3.11 The Weeping Wolf: On the fountain of Mailly-le-Château, the cruelty of the Beast of Auxerrois is engraved forever!
The fountain is located in the lower part of the village, in the Place Saint Nicolas. In 1992, the sculptor Yves Varanguin reworked it to illustrate the past of the village: the castle, the vines, wood transport by the river and … the wolves eating children. We can see the remains of the castle of the Counts of Auxerre and the ramparts of the village. Formerly, before the arrival of phylloxera (insects that ravaged vines), Mailly-le-Château was a village of winemakers as depicted by dry stone huts and cellars that appear on the sculpture. At the top of the fountain, can be seen a wolf crying, perhaps for the cruelty of his ancestors who, in the 1730s, attacked about thirty victims in the area. At the foot of the fountain is a Latin inscription, which attests this hypothesis:
‘This rabid beast will have to sit on this fountain and forever fill it with the tears of his body’.
