was suspected, a slow poison; clear, tasteless, and limpid, like that
spoken of by the Duke of Guise. Upon this evidence, the house was
surrounded by the police, and La Spara and her companions taken into
custody. La Spara, who is described as having been a little ugly old
woman, was put to the torture, but obstinately refused to confess her
guilt. Another of the women, named La Gratiosa, had less firmness, and
laid bare all the secrets of the infernal sisterhood. Taking a confession
extorted by anguish on the rack at its true value (nothing at all), there
is still sufficient evidence to warrant posterity in the belief of their
guilt. They were found guilty, and condemned, according to their degrees
of culpability, to various punishments. La Spara, Gratiosa, and three
young women, who had poisoned their husbands, were hanged together at
Rome. Upwards of thirty women were whipped publicly through the streets;
and several, whose high rank screened them from more degrading punishment,
were banished from the country, and mulcted in heavy fines. In a few
months afterwards, nine women more were hanged for poisoning; and another
bevy, including many young and beautiful girls, were whipped half naked
through the streets of Rome.
This severity did not put a stop to the practice, and jealous women and
avaricious men, anxious to step into the inheritance of fathers, uncles,
or brothers, resorted to poison. As it was quite free from taste, colour,
and smell, it was administered without exciting suspicion. The skilful
vendors compounded it of different degrees of strength, so that the
poisoners had only to say whether they wanted their victims to die in a
week, a month, or six months, and they were suited with corresponding
doses. The vendors were chiefly women, of whom the most celebrated was a
hag named Tophania, who was in this way accessory to the death of upwards
of six hundred persons. This woman appears to have been a dealer in
poisons from her girlhood, and resided first at Palermo and then at
Naples. That entertaining traveller, Father Lebat, has given, in his
letters from Italy, many curious particulars relating to her. When he was
at Civita Vecchia, in 1719, the Viceroy of Naples discovered that poison
was extensively sold in the latter city, and that it went by the name of
_aqueta_, or little-water. On making further inquiry, he ascertained that
Tophania (who was by this time near seventy years of age, and who seems to
have begun her evil courses very soon after the execution of La Spara,)
sent large quantities of it to all parts of Italy in small vials, with the
inscription, "Manna of St. Nicholas of Barri."
The tomb of St. Nicholas of Barri was celebrated throughout Italy. A
miraculous oil was said to ooze from it, which cured nearly all the
maladies that flesh is heir to, provided the recipient made use of it with
the due degree of _faith_. La Tophania artfully gave this name to her
poison to elude the vigilance of the custom-house officers, who, in common
with every body else, had a pious respect for St. Nicholas de Barri and
his wonderful oil.
The poison was similar to that manufactured by La Spara. Hahnemann the
physician, and father of the homoeopathic doctrine, writing upon this
subject, says it was compounded of arsenical neutral salts, occasioning in
the victim a gradual loss of appetite, faintness, gnawing pains in the
stomach, loss of strength, and wasting of the lungs. The Abbé Gagliardi
says, that a few drops of it were generally poured into tea, chocolate, or
soup, and its effects were slow, and almost imperceptible. Garelli,
physician to the Emperor of Austria, in a letter to Hoffmann, says it was
crystallised arsenic, dissolved in a large quantity of water by decoction,
with the addition (for some unexplained purpose) of the herb _cymbalaria_.
The Neapolitans called it _Aqua Toffnina_; and it became notorious all
over Europe under the name of _Aqua Tophania_.
Although this woman carried on her infamous traffic so extensively, it was
extremely difficult to meet with her. She lived in continual dread of
discovery. She constantly changed her name and residence; and pretending
to be a person of great godliness, resided in monasteries for months
together. Whenever she was more than usually apprehensive of detection she
sought ecclesiastical protection. She was soon apprised of the search made
for her by the Viceroy of Naples, and, according to her practice, took
refuge in a monastery. Either the search after her was not very rigid, or
her measures were exceedingly well taken; for she contrived to elude the
vigilance of the authorities for several years. What is still more
extraordinary, as shewing the ramifications of her system, her trade was
still carried on to as great an extent as before. Lebat informs us that
she had so great a sympathy for poor wives who hated their husbands and
wanted to get rid of them, but could not afford to buy her wonderful
_aqua_, that she made them presents of it.
She was not allowed, however, to play at this game for ever; she was at
length discovered in a nunnery, and her retreat cut off. The viceroy made
several representations to the superior to deliver her up, but without
effect. The abbess, supported by the archbishop of the diocese, constantly
refused. The public curiosity was in consequence so much excited at the
additional importance thus thrust upon the criminal, that thousands of
persons visited the nunnery in order to catch a glimpse of her.
The patience of the viceroy appears to have been exhausted by these
delays. Being a man of sense, and not a very zealous Catholic, he
determined that even the Church should not shield a criminal so atrocious.
Setting the privileges of the nunnery at defiance, he sent a troop of
soldiers, who broke over the walls, and carried her away _vi et armis_.
The archbishop, Cardinal Pignatelli, was highly indignant, and threatened
to excommunicate and lay the whole city under interdict. All the inferior
clergy, animated by the _esprit du corps_, took up the question, and so
worked upon the superstitious and bigoted people, that they were ready to
rise in a mass to storm the palace of the viceroy and rescue the prisoner.
These were serious difficulties; but the viceroy was not a man to be
daunted. Indeed, he seems to have acted throughout with a rare union of
astuteness, coolness, and energy. To avoid the evil consequences of the
threatened excommunication, he placed a guard round the palace of the
archbishop, judging that the latter would not be so foolish as to launch
out an anathema which would cause the city to be starved, and himself in
it. The market-people would not have dared to come to the city with
provisions so long as it remained under the ban. There would have been too
much inconvenience to himself and his ghostly brethren in such a measure;
and, as the viceroy anticipated, the good cardinal reserved his thunders
for some other occasion.
Still there was the populace. To quiet their clamour and avert the
impending insurrection, the agents of the government adroitly mingled with
the people, and spread abroad a report that Tophania had poisoned all the
wells and fountains of the city. This was enough. The popular feeling was
turned against her immediately. Those who, but a moment before, had looked
upon her as a saint, now reviled her as a devil, and were as eager for her
punishment as they had before been for her escape. Tophania was then put
to the torture. She confessed the long catalogue of her crimes, and named
all the persons who had employed her. She was shortly afterwards
strangled, and her corpse thrown over the wall into the garden of the
convent from whence she had been taken. This appears to have been done to
conciliate the clergy, by allowing them, at least, the burial of one who
had taken refuge within their precincts.
After her death the mania for poisoning seems to have abated; but we have
yet to see what hold it took upon the French people at a somewhat earlier
period. So rooted had it become in France between the years 1670 and 1680,
that Madame de Sevigné, in one of her letters, expresses her fear that
Frenchman and poisoner would become synonymous terms.
As in Italy, the first notice the government received of the prevalence of
this crime was given by the clergy, to whom females of high rank, and some
among the middle and lower classes, had avowed in the confessional that
they had poisoned their husbands. In consequence of these disclosures, two
Italians, named Exili and Glaser, were arrested, and thrown into the
Bastille, on the charge of compounding and selling the drugs used for
these murders. Glaser died in prison, but Exili remained without trial for
several months; and there, shortly afterwards, he made the acquaintance of
another prisoner, named Sainte Croix, by whose example the crime was still
further disseminated among the French people.
The most notorious of the poisoners that derived their pernicious
knowledge from this man was Madame de Brinvilliers, a young woman
connected both by birth and marriage with some of the noblest families of
France. She seems, from her very earliest years, to have been heartless
and depraved; and, if we may believe her own confession, was steeped in
wickedness ere she had well entered her teens. She was, however, beautiful
and accomplished; and, in the eye of the world, seemed exemplary and kind.
Guyot de Pitaval, in the _Causes Célèbres_, and Madame de Sevigné, in her
letters, represent her as mild and agreeable in her manners, and offering
no traces on her countenance of the evil soul within. She was married in
1651 to the Marquis de Brinvilliers, with whom she lived unhappily for
some years. He was a loose, dissipated character, and was the means of
introducing Sainte Croix to his wife, a man who cast a blight upon her
life, and dragged her on from crime to crime, till her offences became so
great that the mind shudders to dwell upon them. For this man she
conceived a guilty passion, to gratify which she plunged at once into the
gulf of sin. She was drawn to its most loathsome depths ere retribution
overtook her.
She had as yet shewn a fair outside to the world, and found but little
difficulty in effecting a legal separation from her husband, who had not
the art to conceal his vices. The proceeding gave great offence to her
family. She appears, after this, to have thrown off the mask completely,
and carried on her intrigues so openly with her lover, Sainte Croix, that
her father, M. D'Aubray, scandalised at her conduct, procured a _lettre de
cachet_, and had him imprisoned in the Bastille for a twelvemonth.
[Illustration: THE BASTILLE.]
Sainte Croix, who had been in Italy, was a dabbler in poisons. He knew
something of the secrets of the detestable La Spara, and improved himself
in them from the instructions of Exili, with whom he speedily contracted a
sort of friendship. By him he was shewn how to prepare, not only the
liquid poisons employed in Italy, but that known as _succession powder_,
which afterwards became so celebrated in France. Like his mistress, he
appeared amiable, witty, and intelligent, and shewed no signs to the world
of the two fierce passions, revenge and avarice, which were gnawing at his
heart. Both these passions were to be sated on the unfortunate family of
D'Aubray; his revenge, because they had imprisoned him; and his avarice,
because they were rich. Reckless and extravagant, he was always in want of
money, and he had no one to supply him but Madame de Brinvilliers, whose
own portion was far from sufficient to satisfy his need. Groaning to think
that any impediment should stand between him and wealth, he conceived the
horrid idea of poisoning M. D'Aubray her father, and her two brothers,
that she might inherit the property. Three murders were nothing to such a
villain. He communicated his plan to Madame de Brinvilliers; and she,
without the slightest scruple, agreed to aid him: he undertook to compound
the poisons, and she to administer them. The zeal and alacrity with which
she set to work seem hardly credible. Sainte Croix found her an apt
scholar; and she soon became as expert as himself in the manufacture of
poisons. To try the strength of the first doses, she used to administer
them to dogs, rabbits, and pigeons. Afterwards, wishing to be more certain
of their effects, she went round to the hospitals, and administered them
to the sick poor in the soups which she brought in apparent charity.[39]
None of the poisons were intended to kill at the first dose; so that she
could try them once upon an individual without fear of murder. She tried
the same atrocious experiment upon the guests at her father's table, by
poisoning a pigeon-pie! To be more certain still, she next poisoned
herself! When convinced by this desperate essay of the potency of the
draught, she procured an antidote from Sainte Croix, and all doubts being
removed, commenced operations upon her grey-headed father. She
administered the first dose with her own hands, in his chocolate. The
poison worked well. The old man was taken ill, and his daughter,
apparently full of tenderness and anxiety, watched by his bedside. The
next day she gave him some broth, which she recommended as highly
nourishing. This also was poisoned. In this manner she gradually wore out
his frame, and in less than ten days he was a corpse! His death seemed so
much the result of disease, that no suspicions were excited.
[39] This is denied by Voltaire in his _Age of Louis XIV._; but he
does not state for what reason. His words are, "Il est faux
qu'elle eut essayé ses poisons dans les hôpitaux, comme le
disait le peuple, et comme il est écrit dans les _Causes
Célèbres_, ouvrage d'un avocat sans cause et fait pour le
peuple."
When the two brothers arrived from the provinces to render the last sad
duties to their sire, they found their sister as grieved, to all outward
appearance, as even filial affection could desire: but the young men only
came to perish. They stood between Sainte Croix and the already
half-clutched gold, and their doom was sealed. A man, named La Chaussée,
was hired by Sainte Croix to aid in administering the poisons; and, in
less than six weeks time, they had both gone to their long home.
Suspicion was now excited; but so cautiously had all been done, that it
found no one upon whom to attach itself. The marquise had a sister, and
she was entitled, by the death of her relatives, to half the property.
Less than the whole would not satisfy Sainte Croix, and he determined that
she should die the same death as her father and brothers. She was too
distrustful, however; and, by quitting Paris, she escaped the destruction
that was lurking for her.
The marquise had undertaken these murders to please her lover. She was now
anxious to perpetrate another on her own account. She wished to marry
Sainte Croix; but, though separated from her husband, she was not
divorced. She thought it would be easier to poison him than to apply to
the tribunals for a divorce, which might, perhaps, be refused. But Sainte
Croix had no longer any love for his guilty instrument. Bad men do not
admire others who are as bad as themselves. Though a villain himself, he
had no desire to marry one, and was not at all anxious for the death of
the marquis. He seemed, however, to enter into the plot, and supplied her
with poison for her husband; but he took care to provide a remedy. La
Brinvilliers poisoned him one day, and Sainte Croix gave him an antidote
the next. In this manner he was buffeted about between them for some time,
and finally escaped, with a ruined constitution and a broken heart.
But the day of retribution was at hand, and a terrible mischance brought
the murders to light. The nature of the poisons compounded by Sainte Croix
was so deadly, that, when working in his laboratory, he was obliged to
wear a mask, to preserve himself from suffocation. One day, the mask
slipped off, and the miserable wretch perished in his crimes. His corpse
was found, on the following morning, in the obscure lodging where he had
fitted up his laboratory. As he appeared to be without friends or
relatives, the police took possession of his effects. Among other things,
was found a small box, to which was affixed the following singular
document:
"I humbly beg, that those into whose hands this box may fall, will do me
the favour to deliver it into the hands only of the Marchioness de
Brinvilliers, who resides in the Rue Neuve St. Paul, as every thing it
contains concerns her, and belongs to her alone; and as, besides, there is
nothing in it that can be of use to any person but her. In case she shall
be dead before me, it is my wish that it be burned, with every thing it
contains, without opening or altering any thing. In order that no one may
plead ignorance, I swear by the God that I adore, and by all that is held
most sacred, that I assert nothing but the truth: and if my intentions,
just and reasonable as they are, be thwarted in this point by any persons,
I charge their consciences with it, both in this world and that which is
to come, in order that I may unload mine. I protest that this is my last
will. Done at Paris, May 25, 1672. (Signed) SAINTE CROIX."
This earnest solicitation, instead of insuring respect, as was intended,
excited curiosity. The box was opened, and found to contain some papers,
and several vials and powders. The latter were handed to a chemist for
analysis, and the documents were retained by the police, and opened. Among
them was found a promissory note of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, for
thirty thousand francs, to the order of Sainte Croix. The other papers
were of greater importance, as they implicated both her and her servant,
La Chaussée, in the recent murders. As soon as she was informed of the
death of Sainte Croix, she made an attempt to gain possession of his
papers and the box; but, being refused, she saw that there was no time to
be lost, and immediately quitted. Next morning the police were on her
trail; but she succeeded in escaping to England. La Chaussée was not so
fortunate. Altogether ignorant of the fatal mischance which had brought
his villanies to light, he did not dream of danger. He was arrested and
brought to trial: being put to the torture, he confessed that he had
administered poison to the Messieurs d'Aubray, and that he had received a
hundred pistoles, and the promise of an annuity for life, from Sainte
Croix and Madame de Brinvilliers, for the job. He was condemned to be
broken alive on the wheel, and the marchioness was, by default, sentenced
to be beheaded. He was executed accordingly, in March 1673, on the Place
de Grève, in Paris.
La Brinvilliers appears to have resided for nearly three years in England.
Early in 1676, thinking that the rigour of pursuit was over, and that she
might venture to return to the Continent, she proceeded secretly to Liège.
Notwithstanding her care, the French authorities were soon apprised of her
return; and arrangements were promptly made with the municipality of that
city to permit the agents of the French police to arrest her within the
limits of their jurisdiction. Desgrais, an officer of the _maréchaussée_,
accordingly left Paris for that purpose. On his arrival in Liège, he found
that she had sought shelter within the walls of a convent. Here the arm of
the law, long as it is said to be, could not reach her: but Desgrais was
not a man to be baffled, and he resorted to stratagem to accomplish what
force could not. Having disguised himself as a priest, he sought admission
to the convent, and obtained an interview with La Brinvilliers. He said,
that being a Frenchman, and passing through Liège, he could not leave that
city without paying a visit to a lady whose beauty and misfortunes were so
celebrated. Her vanity was flattered by the compliment. Desgrais saw, to
use a vulgar but forcible expression, "that he had got on the blind side
of her;" and he adroitly continued to pour out the language of love and
admiration till the deluded marchioness was thrown completely off her
guard. She agreed, without much solicitation, to meet him outside the
walls of the convent, where their amorous intrigue might be carried on
more conveniently than within. Faithful to her appointment with her
supposed new lover, she came, and found herself, not in the embrace of a
gallant, but in the custody of a policeman.
Her trial was not long delayed. The proofs against her were abundant. The
dying declaration of La Chaussée would have been alone enough to convict
her; but besides that, there were the mysterious document attached to the
box of St. Croix, her flight from France, and, stronger and more damning
proof than all, a paper, in her own handwriting, found among the effects
of St. Croix, in which she detailed to him the misdeeds of her life, and
spoke of the murder of her father and brothers in terms that left no doubt
of her guilt. During the trial, all Paris was in commotion. La
Brinvilliers was the only subject of conversation. All the details of her
crimes were published, and greedily devoured; and the idea of secret
poisoning first put into the heads of hundreds, who afterwards became
guilty of it.
On the 16th of July, 1676, the Superior Criminal Court of Paris pronounced
a verdict of guilty against her, for the murder of her father and
brothers, and the attempt upon the life of her sister. She was condemned
to be drawn on a hurdle, with her feet bare, a rope about her neck, and a
burning torch in her hand, to the great entrance of the cathedral of Notre
Dame, where she was to make the _amende honorable_ in sight of all the
people; to be taken from thence to the Place de Grève, and there to be
beheaded. Her body was afterwards to be burned, and her ashes scattered to
the winds.
After her sentence, she made a full confession of her guilt. She seems to
have looked upon death without fear; but it was recklessness, not courage,
that supported her. Madame de Sevigné says, that when on the hurdle, on
her way to the scaffold, she entreated her confessor to exert his
influence with the executioner to place himself next to her, that his body
might hide from her view "that scoundrel Desgrais, who had entrapped her."
She also asked the ladies, who had been drawn to their windows to witness
the procession, what they were looking at? adding, "a pretty sight you
have come to see, truly!" She laughed when on the scaffold, dying as she
had lived, impenitent and heartless. On the morrow, the populace came in
crowds to collect her ashes to preserve them as relics. She was regarded
as a martyred saint, and her ashes were supposed to be endowed, by divine
grace, with the power of curing all diseases. Popular folly has often
canonised persons whose pretensions to sanctity were extremely equivocal;
but the disgusting folly of the multitude, in this instance, has never
been surpassed.
Before her death, proceedings were instituted against M. de Penautier,
treasurer of the province of Languedoc, and receiver-general for the
clergy, who was accused by a lady, named St. Laurent, of having poisoned
her husband, the late receiver-general, in order to obtain his
appointment. The circumstances of this case were never divulged, and the
greatest influence was exerted to prevent it from going to trial. He was
known to have been intimate with Sainte Croix and Madame de Brinvilliers,
and was thought to have procured his poisons from them. The latter,
however, refused to say any thing which might implicate him. The inquiry
was eventually stifled, after Penautier had been several months in the
Bastille.
The Cardinal de Bonzy was accused by the gossips of the day of being an
accomplice of Penautier. The cardinal's estates were burdened with the
payment of several heavy annuities; but, about the time that poisoning
became so fashionable, all the annuitants died off, one after the other.
The cardinal, in talking of these annuitants, afterwards used to say,
"Thanks to my star, I have outlived them all!" A wit, seeing him and
Penautier riding in the same carriage, cried out, in allusion to this
expression, "There go the Cardinal de Bonzy and his _star_!"