Two days later, de Goncourt tells us, she was buried at Saint Sulpice, an hour before the customary time for interments, her coffin guarded by soldiers, to protect it from the fury of the mob.

As for Madame de Mailly, she spent the last years of her troubled life in the odour of a tardy sanctity—­washing the feet of the poor, ministering to the sick, bringing consolation to those in prison; and she was laid to rest amongst the poorest in the Cimetiere des Innocents, wearing the hair-shirt which had been part of her penance during life, and with a simple cross of wood for all monument.

CHAPTER XXVII

A MISTRESS OF INTRIGUE

“On 11th September,” Madame de Motteville says, “we saw arrive from Italy three nieces of Cardinal Mazarin and a nephew.  Two Mancini sisters and the nephew were the children of the youngest sister of his Eminence; and of the sisters Laure, the elder, was a pleasing brunette with a handsome face, about twelve or thirteen years of age; the second (Olympe), also a brunette, had a long face and pointed chin.  Her eyes were small, but lively; and it might be expected that, when fifteen years of age, she would have some charm.  According to the rules of beauty, it was impossible to grant her any, save that of having dimples in her cheeks.”

Such, at the age of nine or ten, was Olympe Mancini, who, in spite of her childish lack of beauty, was destined to enslave the handsomest King in Europe; and, after a life of discreditable intrigues, in which she incurred the stigma of witchcraft and murder, to end her career in obscurity, shunned by all who had known her in her day of splendour.

It was a singular freak of fortune which translated the Mancini girls from their modest home in Italy to the magnificence of the French Court, as the adopted children of their uncle, Cardinal Mazarin, the virtual ruler of France, and the avowed lover (if not, as some say, the husband) of Anne of Austria, the Queen-mother.  “See those little girls,” said the wife of Marechal de Villeroi to Gaston d’Orleans, pointing to the Mancini children, the centre of an admiring crowd of courtiers.  “They are not rich now; but some day they will have fine chateaux, large incomes, splendid jewels, beautiful silver, and perhaps great dignities.”

And how true this prophecy proved, we know; for, of the Cardinal’s five Mancini nieces (for three others came, later, as their uncle’s protegees), Laure found a husband in the Duc de Mercoeur, grandson of Henri IV.; two others lived to wear the coronet of Duchess; Olympe, as we shall see, became Comtesse de Soissons; and Marie, after narrowly missing the Queendom of France, became the wife of the Constable Colonna, one of the greatest nobles of Italy.

Nor is there anything in such high alliances to cause surprise; for their future was in the hands of the most powerful, ambitious, and wealthy man in France.  From their first appearance as his guests they were received with open arms by Louis’ Court.  They were speedily transferred to the Palais Royal, to be brought up with the boy-King, Louis XIV., and his brother, the Prince of Anjou; while the Queen herself not only paid them the most flattering attentions and treated them as her own children, but herself undertook part of their education.