[69] Clagny was one of Mansard’s first works and won him the favour of Louis XIV. It no longer exists.
[70] The mortality among the workmen was very high.
[71] Nothing now remains but fourteen arches of the aqueduct.
[72] This hydraulic machine, so much admired at the time, was really a clumsy affair.
[73] Ed. Chéruel, XII. c. vii; ed. Boislisle, XXVIII. 242-281.
[74] Wife of Henri de Mornay, Marquis de Montchevreuil, the governor of the Duc du Maine. Mme de Caylus describes her as “une femme froide et sèche dans le commerce, d’une figure triste, d’un esprit au-dessous du médiocre, et d’un zèle capable de dégoûter les plus dévots de la piété.” Saint-Simon’s portrait is equally unflattering: “Une grande créature maigre, jaune, qui rioit niais, et montroit de longues vilaines dents, dévote à l’outrance” (IV. 35), and Madame on hearing of her death writes: “ça fait une méchante femme de moins en ce monde” (Corr. I. 214).
[75] Armand-Jean Du Plessis, great-nephew of the Cardinal.
[76] Mme de Caylus (Marthe-Marguerite de Valois) was the daughter of the Marquis de Villette, Mme de Maintenon’s first cousin, and was thus her nièce à la mode de Bretagne. In her father’s absence in America Mme de Maintenon carried her off and made her a Catholic, and in 1686, when she was in her thirteenth year, married her to the Comte de Caylus, a confirmed drunkard. She was one of the most attractive women of her day, and her memoirs are a lively source of information for Mme de Maintenon and the Court generally. Her stepmother, the Marquise de Villette, married, as his second wife, Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke.
[77] Wife of Henri de Daillon, Comte and afterwards Duc du Lude, Grand-Master of the Artillery. In 1696 she was made principal lady-in-waiting (dame d’honneur) to the future Duchess of Burgundy. She was a Béthune by birth, the great-granddaughter of Sully.
[78] Bonne de Pons, Marquise d’Heudicourt. Mme de Caylus speaks of her as “bizarre, naturelle, sans jugement, pleine d’imagination, toujours nouvelle et divertissante.” Saint-Simon in reporting her death in 1709 calls her a “démon domestique” and a “mauvaise fée,” but he adds: “On ne pouvoit avoir plus d’esprit ni plus agréable, ni savoir plus de choses, ni être plus plaisante, plus amusante, plus divertissante, sans vouloir l’être” (IV. 345).