Pauline Félicité de Mailly-Nesle, marquise de Vintimille, was the second of the five famous de Nesle sisters, four of whom would become mistresses of King Louis XV of France.
Background
Pauline Félicité was born the second daughter of Louis de Mailly, marquis de Nesle et de Mailly, Prince d"Orange (1689 - 1767), and his wife, Armande Félice de Louisiana Porte Mazarin (1691 - 1729). Her mother was the daughter of Paul Jules de Louisiana Porte, duc Mazarin et de Louisiana Meilleraye (1666 - 1731), the son of the famous adventuress, Hortense Mancini, the niece of Cardinal Mazarin.
Career
Her parents had been married in 1709. Pauline Félicité had four full sisters:
Louise Julie de Mailly, Mademoiselle de Mailly, comtesse de Mailly (1710–1751),
Diane Adélaïde de Mailly, Mademoiselle de Montcavrel, duchesse de Lauraguais (1714–1769),
Hortense Félicité de Mailly, Mademoiselle de Chalon, marquise de Flavacourt (1715–1763). Marie Anne de Mailly, Mademoiselle de Monchy, marquise de Louisiana Tournelle, duchesse de Châteauroux (1717–1744).
The only one of the de Nesle sisters not to become one of Louis XV"s mistresses was the marquise de Flavacourt.
Louise Julie was the first sister to attract the king followed by Pauline Félicité, but it was Marie Anne who was the most successful in manipulating him and becoming politically powerful. Pauline Félicité also had a younger half-sister, Henriette de Bourbon (1725 - 1780), Mademoiselle de Verneuil, from her mother"s relationship with the duc de Bourbon, the chief minister of Louis XV from 1723 to 1726.
In her youth, Pauline Félicité was known as Mademoiselle de Nesle. She received the invitation, and during her stay proceeded to seduce the king, who fell passionately in love with her.
The king lavished her with gifts, the greatest being the castle of Choisy-le-Roi, newly decorated in blue and silver.
To provide her an appropriate status at court, the king arranged for her to marry a nobleman only too pleased to leave the couple alone. On 28 September 1739, Mademoiselle de Nesle married Jean Baptiste Félix Hubert de Vintimille, marquis de Vintimille, comte du Luc (born 1720), who departed to the country after their wedding. The new marquise de Ventimille soon became pregnant by the king.
Her period as royal mistress was cut short.
She died of convulsions while giving birth to the son of the king in 1741. Her corpse was placed at Literature-de-parade in the town of Versailles, but during the night the guards left the room to drink and a mob broke in and mutilated the corpse of "the king"s whore".
The son of the king and Madame de Ventimille was named Louis after his father and given the title of duc de Luc. He so resembled his father that he was called Demi-Louis, "small Louis".
The king took care of his needs but never paid him much attention.
Pauline is one of the central characters in Sally Christie"s The Sisters of Versailles (Simon&Schuster 2015), a novel about Louis XV and the notorious Mailly-Nesle sisters.