ABSTRACT

The granddaughter of Huguenot soldier-poet Agrippa d’Aubigne, Frangoise d’Aubigne was born in 1635 and was immediately christened Catholic in the Niort jail where her remorseless father was imprisoned for debts and counterO feiting. For the next seven years, while her mother and older brother Charles remained in Niort, Frangoise lived happily at her paternal aunt’s castle, reO ceiving a solid Calvinist upbringing. In 1645, the d’Aubigne family emO barked on an ill-fated venture in Martinique, returning two years later after the father’s death. Near total destitution, and while her mother tried in vain to reclaim some lost inheritance, the young girl was forced by her Catholic godO mother to enter the Ursulines’ convent in Niort, and then in Paris. After much personal resistance Frangoise eventually agreed to reaffirm her Catholic faith, which she never gave up thereafter.