"I have told all I know, and there is no more I can say."
After this declaration, they were going to drive the tumbril nearer to
the scaffold, but the crowd was so dense that the assistant could not
force a way through, though he struck out on every side with his whip.
So they had to stop a few paces short. The executioner had already got
down, and was adjusting the ladder. In this terrible moment of waiting,
the marquise looked calmly and gratefully at the doctor, and when she
felt that the tumbril had stopped, said, "Sir, it is not here we part:
you promised not to leave me till my head is cut off. I trust you will
keep your word."
"To be sure I will," the doctor replied; "we shall not be separated
before the moment of your death: be not troubled about that, for I will
never forsake you."
"I looked for this kindness," she said, "and your promise was too solemn
for you to think for one moment of failing me. Please be on the scaffold
and be near me. And now, sir, I would anticipate the final
farewell,--for all the things I shall have to do on the scaffold may
distract me,--so let me thank you here. If I am prepared to suffer the
sentence of my earthly judge, and to hear that of my heavenly judge, I
owe it to your care for me, and I am deeply grateful. I can only ask
your forgiveness for the trouble I have given you." Tears choked the
doctor's speech, and he could not reply. "Do you not forgive me?" she
repeated. At her words, the doctor tried to reassure her; but feeling
that if he opened his mouth he must needs break into sobs, he still kept
silent. The marquise appealed to him a third time. "I entreat you, sir,
forgive me; and do not regret the time you have passed with me. You will
say a De Profundus at the moment of my death, and a mass far me
to-morrow: will you not promise?"
"Yes, madame," said the doctor in a choking voice; "yes, yes, be calm,
and I will do all you bid me."
The executioner hereupon removed the board, and helped the marquise out
of the tumbril; and as they advanced the few steps towards the scaffold,
and all eyes were upon them, the doctor could hide his tears for a
moment without being observed. As he was drying his eyes, the assistant
gave him his hand to help him down. Meanwhile the marquise was mounting
the ladder with the executioner, and when they reached the platform he
told her to kneel down in front of a block which lay across it. Then the
doctor, who had mounted with a step less firm than hers, came and knelt
beside her, but turned in the other direction, so that he might whisper
in her ear--that is, the marquise faced the river, and the doctor faced
the Hotel de Ville. Scarcely had they taken their place thus when the
man took down her hair and began cutting it at the back and at the
sides, making her turn her head this way and that, at times rather
roughly; but though this ghastly toilet lasted almost half an hour, she
made no complaint, nor gave any sign of pain but her silent tears. When
her hair was cut, he tore open the top of the shirt, so as to uncover
the shoulders, and finally bandaged her eyes, and lifting her face by
the chin, ordered her to hold her head erect. She obeyed, unresisting,
all the time listening to the doctor's words and repeating them from
time to time, when they seemed suitable to her own condition. Meanwhile,
at the back of the scaffold, on which the stake was placed, stood the
executioner, glancing now and again at the folds of his cloak, where
there showed the hilt of a long, straight sabre, which he had carefully
concealed for fear Madame de Brinvilliers might see it when she mounted
the scaffold. When the doctor, having pronounced absolution, turned his
head and saw that the man was not yet armed, he uttered these prayers,
which she repeated after him: "Jesus, Son of David and Mary, have mercy
upon me; Mary, daughter of David and Mother of Jesus, pray for me; my
God, I abandon my body, which is but dust, that men may burn it and do
with it what they please, in the firm faith that it shall one day arise
and be reunited with my soul. I trouble not concerning my body; grant, O
God, that I yield up to Thee my soul, that it may enter into Thy rest;
receive it into Thy bosom; that it may dwell once more there, whence it
first descended; from Thee it came, to Thee returns; Thou art the source
and the beginning; be thou, O God, the centre and the end!"
The marquise had said these words when suddenly the doctor heard a dull
stroke like the sound of a chopper chopping meat upon a block: at that
moment she ceased to speak. The blade had sped so quickly that the
doctor had not even seen a flash. He stopped, his hair bristling, his
brow bathed in sweat; for, not seeing the head fall, he supposed that
the executioner had missed the mark and must needs start afresh. But his
fear was short-lived, for almost at the same moment the head inclined to
the left, slid on to the shoulder, and thence backward, while the body
fell forward on the crossway block, supported so that the spectators
could see the neck cut open and bleeding. Immediately, in fulfilment of
his promise, the doctor said a De Profundis.
When the prayer was done and the doctor raised his head, he saw before
him the executioner wiping his face. "Well, sir," said he, "was not that
a good stroke? I always put up a prayer on these occasions, and God has
always assisted me; but I have been anxious for several days about this
lady. I had six masses said, and I felt strengthened in hand and heart."
He then pulled out a bottle from under his cloak, and drank a dram; and
taking the body under one arm, all dressed as it was, and the head in
his other hand, the eyes still bandaged, he threw both upon the faggots,
which his assistant lighted.
"The next day," says Madame de Sevigne, "people were looking for the
charred bones of Madame de Brinvilliers, because they said she was a
saint."
In 1814, M. d'Offemont, father of the present occupier of the castle
where the Marquise de Brinvilliers poisoned her father, frightened at
the approach of all the allied troops, contrived in one of the towers
several hiding-places, where he shut up his silver and such other
valuables as were to be found in this lonely country in the midst of the
forest of Laigue. The foreign troops were passing backwards and forwards
at Offemont, and after a three months' occupation retired to the farther
side of the frontier.
Then the owners ventured to take out the various things that had been
hidden; and tapping the walls, to make sure nothing had been overlooked,
they detected a hollow sound that indicated the presence of some
unsuspected cavity. With picks and bars they broke the wall open, and
when several stones had come out they found a large closet like a
laboratory, containing furnaces, chemical instruments, phials
hermetically sealed full of an unknown liquid, and four packets of
powders of different colours. Unluckily, the people who made these
discoveries thought them of too much or too little importance; and
instead of submitting the ingredients to the tests of modern science,
they made away with them all, frightened at their probably deadly
nature.
Thus was lost this great opportunity--probably the last--for finding and
analysing the substances which composed the poisons of Sainte-Croix and
Madame de Brinvilliers.
----