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Updated: June 3, 2025
"Oh, the poor man." Crash goes a shell. Everybody wonders where it has fallen. In a few seconds the éclats rain down into the street. "Dirty animals," says the voice of the old man in the darkest of all the corners. Madame Champaubert begins the story of how a cousin of hers who keeps a grocery-shop at Mailly, near the frontier, was cheated by a Boche tinware salesman.
The Princesse d'Harcourt, whose habit it was to accept any sum, from a crown upwards, willingly undertook this strange business. She went upon her errand immediately, and then repaired to Madame de Mailly, who without property, and burdened with a troop of children sons and daughters, was in no way averse to the marriage.
The French, whose operations were hidden by the gardens, at once proceeded to drive a gallery in order to blow up the counterscarp, upon which their guns could not be brought to bear, and on the 29th the mine was sprung. It did some damage, but it had not been driven quite far enough. Led by an officer of the staff named Mailly, the French rushed forward as soon as the mine exploded.
But to Félicité de Nesle it was no vain dream, but the ambition of a lifetime, which dominated her more and more as the months passed in her convent seclusion. If her sister, Madame de Mailly, had so easily made a conquest of the King, why should she, with less beauty, it is true, but with a much cleverer brain, despair?
Between five and six the next morning a number of us met at the house of the Archbishop of Rheims at the end of the Pont Royal, behind the Hotel de Mailly, and there, in accordance with a resolution previously agreed upon, it was arranged that I should make a protest to the Parliament before the opening of the King's will there, against certain other usurpations, and state that it was solely because M. le Duc d'Orleans had given us his word that our complaints should be attended to as soon as the public affairs of the government were settled, that we postponed further measures upon this subject.
The King declared that he would no longer bear the expense of the changes that the courtiers introduced into their apartments. It had cost him more than sixty thousand francs since the Court left Fontainebleau. It is believed that Madame de Mailly was the cause of this determination of the King; for during the last two or three years she had made changes in her apartments every year.
He did not lose his wits at the news, but at once sent and woke up the Princesse d'Harcourt, and begged her to come and see him instantly. Opening his purse, he prayed her to go and see Madame de Maintenon as soon as she got up, and propose his marriage with Mademoiselle de Mailly, whom he would take without dowry, if the King gave him his father's appointments.
The King, upon getting up, was duly made acquainted with La Vrilliere's proposal, and at once agreed to it. There was only one person opposed to the marriage, and that was Mademoiselle de Mailly. She was not quite twelve years of age.
The veteran Marshal de Mailly, one of those gallant nobles whose devoted loyalty had been so scandalously insulted by La Fayette in the spring of the preceding year, though now eighty years of age, hastened to the defense of his royal master and mistress, and brought with him a chivalrous phalanx of above a hundred gentlemen, all animated with the same self-sacrificing heroism, as his own, to fight, or, if need should be, to die for their king and queen, though they had no arms but their swords.
It was he who was made Archbishop of Rouen, which post Cauchon had hoped to gain; and it was for this archbishopric that Cauchon had taken the presiding post during the trial. John de Mailly, Bishop of Noyon; he was another staunch auxiliary of Cauchon.
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