Madame de Navailles was the eldest daughter of this Madame de Neuillant, and it was her husband, M. de Navailles, who, serving under M. le Prince in Flanders, received from that General a strong reprimand for his ignorance.  M. le Prince wanted to find the exact position of a little brook which his maps did not mark.  To assist him in the search, M. de Navailles brought a map of the world!  On another occasion, visiting M. Colbert, at Sceaux, the only thing M. de Navailles could find to praise was the endive of the kitchen garden:  and when on the occasion of the Huguenots the difficulty of changing religion was spoken of, he declared that if God had been good enough to make him a Turk, he should have remained so.

Madame de Navailles had been lady of honour to the Queen-mother, and lost that place by a strange adventure.

She was a woman of spirit and of virtue, and the young ladies of honour were put under her charge.  The King was at this time young and gallant.  So long as he held aloof from the chamber of the young ladies, Madame de Navailles meddled not, but she kept her eye fixed upon all that she controlled.  She soon perceived that the King was beginning to amuse himself, and immediately after she found that a door had secretly been made into the chamber of the young ladies; that this door communicated with a staircase by which the King mounted into the room at night, and was hidden during the day by the back of a bed placed against it.  Upon this Madame de Navailles held counsel with her husband.  On one side was virtue and honour, on the other, the King’s anger, disgrace, and exile.  The husband and wife did not long hesitate.  Madame de Navailles at once took her measures, and so well, that in a few hours one evening the door was entirely closed up.  During the same night the King, thinking to enter as usual by the little staircase, was much surprised to no longer find a door.  He groped, he searched, he could not comprehend the disappearance of the door, or by what means it had become wall again.  Anger seized him; he doubted not that the door had been closed by Madame de Navailles and her husband.  He soon found that such was the case, and on the instant stripped them of almost all their offices, and exiled them from the Court.  The exile was not long; the Queen-mother on her death-bed implored him to receive back Monsieur and Madame de Navailles, and he could not refuse.  They returned, and M. de Navailles nine years afterwards was made Marechal of France.  After this Madame de Navailles rarely appeared at the Court.  Madame de Maintenon could not refuse her distinctions and special favours, but they were accorded rarely and by moments.  The King always remembered his door; Madame de Maintenon always remembered the hay and barley of Madame de Neuillant, and neither years nor devotion could deaden the bitterness of the recollection.