise supervised the children's care by wet nurses; for another two years she lived with the children in a village outside Paris and began to act as their governess. At the end of 1673, Louis officially recognized Montespan's children, and Françoise  moved with them to the court at St. Germain. Her goal now was to buy a home of her own; within a year she had achieved that goal, and in 1675 she was granted the title of Marquise de Maintenon. She still spent most of her time at court, and as Montespan's influence declined, Françoise's influence grew.

Queen Maria Theresa died in the summer of 1683. In early beginning of 1684 Louis XIV married Mme de Maintenon secretly, possibly because of the potential scandal of marrying the widow of the man who often ridiculed the monarchy.  Françoise became the most important woman in Louis' life and  played a prominent part in politics for the next thirty-one years --- far too prominent in the view of many of Louis' courtiers. Shortly after their marriage and upon her request Louis XIV created in Saint-Cyr a college for the filles pauvres de la noblesse (poor noble girls), to which she retired on his death in 1715.

Françoise has been portrayed in more than twenty films, most of them French,  with notable performances by Claudette Colbert in Si Versailles m'était conté (1954); Danielle Darrieux in L' Affaire des poisons (1955), Dominique Blanc in the French TV miniseries L'Allée du roi (1996), Isabelle Huppert in Saint-Cyr (2000), Marine Delterme in Vatel (2000), and Ingrid Rouif in Le Roi danse, (2000) She was also played by Lysa Ansaldi in the long-running French musical, Le Roi Soleil.

Although Françoise adored Louis, the King's constant satyriasis began to wear her down. When she was seventy years old, she asked her confessor if she was still required to have sex on demand twice a day to satisfy the king. She was told yes. During her free time of which there wasn't apparently too much.

Françoise enjoyed cooking and created several dishes that bear her name, including Côtelette à la Maintenon (chicken cutlets and tongue) which may have been a "tongue-in-cheeken" tribute to her former husband who was nicknamed Ie Langue, because his witty tongue was about all he could move. So this seems the most appropriate dish to celebrate Françoise's birthday. which we suggest pairing with a DVD of Saint-Cyr
 

Côtelette à la Maintenon
(Chicken Cutlets and Tongue on Toast)