At seven in the evening they had a grand supper at the Hôtel de Ville, and afterwards the bonfire was lit and fireworks sent up.
During the blazing of the bonfire the new-married had the right of proclaiming from the balcony of the Hôtel de Ville, “Les Valentins et les Valentines,” i.e. they called out the names of any of their unmarried friends with the following words, “Qui donne-t-on à M——?” “Mademoiselle ——” was answered by another, and the crowd took up the names, expressing their approbation or otherwise.
In the course of the next week the Valentin was to send to his Valentine a bouquet, or other present; if she accepted it, she appeared, with the cadeau, at the toilette of the Duchess, on the following Sunday; if no present had been sent by the Valentin, his neighbours lit a fire of straw in front of his house, as a sign of their displeasure.
The ladies were to give a ball to their Valentins, and if they did not do so, a straw-fire was lit before their houses.
These fires were called “Brûler le Valentin,” or “Valentine,” and showed “the new-married” had made a mistake in their choice for the unmarried. The chronicle finishes by saying, “the people were so pleased at seeing Stanislas and his queen taking a part in their fête, that they did not pelt peas under their feet when dancing.”
Nancy is not a town of very ancient date like its neighbours, Metz and Toul; it dates only from the eleventh century, and even then it was merely “a castle with a few houses clustered round.”
Here Joan of Arc, born at Domremy, near Toul, was first presented by the Sire de Baudricourt to Duke Charles II., who gave her a horse and arms, and sent her to Chinon to the King, Charles VII. of France, to whom Joan made use of the following words:—“Je vous promets de par Dieu, premier qu’il soit un an, tous les Anglais hors de royaume je mettrai, et vous certifie que la puissance en moi est.”
After her barbarous murder the King ennobled all her family, males and females, in perpetuity; and they retained this privilege into the seventeenth century, when a parliamentary decree confined the honours to the males.
Many in Lorraine believed that Joan was not really burnt: this belief gave rise to several impostors, one of whom was so successful that she deceived even Joan’s brothers, and under her assumed name married a certain Seigneur des Armoises: another was for some time believed in, and fêted accordingly, but at last, being confronted with the King, he posed her by asking what was the secret between them.
In 1445 the Duke of Suffolk arrived at Nancy to demand the hand of Marguerite, René’s beautiful daughter, for Henry VI. of England; René willingly consented to this honour, and Marguerite went forth to pass her troubled life in camps and battles, until, after the murder of her husband and son, she returned to Lorraine, and died in 1482, near St. Mihiel. She was remarkable, says the historian, for her virtues, her talents, her courage, her misfortunes, and her beauty.