THE TERROR OF POISON
The Marquise de Brinvilliers--Homicidal mania--Mysterious
death of her father, M. D'Aubray--Death of her eldest brother
and her second brother--Sainte Croix's sudden death--Fatal
secret betrayed--Marchioness flies to England--Brought
to Paris--Her trial--Torture and cruel sentence--Others
suspected--Pennautier--Trade in poisoning--The _Chambre
Ardente_--La Voisin--Great people implicated--Wholesale
sentences--The galleys, or forced labor at the oar a common
punishment--War galleys--Manned with difficulty--Illegal
detention--Horrors of the galleys.
Paris was convulsed and shaken to its roots in 1674, when the
abominable crimes of the Marchioness of Brinvilliers were laid
bare. They have continued to horrify the whole world. Here was
a beautiful woman of good family, of quiet demeanor, seemingly
soft-hearted and sweet tempered, who nevertheless murdered her nearest
relations,--father, brother, sisters, her husband and her own children
by secret and detestable practices. It could have been nothing less
than homicidal mania in its worst development. The rage to kill, or,
more exactly, to test the value of the lethal weapons she recklessly
wielded, seized her under the guise of a high, religious duty to visit
the hospitals to try the effects of her poisons on the sick poor.
There were those at the time who saw in the discovery of her murderous
processes the direct interposition of Providence. First, there was the
sudden death of her principal accomplice, and the sure indications
found among the papers he left; next, the confirmatory proofs afforded
by a servant who had borne the "question" without opening his lips, and
only confessed at the scaffold; last of all, the guilty woman's arrest
in Liége on the last day that the French king's authority was paramount
in that city; and more, there was the fact that when taken, she was in
possession of papers indispensable to secure her own conviction.
Marie-Madeleine d'Aubray was beautiful, the daughter of the d'Aubray
who filled the high legal office of Lieutenant-Criminel, and she
married the Marquis de Brinvilliers at the age of twenty-one.
She was possessed of great personal attraction: a small woman of
slight, exquisite figure, her face round and regular, her complexion
extraordinarily fair, her hair abundant and of a dark chestnut color.
Everything promised a happy life for the young people. They were drawn
together by strong liking, they were fairly rich and held their heads
high in the best circle of the court. They lived together happily for
some years, and five children were born to them, but presently they
fell into extravagant ways and wasted their substance. The Marquis
became a roué and a gambler, and left his wife very much alone and
exposed to temptation, and especially to the marked attentions of a
certain Godin de St. Croix, a young, handsome and seductive gallant,
whom the Marquis had himself introduced and welcomed to his house. At
the trial it was urged that this St. Croix had been the real criminal;
he is described as a demon of violent and unbridled passion, who had
led the Marchioness astray, a statement never proved.
The liaison soon became public property, but the husband was altogether
indifferent to his wife's misconduct, having a disreputable character
of his own. The father and brothers strongly disapproved and reproached
the Marchioness fiercely. The elder d'Aubray, quite unable to check the
scandal, at last obtained a _lettre de cachet_, an order of summary
imprisonment, against St. Croix, and the lover was arrested in the
Marchioness' carriage, seated by her side. He was committed at once
to the Bastile, where he became the cellmate of an Italian generally
called Exili; although his real name is said to have been Egidi, while
his occult profession, according to contemporary writers, was that of
an artist in poisons. From this chance prison acquaintance flowed the
whole of the subsequent crimes. When St. Croix was released from the
Bastile, he obtained the release also of Exili and, taking him into
his service, the two applied themselves to the extensive manufacture
of poisons, assisted by an apothecary named Glaser. St. Croix was
supposed to have reformed. When once more free, he married, became
reserved and grew devout. Secretly he renewed his intimacy with the
Marchioness and persuaded her to get rid of her near relatives in order
to acquire the whole of the d'Aubray property; and he provided her with
the poisons for the purpose.
M. d'Aubray had forgiven his daughter, and had taken her with
him to his country estate at Offémont in the autumn of 1666. The
Marchioness treated him with the utmost affection and seemed to have
quite abandoned her loose ways. Suddenly, soon after their arrival,
M. d'Aubray was seized with some mysterious malady, accompanied by
constant vomitings and intolerable sufferings. Removed to Paris
next day, he was attended by a strange doctor, who had not seen the
beginning of the attack, and speedily died in convulsions. It was
suggested as the cause of his death, that he had been suffering from
gout driven into the stomach.
The inheritance was small, and there were four children to share it.
The Marchioness had two brothers and two sisters. One sister was
married and the mother of two children, the other was a Carmelite
nun. The eldest brother, Antoine d'Aubray, succeeded to his father's
office as Lieutenant-Criminel, and within four years he also died
under suspicious circumstances. He lived in Paris, and upon entering
his house one day called for a drink. A new valet, named La Chaussée,
brought him a glass of wine and water. It was horribly bitter to the
taste, and d'Aubray threw the greater part away, expressing his belief
that the rascal, La Chaussée, wanted to poison him. It was like liquid
fire, and others, who tasted it, declared that it contained vitriol.
La Chaussée, apologising, recovered the glass, threw the rest of the
liquid into the fire and excused himself by saying that a fellow
servant had just used the tumbler as a medicine glass. This incident
was presently forgotten, but next spring, at a dinner given by M.
d'Aubray, guests and host were seized with a strange illness after
eating a tart or _vol au vent_, and M. d'Aubray never recovered his
health. He "pined visibly" after his return to Paris, losing appetite
and flesh, and presently died, apparently of extreme weakness, on the
17th of June, 1670. A post mortem was held, but disclosed nothing, and
the death was attributed to "malignant humours," a ridiculously vague
expression showing the medical ignorance of the times.
The second brother did not survive. He too was attacked with illness,
and died of the same loss of power and vitality. An autopsy resulted
in a certain suspicion of foul play. The doctors reported that the
lungs of the deceased were ulcerated, the liver and heart burned up and
destroyed. Undoubtedly there had been noxious action, but it could not
be definitely referred to poison. No steps, however, were taken by the
police to inquire into the circumstances of this sudden death.
Meanwhile the Marchioness had been deserted by her husband, and she
gave herself up to reckless dissipation. When St. Croix abandoned her
also, she resolved to commit suicide. "I shall put an end to my life,"
she wrote him in a letter afterwards found among his papers, "by using
what you gave me, the preparation of Glaser." Courage failed her, and
now chance or strange fortune intervened with terrible revelations. St.
Croix's sudden death betrayed the secret of the crime.
He was in the habit of working at a private laboratory in the Place
Maubert, where he distilled his lethal drugs. One day as he bent
over the furnace, his face protected by a glass mask, the glass
burst unexpectedly, and he inhaled a breath of the poisonous fumes,
which stretched him dead upon the spot. Naturally there could be no
destruction of compromising papers, and these at once fell into the
hands of the police. Before they could be examined, the Marchioness,
terrified at the prospect of impending detection, committed herself
hopelessly by her imprudence. She went at once to the person to whom
the papers had been confided and begged for a casket in which were a
number of her letters. She was imprudent enough to offer a bribe of
fifty louis, and was so eager in her appeal, that suspicion arose and
her request was refused. Ruin stared her in the face, she went home,
got what money she could and fled from Paris.
The casket was now opened, and fully explained her apprehensions.
On top was a paper written by St. Croix which ran: "I humbly entreat
the person into whose hands this casket may come to convey it to the
Marchioness Brinvilliers, rue Neuve St. Paul; its contents belong to
her and solely concern her and no one else in the world. Should she die
before me I beg that everything within the box may be burned without
examination." In addition to the letters from the Marchioness, the
casket contained a number of small parcels and phials full of drugs,
such as antimony, corrosive sublimate, vitriol in various forms. These
were analysed, and some portion of them administered to animals, which
immediately died.
The law now took action. The first arrest was that of La Chaussée,
whose complicity with St. Croix was undoubted. The man had been in St.
Croix's service, he had lived with Antoine d'Aubray, and at the seizure
of St. Croix's effects, he had rashly protested against the opening
of the casket. He was committed to the Châtelet and put on his trial
with the usual preliminary torture of the "boot." He stoutly refused
to make confession at first, but spoke out when released from the
rack. His conviction followed, on a charge of having murdered the two
Lieutenants-Criminel, the d'Aubrays, father and son. His sentence was,
to be broken alive on the wheel, and he was duly executed.
This was the first act in the criminal drama. The Marchioness was still
at large. She had sought an asylum in England, and was known to be in
London. Colbert, the French minister, applied in his king's name for
her arrest and removal to France. But no treaty of extradition existed
in those days, and the laws of England were tenacious. Even Charles II,
the paid pensioner of Louis and his very submissive ally, could not
impose his authority upon a free people; and the English, then by no
means friendly with France, would have resented the arbitrary arrest
of even the most dastard criminal for an offence committed beyond the
kingdom. History does not say exactly how it was compassed, but the
Marchioness did leave England, and crossed to the Low Countries, where
she took refuge in a convent in the city of Liége.
Four years passed, but her retreat became known to the police of Paris.
Desgrez, a skilful officer, famous for his successes as a detective,
was forthwith despatched to inveigle her away. He assumed the disguise
of an abbé, and called at the convent. Being a good looking young man
of engaging manners, he was well received by the fugitive French woman,
sick and weary of conventual restriction. The Marchioness, suspecting
nothing, gladly accepted the offer of a drive in the country with the
astute Desgrez, who promptly brought her under escort to the French
frontier as a prisoner. A note of her reception at the Conciergerie is
among the records, to the effect, that, "La Brinvilliers, who had been
arrested by the King's order in the city of Liége, was brought to the
prison under a warrant of the Court."
On the journey from Liége she had tried to seduce one of her escort
into passing letters to a friend, whom she earnestly entreated to
recover certain papers she had left at the convent. These, however,
one of them of immense importance, her full confession, had already
been secured by Desgrez, showing that the Abbess had been cognisant of
the intended arrest. The Marchioness yielded to despair when she heard
of the seizure of her papers and would have killed herself, first by
swallowing a long pin and next by eating glass. This confession is
still extant and will be read with horror--the long list of her crimes
and debaucheries set forth with cold-blooded, plain speaking. It was
not produced at her trial, which was mainly a prolonged series of
detailed interrogatories to which she made persistent denials. As the
proceedings drew slowly on, all Paris watched with shuddering anxiety,
and the King himself, who was absent on a campaign, sent peremptory
orders to Colbert that no pains should be spared to bring all proof
against the guilty woman. Conviction was never in doubt. One witness
declared that she had made many attempts to get the casket from St.
Croix; another, that she exulted in her power to rid herself of her
enemies, declaring it was easy to give them "a pistol shot in their
soup;" a third, that she had exhibited a small box, saying, "it is
very small but there is enough inside to secure many successions
(inheritances)." Hence the euphemism _poudre de succession_, so often
employed at that time to signify "deadly poison."
The accused still remained obstinately dumb, but at last an eloquent
priest, l'Abbé Pirot, worked upon her feelings of contrition, and
obtained a full avowal, not only of her own crimes, but those also
of her accomplices. Sentence was at once pronounced, and execution
quickly followed. Torture, both ordinary and extraordinary, was to
be first inflicted. The ordeal of water, three buckets-full, led her
to ask if they meant to drown her, as assuredly she could not, with
her small body, drink so much. After the torture she was to make
the _amende honorable_ and the acknowledgment, candle in hand, that
vengeance and greed had tempted her to poison her father, brothers and
sisters. Then her right hand was to be amputated as a parricide; but
this penalty was remitted. The execution was carried out under very
brutal conditions. No sooner were the prison doors opened than a mob of
great ladies rushed in to share and gloat over her sufferings, among
them the infamous Comtesse de Soissons, who was proved later to have
been herself a poisoner. An enormous crowd of spectators, at least one
hundred thousand, were assembled in the streets, at the windows and
on the roofs, and she was received with furious shouts. Close by the
tumbril rode Desgrez, the officer who had captured her in Liége. Yet
she showed the greatest fortitude. "She died as she had lived," writes
Madame de Sévigné, "resolutely. Now she is dispersed into the air. Her
poor little body was thrown into a fierce furnace, and her ashes blown
to the four winds of heaven."
Another person was implicated in this black affair, Reich de
Pennautier, Receiver-General of the clergy. When the St. Croix casket
was opened, a promissory note signed by Pennautier had been found.
He was suspected of having used poison to remove his predecessor in
office. Pennautier was arrested and lodged in the Conciergerie, where
he occupied the old cell of Ravaillac for seven days. Then he was put
on his trial. He found friends, chief of them the reticent Madame
de Brinvilliers, but he had an implacable enemy in the widow of his
supposed victim, Madame de St. Laurent, who continually pursued him
in the courts. He was, however, backed by Colbert, Archbishop of
Paris, and the whole of the French clergy. In the end he was released,
emerging as Madame de Sévigné put it, "rather whiter than snow," and
he retained his offices until he became enormously rich. Although his
character was smirched in this business he faced the world bravely to a
green old age.
In France uneasiness was general after the execution of the Brinvilliers
and the acquittal of Pennautier. Sinister rumors prevailed that secret
poisoning had become quite a trade, facilitated by the existence of
carefully concealed offices, where the noxious drugs necessary could be
purchased easily by heirs tired of waiting for their succession, and
by husbands and wives eager to get rid of one another. Within a year
suspicion was strengthened by the picking up of an anonymous letter in
the confessional of the Jesuit Church of the rue St. Antoine, stating
that a plot was afoot to poison both the King and the Dauphin. The
police set inquiries on foot, and traced the projected crime to two
persons, Louis Vanens and Robert de la Nurée, the Sieur de Bachimont.
The first of these dabbled openly in love philtres and other unavowable
medicines; and he was also suspected of having poisoned the Duke of
Savoy some years previously. Bachimont was one of his agents. From
this first clue, the police followed the thread of their discoveries,
and brought home to a number of people the charge of preparing and
selling poisons, two of whom were condemned and executed. A still
more important arrest was that of Catherine Deshayes, the wife of one
Voisin or Monvoisin, a jeweller. From this moment the affair assumed
such serious proportions that it was decided to conduct the trial
with closed doors. The authorities constituted a royal tribunal to
sit in private at the Arsenal, and to be known to the public as the
_Chambre Ardente_ or Court of Poisons. La Reynie and another counsellor
presided, and observed extreme caution, but were quite unable to keep
secret the result of their proceedings. It was soon whispered through
Paris that the crime of poisoning had extensive ramifications, and that
many great people, some nearly related to the throne, were compromised
with la Voisin. The names were openly mentioned: a Bourbon prince, the
Comte de Clermont, the Duchesse de Bouillon, the Princesse de Tingry,
one of the Queen's ladies in waiting, and the Marchionesse d'Alluye,
who had been an intimate friend of Fouquet. The Duc de Luxembourg and
others of the highest rank were consigned to the Bastile. Yet more, the
Comtesse de Soissons, the proudest of Cardinal Mazarin's nieces and one
of the first of the King's favorites, had, by his special grace, been
warned to fly from Paris to escape imprisonment.
No such favor was shown to others. Louis XIV sternly bade La Reynie
to spare no one else, to let justice take its course strictly and
expose everything; the safety of the public demanded it, and the
hideous evil must be extirpated in its very root. There was to be no
distinction of persons or of sex in vindicating the law. Such severity
was indeed necessary. Although the King wished all the documents in
the case to be carefully destroyed, some have been preserved. They
exhibit the widespread infamy and almost immeasurable guilt of the
criminals. Colbert stigmatised the facts as "things too execrable to
be put on paper; amounting to sacrilege, profanity and abomination."
The very basest aims inspired the criminals to seek the King's favor;
disappointed beauties would have poisoned their rivals and replaced
them in the King's affections. The Comtesse de Soissons's would-be
victim was the beautiful La Vallière, and Madame de Montespan was
suspected of desiring to remove Mdlle. de Fontanges. Madame La Féron
attempted the life of her husband, a president of Parliament. The Duc
de Luxembourg was accused of poisoning his duchess. M. de Feuquières
invited la Voisin to get rid of the uncle and guardian of an heiress
he wished to marry. The end of these protracted proceedings was the
inevitable retribution that waited on their crimes. Two hundred and
forty-six persons had been brought to trial, of whom thirty-six went
to the scaffold, after enduring torture, ordinary and extraordinary.
Of the rest, some were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, some to
banishment, some to the galleys for life. Among those who suffered the
extreme penalty were la Voisin, La Vigouroux, Madame de Carada, several
priests and Sieur Maillard, who was charged with attempting to poison
Colbert and the King himself. The Bastile, Vincennes and every State
prison were crowded with the poisoners, and for years the registers of
castles and fortresses contained the names of inmates committed by the
_Chambre Ardente_ of the Arsenal.
The edict which dissolved this special tribunal laid down stringent
laws to protect the public against future poisoning. A clean sweep
was made of the charlatans, the pretended magicians who came from
abroad and imposed upon the credulity of the French people, who united
sacrilege and impious practices with the manufacture and distribution
of noxious drugs. Several clauses in the edict dealt with poisons,
describing their action and effect,--in some cases instantaneous, in
others slow, gradually undermining health and originating mysterious
maladies, that proved fatal in the end. The sale of deleterious
substances was strictly regulated, such as arsenic and corrosive
sublimate, and the use of poisonous vermin, "snakes, vipers and frogs,"
in medical prescriptions was forbidden.
A few words more as to the Comtesse de Soissons, who was suffered
to fly from France, but could find no resting place. Her reputation
preceded her, and she was refused admittance into Antwerp. In Flanders
she ingratiated herself with the Duke of Parma, and lived under his
protection for several years. Finally she appeared in Madrid, and was
received at court. Then the young Queen of Spain died suddenly with
all the symptoms of poisoning, and Madame de Soissons was immediately
suspected, for unexpected and mysterious deaths always followed in her
trail. She was driven from the country, and died a wanderer in great
poverty.
No account of the means of repression of those days in France would be
complete without including the galleys,--the system of enforced labor
at the oars, practised for many centuries by all the Mediterranean
nations, and dating back to classical times. These ancient warships,
making at best but six miles an hour by human effort under the lash,
are in strong contrast with the modern ironclad impelled by steam. But
the Venetians and the Genoese owned fine fleets of galleys and won
signal naval victories with them. France long desired to rival these
powers, and Henry III, when returning from Poland to mount the French
throne, paused at Venice to visit the arsenal and see the warships in
process of construction. At that time France had thirty galleys afloat,
twenty-six of the highest order and worked by convicts (_galeriens_).
This number was not always maintained, and in 1662 Colbert, bidding for
sea power and striving hard to add to the French navy, ordered six new
ships to be laid down at Marseilles, and sought to buy a number, all
standing, from the Republic of Genoa and the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
These efforts were crowned with success. In 1670 there were twenty
galleys under the French flag, and Colbert wrote the intendant at
Marseilles that his Master, Louis XIV, was eager to possess one royal
ship which would outvie any hitherto launched on the seas. The increase
continued, and in 1677 the fleet numbered thirty, rising to forty-two
by the end of the century.
It was not enough to build the ships; the difficulty was to man them.
The custom of sending condemned convicts to ply the oar was ancient,
and dated back to the reign of Charles VII. But it was little used
until Francis I desired to strengthen his navy, and he ordered
parliaments and tribunals to consign to the galleys all able-bodied
offenders who deserved death and had been condemned to bodily
penalties, whatsoever crimes they had committed. The supply of this
personnel was precarious, and Colbert wrote to the judges to be more
severe with their sentences, and to inflict the galleys in preference
to death, a commutation likely to be welcome to the culprit. But some
of the parliaments demurred. That of Dijon called it changing the
law, and the President, protesting, asked for new ordinances. Colbert
put the objection aside arbitrarily. He increased the pressure on the
courts and dealt sharply with the keepers of local gaols, who did not
use sufficient promptness in sending on their quotas of convicts to
Marseilles and Toulon. Many escapes from the chain were made by the
way, so carelessly conducted was the transfer.
This "chain," a disgrace to humanity, was employed in France till quite
within our own day. The wretched convicts made their long pilgrimage
on foot from all parts of the country to the southern coast. They
were chained together in gangs and marched painfully in all weathers,
mile after mile, along their weary road under military escort. No
arrangements were made for them by the way. They were fed on any coarse
food that could be picked up, and were lodged for the night in sheds
and stables if any could be found; if not, under the sky. Death took
its toll of them ere they reached their destination. They were a scarce
commodity and yet no measures were adopted to preserve their health and
strength. The ministers in Paris were continually urging the presidents
of parliaments to augment the supplies of the condemned, and were told
that the system was in fault, that numbers died in their miserable
cells waiting removal, and many made their escape on the journey.
Still the demands of the galleys were insatiable, and many contrivances
were adopted to reinforce the crews. Colbert desired to send to them
all vagabonds, all sturdy beggars, smugglers and men without visible
means of support, but a change in the law was required and the
authorities for a time shrank from it. Another expedient was to hire
_forcats_ from the Duke of Savoy, who had no warships. Turkish and
Russian slaves were purchased to work the oars, and Negroes from the
Guinea coast. As a measure of retaliation against Spain, prisoners of
war of that nation were treated as galley slaves, a custom abhorrent
to fair usage. It was carried so far as to include the Red Indians,
Iroquois, captured in Canada in the fierce war then in progress.
Numbers were taken by unworthy stratagem and passed over to France, and
the result was an embittered contest, which endured for four years.
A fresh device was to seek volunteers. These "bonne-voglies," or
"bonivoglios," the Italian form most commonly used, were so called
because they contracted of their own free will to accept service in
the galleys, to live the wretched life of the galley slave, to submit
to all his hardships, meagre fare and cruel usage, to be chained to
the oar, and driven to labor under the ready lash of the overseers.
These free _forcats_ soon claimed greater consideration, and it was
necessary to treat them more leniently and in a way injurious to
discipline in the opinion of the captains and intendants. The convicts
were more submissive and more laborious, and still the authorities
sought to multiply them. A more disgraceful system than any of these
already mentioned was now practised,--that of illegal detention long
after the sentence had expired. By an old ordinance, any captain who
thus detained a convict was liable to instant dismissal. Other laws,
however, fixed a minimum term of ten years' detention, what though the
original sentence was considerable. Under Louis XIII it was ruled that
six years should be the lowest term, on the ground that during the two
first years a galley slave was useless on account of weak physique and
want of skill in rowing. Later a good Bishop of Marseilles pleaded the
cause of convicts who had endured a term of twice or three times their
first sentence. A case was quoted in which _thirty-four_, convicted
between 1652 and 1660, and sentenced to two, three or four years, were
still languishing in chains in 1674. An official document of that
year gives the names of twenty who had served fifteen to twenty years
beyond their sentence. The intendant of the galleys at Marseilles
reports in 1679, that on examining the registers he had found a certain
soldier still in custody who was sentenced by a military court in
1660 to five years, and who had therefore endured fourteen. Again, a
man named Caneau was sentenced in 1605 to two years and was still in
confinement twelve years later. True it was open to the _galerien_ to
buy a substitute, a Turkish or other "bonivoglio," but the price, eight
hundred or one thousand francs, was scarcely within the reach of the
miserable creatures at the _bagnes_.
It is difficult to exaggerate the horrors of the galleys. No wonder
that many preferred suicide or self-mutilation to enduring it! Afloat
or ashore, the convict's condition was wretched in the extreme. On
board ship each individual was chained to his bench, day and night,
and the short length of the chain, as well as the nearness of his
neighbors, limited his movements. His whole clothing consisted of
a single loose blouse of coarse red canvas, with neither shoes nor
stockings and little underlinen. His diet was of brown beans cooked in
a little oil, black bread and a morsel of bacon. Personal cleanliness
was entirely neglected, and all alike suffered from scurvy and were
infested with vermin. Labor was incessant while at sea, and the
overseers, walking on a raised platform, which ran fore and aft between
the benches of rowers, stimulated effort by using their whips upon the
bending backs below them. At times silence was strictly required,--as
when moving to the attack or creeping away from an enemy and the whole
ship's company was gagged with a wooden ball inserted in the mouth. In
the barracks ashore, when the ships were laid up for the winter, the
convicts' lot was somewhat better, for they were not at the mercy of
the elements, and there was no severe labor; but the other conditions,
such as diet, clothing and general discomfort, were the same. Now and
again if any distinguished visitor arrived at the port, it was the
custom to treat them to a cruise in one of the great galleys. The ship
was dressed with all her colors, the convicts were washed clean, and
wore their best red shirts, and they were trained to salute the great
folk who condescended to come on board, by a strange shout of welcome:
"Hou! Hou! Hou!" a cry thrice repeated, resembling the roar of a wild
beast.
The merciless treatment accorded by Louis XIV to the Protestants, who
dared to hold their own religious opinions, will be better realised
when it is stated that great numbers of them were consigned to the
galleys, to serve for years side by side with the worst malefactors,
with savage Iroquois and infidel Turks, and to endure the selfsame
barbarities inflicted on the wretched refuse of mankind. No greater
stain rests upon the memory of a ruler, whom the weak-kneed sycophants
of his age misnamed La Grande Monarque, than this monstrous persecution
of honest, honorable people, who were ready to suffer all rather than
sacrifice liberty of conscience. How deep and ineffaceable is the
stain shall be shown in the next chapter.