Angélique scarcely noticed her brother, except to bid him good-night
when she left him in the vestibule of the mansion. Gathering her gay
robes in her jewelled hand, she darted up the broad stairs to her
own apartment, the same in which she had received Le Gardeur on that
memorable night in which she crossed the Rubicon of her fate.
There was a fixedness in her look and a recklessness in her step that
showed anger and determination. It struck Lizette with a sort of awe, so
that, for once, she did not dare to accost her young mistress with her
usual freedom. The maid opened the door and closed it again without
offering a word, waiting in the anteroom until a summons should come
from her mistress.
Lizette observed that she had thrown herself into a fauteuil, after
hastily casting off her mantle, which lay at her feet. Her long hair
hung loose over her shoulders as it parted from all its combs and
fastenings. She held her hands clasped hard across her forehead, and
stared with fixed eyes upon the fire which burned low on the hearth,
flickering in the depths of the antique fireplace, and occasionally
sending a flash through the room which lit up the pictures on the wall,
seeming to give them life and movement, as if they, too, would gladly
have tempted Angélique to better thoughts. But she noticed them not, and
would not at that moment have endured to look at them.
Angélique had forbidden the lamps to be lighted: it suited her mood to
sit in the half-obscure room, and in truth her thoughts were hard and
cruel, fit only to be brooded over in darkness and alone. She clenched
her hands, and raising them above her head, muttered an oath between her
teeth, exclaiming,--
“Par Dieu! It must be done! It must be done!” She stopped suddenly when
she had said that. “What must be done?” asked she sharply of herself,
and laughed a mocking laugh. “He gave me her life! He did not mean it!
No! The Intendant was treating me like a petted child. He offered me her
life while he refused me a lettre de cachet! The gift was only upon his
false lips, not in his heart! But Bigot shall keep that promise in spite
of himself. There is no other way,--none!”
This was a new world Angélique suddenly found herself in. A world of
guilty thoughts and unresisted temptations, a chaotic world where black,
unscalable rocks, like a circle of the Inferno, hemmed her in on every
side, while devils whispered in her ears the words which gave shape
and substance to her secret wishes for the death of her “rival,” as she
regarded the poor sick girl at Beaumanoir.
How was she to accomplish it? To one unpractised in actual deeds of
wickedness, it was a question not easy to be answered, and a thousand
frightful forms of evil, stalking shapes of death came and went before
her imagination, and she clutched first at one, then at another of
the dire suggestions that came in crowds that overwhelmed her power of
choice.
In despair to find an answer to the question, “What must be done?” she
rose suddenly and rang the bell. The door opened, and the smiling face
and clear eye of Lizette looked in. It was Angélique's last chance, but
it was lost. It was not Lizette she had rung for. Her resolution was
taken.
“My dear mistress!” exclaimed Lizette, “I feared you had fallen asleep.
It is almost day! May I now assist you to undress for bed?” Voluble
Lizette did not always wait to be first spoken to by her mistress.
“No, Lizette, I was not asleep; I do not want to undress; I have much
to do. I have writing to do before I retire; send Fanchon Dodier here.”
Angélique had a forecast that it was necessary to deceive Lizette, who,
without a word, but in no serene humor, went to summon Fanchon to wait
on her mistress.
Fanchon presently came in with a sort of triumph glittering in her black
eye. She had noticed the ill humor of Lizette, but had not the slightest
idea why she had been summoned to wait on Angélique instead of her own
maid. She esteemed it quite an honor, however.
“Fanchon Dodier!” said she, “I have lost my jewels at the ball; I cannot
rest until I find them; you are quicker-witted than Lizette: tell me
what to do to find them, and I will give you a dress fit for a lady.”
Angélique with innate craft knew that her question would bring forth the
hoped-for reply.
Fanchon's eyes dilated with pleasure at such a mark of confidence. “Yes,
my Lady,” replied she, “if I had lost my jewels I should know what to
do. But ladies who can read and write and who have the wisest gentlemen
to give them counsel do not need to seek advice where poor habitan girls
go when in trouble and perplexity.”
“And where is that, Fanchon? Where would you go if in trouble and
perplexity?”
“My Lady, if I had lost all my jewels,”--Fanchon's keen eye noticed that
Angélique had lost none of hers, but she made no remark on it,--“if I
had lost all mine, I should go see my aunt Josephte Dodier. She is the
wisest woman in all St. Valier; if she cannot tell you all you wish to
know, nobody can.”
“What! Dame Josephte Dodier, whom they call La Corriveau? Is she your
aunt?”
Angélique knew very well she was. But it was her cue to pretend
ignorance in order to impose on Fanchon.
“Yes, ill-natured people call her La Corriveau, but she is my aunt,
nevertheless. She is married to my uncle Louis Dodier, but is a lady,
by right of her mother, who came from France, and was once familiar with
all the great dames of the Court. It was a great secret why her mother
left France and came to St. Valier; but I never knew what it was. People
used to shake their heads and cross themselves when speaking of her, as
they do now when speaking of Aunt Josephte, whom they call La Corriveau;
but they tremble when she looks at them with her black, evil eye,
as they call it. She is a terrible woman, is Aunt Josephte! but oh,
Mademoiselle, she can tell you things past, present, and to come! If she
rails at the world, it is because she knows every wicked thing that is
done in it, and the world rails at her in return; but people are afraid
of her all the same.”
“But is it not wicked? Is it not forbidden by the Church to consult a
woman like her, a sorcière?” Angélique took a sort of perverse merit to
herself for arguing against her own resolution.
“Yes, my Lady! but although forbidden by the Church, the girls all
consult her, nevertheless, in their losses and crosses; and many of the
men, too, for she does know what is to happen, and how to do things,
does Aunt Josephte. If the clergy cannot tell a poor girl about her
sweetheart, and how to keep him in hand, why should she not go and
consult La Corriveau, who can?”
“Fanchon, I would not care to consult your aunt. People would laugh at
my consulting La Corriveau, like a simple habitan girl; what would the
world say?”
“But the world need not know, my Lady. Aunt Josephte knows secrets,
they say, that would ruin, burn, and hang half the ladies of Paris. She
learned those terrible secrets from her mother, but she keeps them safe
in those close lips of hers. Not the faintest whisper of one of them has
ever been heard by her nearest neighbor. Indeed, she has no gossips, and
makes no friends, and wants none. Aunt Josephte is a safe confidante, my
Lady, if you wish to consult her.”
“I have heard she is clever, supernatural, terrible, this aunt of
yours! But I could not go to St. Valier for advice and help; I could not
conceal my movements like a plain habitan girl.”
“No, my Lady,” continued Fanchon, “it is not fitting that you should go
to Aunt Josephte. I will bring Aunt Josephte here to you. She will be
charmed to come to the city and serve a lady like you.”
“Well,--no! it is not well, but ill! but I want to recover my jewels, so
go for your aunt, and bring her back with you. And mind, Fanchon!” said
Angélique, lifting a warning finger, “if you utter one word of your
errand to man or beast, or to the very trees of the wayside, I will cut
out your tongue, Fanchon Dodier!”
Fanchon trembled and grew pale at the fierce look of her mistress. “I
will go, my Lady, and I will keep silent as a fish!” faltered the maid.
“Shall I go immediately?”
“Immediately if you will! It is almost day, and you have far to go. I
will send old Gujon the butler to order an Indian canoe for you. I will
not have Canadian boatmen to row you to St. Valier: they would talk you
out of all your errand before you were half-way there. You shall go
to St. Valier by water, and return with La Corriveau by land. Do you
understand? Bring her in to-night, and not before midnight. I will leave
the door ajar for you to enter without noise; you will show her at once
to my apartment, Fanchon! Be wary, and do not delay, and say not a word
to mortal!”
“I will not, my Lady. Not a mouse shall hear us come in!” replied
Fanchon, quite proud now of the secret understanding between herself and
her mistress.
“And again mind that loose tongue of yours! Remember, Fanchon, I will
cut it out as sure as you live if you betray me.”
“Yes, my Lady!” Fanchon's tongue felt somewhat paralyzed under the
threat of Angélique, and she bit it painfully as if to remind it of its
duty.
“You may go now,” said Angélique. “Here is money for you. Give this
piece of gold to La Corriveau as an earnest that I want her. The
canotiers of the St. Lawrence will also require double fare for bringing
La Corriveau over the ferry.”
“No, they rarely venture to charge her anything at all, my Lady,”
replied Fanchon; “to be sure it is not for love, but they are afraid
of her. And yet Antoine La Chance, the boatman, says she is equal to a
Bishop for stirring up piety; and more Ave Marias are repeated when she
is in his boat, than are said by the whole parish on Sunday.”
“I ought to say my Ave Marias, too!” replied Angélique, as Fanchon left
the apartment, “but my mouth is parched and burns up the words of prayer
like a furnace; but that is nothing to the fire in my heart! That girl,
Fanchon Dodier, is not to be trusted, but I have no other messenger
to send for La Corriveau. I must be wary with her, too, and make
her suggest the thing I would have done. My Lady of Beaumanoir!” she
apostrophized in a hard monotone, “your fate does not depend on the
Intendant, as you fondly imagine. Better had he issued the lettre de
cachet than for you to fall into the hands of La Corriveau!”
Daylight now shot into the windows, and the bright rays of the rising
sun streamed full in the face of Angélique. She saw herself reflected in
the large Venetian mirror. Her countenance looked pale, stern, and fixed
as marble. The fire in her eyes startled her with its unearthly glow.
She trembled and turned away from her mirror, and crept to her couch
like a guilty thing, with a feeling as if she was old, haggard, and
doomed to shame for the sake of this Intendant, who cared not for her,
or he would not have driven her to such desperate and wicked courses as
never fell to the lot of a woman before.
“C'est sa faute! C'est sa faute!” exclaimed she, clasping her hands
passionately together. “If she dies, it is his fault, not mine! I prayed
him to banish her, and he would not! C'est sa faute! C'est sa faute!”
Repeating these words Angélique fell into a feverish slumber, broken by
frightful dreams which lasted far on into the day.
The long reign of Louis XIV., full of glories and misfortunes for
France, was marked towards its close by a portentous sign indicative of
corrupt manners and a falling state. Among these, the crimes of secret
poisoning suddenly attained a magnitude which filled the whole nation
with terror and alarm.
Antonio Exili, an Italian, like many other alchemists of that period,
had spent years in search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir
of life. His vain experiments to transmute the baser metals into gold
reduced him to poverty and want. His quest after these secrets had led
him to study deeply the nature and composition of poisons and their
antidotes. He had visited the great universities and other schools of
the continent, finishing his scientific studies under a famous German
chemist named Glaser. But the terrible secret of the agua tofana and of
the poudre de succession, Exili learned from Beatrice Spara, a Sicilian,
with whom he had a liaison, one of those inscrutable beings of the
gentle sex whose lust for pleasure or power is only equalled by the
atrocities they are willing to perpetrate upon all who stand in the way
of their desires or their ambition.
To Beatrice Spara, the secret of this subtle preparation had come
down like an evil inheritance from the ancient Candidas and Saganas of
imperial Rome. In the proud palaces of the Borgias, of the Orsinis, the
Scaligers, the Borroméos, the art of poisoning was preserved among the
last resorts of Machiavellian statecraft; and not only in palaces, but
in streets of Italian cities, in solitary towers and dark recesses of
the Apennines, were still to be found the lost children of science,
skilful compounders of poisons, at once fatal and subtle in their
operation,--poisons which left not the least trace of their presence in
the bodies of their victims, but put on the appearance of other and more
natural causes of death.
Exili, to escape the vengeance of Beatrice Spara, to whom he had proved
a faithless lover, fled from Naples, and brought his deadly knowledge
to Paris, where he soon found congenial spirits to work with him in
preparing the deadly poudre de succession, and the colorless drops of
the aqua tofana.
With all his crafty caution, Exili fell at last under suspicion of
the police for tampering in these forbidden arts. He was arrested, and
thrown into the Bastile, where he became the occupant of the same cell
with Gaudin de St. Croix, a young nobleman of the Court, the lover of
the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, for an intrigue with whom the Count
had been imprisoned. St. Croix learned from Exili, in the Bastile, the
secret of the poudre de succession.
The two men were at last liberated for want of proof of the charges
against them. St. Croix set up a laboratory in his own house, and at
once proceeded to experiment upon the terrible secrets learned from
Exili, and which he revealed to his fair, frail mistress, who, mad to
make herself his wife, saw in these a means to remove every obstacle out
of the way. She poisoned her husband, her father, her brother, and at
last, carried away by a mania for murder, administered on all sides the
fatal poudre de succession, which brought death to house, palace, and
hospital, and filled the capital, nay, the whole kingdom, with suspicion
and terror.
This fatal poison history describes as either a light and almost
impalpable powder, tasteless, colorless, and inodorous, or a liquid
clear as a dewdrop, when in the form of the aqua tofana. It was capable
of causing death either instantaneously or by slow and lingering decline
at the end of a definite number of days, weeks, or even months, as was
desired. Death was not less sure because deferred, and it could be made
to assume the appearance of dumb paralysis, wasting atrophy, or burning
fever, at the discretion of the compounder of the fatal poison.
The ordinary effect of the aqua tofana was immediate death. The poudre
de succession was more slow in killing. It produced in its pure form a
burning heat, like that of a fiery furnace in the chest, the flames of
which, as they consumed the patient, darted out of his eyes, the only
part of the body which seemed to be alive, while the rest was little
more than a dead corpse.
Upon the introduction of this terrible poison into France, Death, like
an invisible spirit of evil, glided silently about the kingdom, creeping
into the closest family circles, seizing everywhere on its helpless
victims. The nearest and dearest relationships of life were no longer
the safe guardians of the domestic hearth. The man who to-day appeared
in the glow of health dropped to-morrow and died the next day. No skill
of the physician was able to save him, or to detect the true cause of
his death, attributing it usually to the false appearances of disease
which it was made to assume.
The victims of the poudre de succession were counted by thousands.
The possession of wealth, a lucrative office, a fair young wife, or a
coveted husband, were sufficient reasons for sudden death to cut off
the holder of these envied blessings. A terrible mistrust pervaded
all classes of society. The husband trembled before his wife, the wife
before her husband, father and son, brother and sister,--kindred and
friends, of all degrees, looked askance and with suspicious eyes upon
one another.
In Paris the terror lasted long. Society was for a while broken up by
cruel suspicions. The meat upon the table remained uneaten, the wine
undrank, men and women procured their own provisions in the market, and
cooked and ate them in their own apartments. Yet was every precaution in
vain. The fatal dust scattered upon the pillow, or a bouquet sprinkled
with the aqua tofana, looking bright and innocent as God's dew upon the
flowers, transmitted death without a warning of danger. Nay, to crown
all summit of wickedness, the bread in the hospitals of the sick, the
meagre tables of the convent, the consecrated host administered by the
priest, and the sacramental wine which he drank himself, all in turn
were poisoned, polluted, damned, by the unseen presence of the manna of
St. Nicholas, as the populace mockingly called the poudre de succession.
The Court took the alarm when a gilded vial of the aqua tofana was
found one day upon the table of the Duchesse de la Vallière, having
been placed there by the hand of some secret rival, in order to
cast suspicion upon the unhappy Louise, and hasten her fall, already
approaching.
The star of Montespan was rising bright in the east, and that of La
Vallière was setting in clouds and darkness in the west. But the King
never distrusted for a moment the truth of La Vallière, the only woman
who ever loved him for his own sake, and he knew it even while he
allowed her to be supplanted by another infinitely less worthy--one
whose hour of triumph came when she saw the broken-hearted Louise throw
aside the velvet and brocade of the Court and put on the sackcloth of
the barefooted and repentant Carmelite.
The King burned with indignation at the insult offered to his mistress,
and was still more alarmed to find the new mysterious death creeping
into the corridors of his palace. He hastily constituted the terrible
Chambre Ardente, a court of supreme criminal jurisdiction, and
commissioned it to search out, try, and burn, without appeal, all
poisoners and secret assassins in the kingdom.
La Regnie, a man of Rhadamanthean justice, as hard of heart as he was
subtle and suspicious, was long baffled, and to his unutterable rage,
set at naught by the indefatigable poisoners who kept all France awake
on its pillows.
History records how Gaudin de St. Croix, the disciple of Exili, while
working in his secret laboratory at the sublimation of the deadly
poison, accidentally dropped the mask of glass which protected his face.
He inhaled the noxious fumes and fell dead by the side of his crucibles.
This event gave Desgrais, captain of the police of Paris, a clue to the
horrors which had so long baffled his pursuit.
The correspondence of St. Croix was seized. His connection with
the Marchioness de Brinvilliers and his relations with Exili were
discovered. Exili was thrown a second time into the Bastile. The
Marchioness was arrested, and put upon her trial before the Chambre
Ardente, where, as recorded in the narrative of her confessor, Pirol,
her ravishing beauty of feature, blue eyes, snow-white skin, and gentle
demeanor won a strong sympathy from the fickle populace of Paris, in
whose eyes her charms of person and manner pleaded hard to extenuate her
unparalleled crimes.
But no power of beauty or fascination of look could move the stern La
Regnie from his judgment. She was pronounced guilty of the death of her
husband, and sentenced first to be tortured and then beheaded and her
body burnt on the Place de Grève, a sentence which was carried out to
the letter. The ashes of the fairest and most wicked dame of the Court
of Lous XIV. were scattered to the four corners of the city which had
been the scene of her unparalleled crimes. The arch-poisoner Exili was
also tried, and condemned to be burnt. The tumbril that bore him to
execution was stopped on its way by the furious rabble, and he was torn
in pieces by them.
For a short time the kingdom breathed freely in fancied security; but
soon the epidemic of sudden as well as lingering deaths from poison
broke out again on all sides. The fatal tree of the knowledge of evil,
seemingly cut down with Exili and St. Croix, had sprouted afresh, like a
upas that could not be destroyed.
The poisoners became more numerous than ever. Following the track of
St. Croix and La Brinvilliers, they carried on the war against
humanity without relaxation. Chief of these was a reputed witch and
fortune-teller named La Voisin, who had studied the infernal secret
under Exili and borne a daughter to the false Italian.
With La Voisin were associated two priests, Le Sage and Le Vigoureux,
who lived with her, and assisted her in her necromantic exhibitions,
which were visited, believed in, and richly rewarded by some of the
foremost people of the Court. These necromantic exhibitions were in
reality a cover to darker crimes.
It was long the popular belief in France, that Cardinal Bonzy got from
La Voisin the means of ridding himself of sundry persons who stood
in the way of his ecclesiastical preferment, or to whom he had to pay
pensions in his quality of Archbishop of Narbonne. The Duchesse de
Bouillon and the Countess of Soissons, mother of the famous Prince
Eugene, were also accused of trafficking with that terrible woman,
and were banished from the kingdom in consequence, while a royal duke,
François de Montmorency, was also suspected of dealings with La Voisin.
The Chambre Ardente struck right and left. Desgrais, chief of the
police, by a crafty ruse, penetrated into the secret circle of La
Voisin, and she, with a crowd of associates, perished in the fires of
the Place de Grève. She left an ill-starred daughter, Marie Exili, to
the blank charity of the streets of Paris, and the possession of many of
the frightful secrets of her mother and of her terrible father.
Marie Exili clung to Paris. She grew up beautiful and profligate; she
coined her rare Italian charms, first into gold and velvet, then into
silver and brocade, and at last into copper and rags. When her charms
faded entirely, she began to practise the forbidden arts of her mother
and father, but without their boldness or long impunity.
She was soon suspected, but receiving timely warning of her danger, from
a high patroness at Court, Marie fled to New France in the disguise of
a paysanne, one of a cargo of unmarried women sent out to the colony on
matrimonial venture, as the custom then was, to furnish wives for the
colonists. Her sole possession was an antique cabinet with its contents,
the only remnant saved from the fortune of her father, Exili.
Marie Exili landed in New France, cursing the Old World which she had
left behind, and bringing as bitter a hatred of the New, which received
her without a shadow of suspicion that under her modest peasant's garb
was concealed the daughter and inheritrix of the black arts of Antonio
Exili and of the sorceress La Voisin.
Marie Exili kept her secret well. She played the ingénue to perfection.
Her straight figure and black eyes having drawn a second glance from
the Sieur Corriveau, a rich habitan of St. Valier, who was looking for
a servant among the crowd of paysannes who had just arrived from France,
he could not escape from the power of their fascination.
He took Marie Exili home with him, and installed her in his household,
where his wife soon died of some inexplicable disease which baffled the
knowledge of both the doctor and the curate, the two wisest men in the
parish. The Sieur Corriveau ended his widowhood by marrying Marie Exili,
and soon died himself, leaving his whole fortune and one daughter, the
image of her mother, to Marie.
Marie Exili, ever in dread of the perquisitions of Desgrais, kept very
quiet in her secluded home on the St. Lawrence, guarding her secret with
a life-long apprehension, and but occasionally and in the darkest ways
practising her deadly skill. She found some compensation and relief for
her suppressed passions in the clinging sympathy of her daughter, Marie
Josephte dit La Corriveau, who worshipped all that was evil in her
mother, and in spite of an occasional reluctance, springing from some
maternal instinct, drew from her every secret of her life. She made
herself mistress of the whole formula of poisoning as taught by her
grandfather Exili, and of the arts of sorcery practised by her wicked
grandmother, La Voisin.
As La Corriveau listened to the tale of the burning of her grandmother
on the Place de Grève, her own soul seemed bathed in the flames which
rose from the faggots, and which to her perverted reason appeared as the
fires of cruel injustice, calling for revenge upon the whole race of the
oppressors of her family, as she regarded the punishers of their crimes.
With such a parentage, and such dark secrets brooding in her bosom,
Marie Josephte, or, as she was commonly called, La Corriveau, had
nothing in common with the simple peasantry among whom she lived.
Years passed over her, youth fled, and La Corriveau still sat in her
house, eating her heart out, silent and solitary. After the death of her
mother, some whispers of hidden treasures known only to herself, a
rumor which she had cunningly set afloat, excited the cupidity of Louis
Dodier, a simple habitan of St. Valier, and drew him into a marriage
with her.
It was a barren union. No child followed, with God's grace in its little
hands, to create a mother's feelings and soften the callous heart of La
Corriveau. She cursed her lot that it was so, and her dry bosom became
an arid spot of desert, tenanted by satyrs and dragons, by every evil
passion of a woman without conscience and void of love.
But La Corriveau had inherited the sharp intellect and Italian
dissimulation of Antonio Exili: she was astute enough to throw a veil
of hypocrisy over the evil eyes which shot like a glance of death from
under the thick black eyebrows.
Her craft was equal to her malice. An occasional deed of alms, done not
for charity's sake, but for ostentation; an adroit deal of cards, or a
horoscope cast to flatter a foolish girl; a word of sympathy, hollow
as a water bubble, but colored with iridescent prettiness, averted
suspicion from the darker traits of her character.
If she was hated, she was also feared by her neighbors, and although
the sign of the cross was made upon the chair whereon she had sat in a
neighbor's house, her visits were not unwelcome, and in the manor-house,
as in the cabin of the woodman, La Corriveau was received, consulted,
rewarded, and oftener thanked than cursed, by her witless dupes.
There was something sublime in the satanic pride with which she carried
with her the terrible secrets of her race, which in her own mind made
her the superior of every one around her, and whom she regarded as
living only by her permission or forbearance.
For human love other than as a degraded menial, to make men the slaves
of her mercenary schemes, La Corriveau cared nothing. She never felt
it, never inspired it. She looked down upon all her sex as the filth
of creation and, like herself, incapable of a chaste feeling or a pure
thought. Every better instinct of her nature had gone out like the flame
of a lamp whose oil is exhausted; love of money remained as dregs at
the bottom of her heart. A deep grudge against mankind, and a secret
pleasure in the misfortunes of others, especially of her own sex, were
her ruling passions.
Her mother, Marie Exili, had died in her bed, warning her daughter not
to dabble in the forbidden arts which she had taught her, but to cling
to her husband and live an honest life as the only means of dying a more
hopeful death than her ancestors.
La Corriveau heard much, but heeded little. The blood of Antonio Exili
and of La Voisin beat too vigorously in her veins to be tamed down by
the feeble whispers of a dying woman who had been weak enough to give
way at last. The death of her mother left La Corriveau free to follow
her own will. The Italian subtlety of her race made her secret and
cautious. She had few personal affronts to avenge, and few temptations
in the simple community where she lived to practise more than the
ordinary arts of a rural fortune-teller, keeping in impenetrable shadow
the darker side of her character as a born sorceress and poisoner.
Fanchon Dodier, in obedience to the order of her mistress, started early
in the day to bear the message entrusted to her for La Corriveau. She
did not cross the river and take the king's highway, the rough though
well-travelled road on the south shore which led to St. Valier.
Angélique was crafty enough amid her impulsiveness to see that it were
better for Fanchon to go down by water and return by land: it lessened
observation, and might be important one day to baffle inquiry. La
Corriveau would serve her for money, but for money also she might
betray her. Angélique resolved to secure her silence by making her the
perpetrator of whatever scheme of wickedness she might devise against
the unsuspecting lady of Beaumanoir. As for Fanchon, she need know
nothing more than Angélique told her as to the object of her mission to
her terrible aunt.
In pursuance of this design, Angélique had already sent for a couple of
Indian canoemen to embark Fanchon at the quay of the Friponne and convey
her to St. Valier.
Half-civilized and wholly-demoralized red men were always to be found
on the beach of Stadacona, as they still called the Batture of the St.
Charles, lounging about in blankets, smoking, playing dice, or drinking
pints or quarts,--as fortune favored them, or a passenger wanted
conveyance in their bark canoes, which they managed with a dexterity
unsurpassed by any boatman that ever put oar or paddle in water, salt or
fresh.
These rough fellows were safe and trusty in their profession. Fanchon
knew them slightly, and felt no fear whatever in seating herself upon
the bear skin which carpeted the bottom of their canoe.
They pushed off at once from the shore, with scarcely a word of reply
to her voluble directions and gesticulations as they went speeding their
canoe down the stream. The turning tide bore them lightly on its bosom,
and they chanted a wild, monotonous refrain as their paddles flashed and
dipped alternately in stream and sunshine;
“Ah! ah! Tenaouich tenaga!
Tenaouich tenaga, ouich ka!”
“They are singing about me, no doubt,” said Fanchon to herself. “I do
not care what people say, they cannot be Christians who speak such a
heathenish jargon as that: it is enough to sink the canoe; but I will
repeat my paternosters and my Ave Marias, seeing they will not converse
with me, and I will pray good St. Anne to give me a safe passage to
St. Valier.” In which pious occupation, as the boatmen continued
their savage song without paying her any attention, Fanchon, with many
interruptions of worldly thoughts, spent the rest of the time she was in
the Indian canoe.
Down past the green hills of the south shore the boatmen steadily plied
their paddles, and kept singing their wild Indian chant. The wooded
slopes of Orleans basked in sunshine as they overlooked the broad
channel through which the canoe sped, and long before meridian the
little bark was turned in to shore and pulled up on the beach of St.
Valier.
Fanchon leaped out without assistance, wetting a foot in so doing, which
somewhat discomposed the good humor she had shown during the voyage. Her
Indian boatmen offered her no help, considering that women were made to
serve men and help themselves, and not to be waited upon by them.
“Not that I wanted to touch one of their savage hands,” muttered
Fanchon, “but they might have offered one assistance! Look there,”
continued she, pulling aside her skirt and showing a very trim foot wet
up to the ankle; “they ought to know the difference between their
red squaws and the white girls of the city. If they are not worth
politeness, WE are. But Indians are only fit to kill Christians or be
killed by them; and you might as well courtesy to a bear in the briers
as to an Indian anywhere.”
The boatmen looked at her foot with supreme indifference, and taking out
their pipes, seated themselves on the edge of their canoe, and began to
smoke.
“You may return to the city,” said she, addressing them sharply; “I pray
to the bon Dieu to strike you white;--it is vain to look for manners
from an Indian! I shall remain in St. Valier, and not return with you.”
“Marry me, be my squaw, Ania?” replied one of the boatmen, with a grim
smile; “the bon Dieu will strike out papooses white, and teach them
manners like palefaces.”
“Ugh! not for all the King's money. What! marry a red Indian, and carry
his pack like Fifine Perotte? I would die first! You are bold indeed,
Paul La Crosse, to mention such a thing to me. Go back to the city! I
would not trust myself again in your canoe. It required courage to do
so at all, but Mademoiselle selected you for my boatmen, not I. I wonder
she did so, when the brothers Ballou, and the prettiest fellows in town,
were idle on the Batture.”
“Ania is niece to the old medicine-woman in the stone wigwam at St.
Valier; going to see her, eh?” asked the other boatman, with a slight
display of curiosity.
“Yes, I am going to visit my aunt Dodier; why should I not? She
has crocks of gold buried in the house, I can tell you that, Pierre
Ceinture!”
“Going to get some from La Corriveau, eh? crocks of gold, eh?” said Paul
La Crosse.
“La Corriveau has medicines, too! get some, eh?” asked Pierre Ceinture.
“I am going neither for gold nor medicines, but to see my aunt, if it
concerns you to know, Pierre Ceinture! which it does not!”
“Mademoiselle des Meloises pay her to go, eh? not going back ever, eh?”
asked the other Indian.
“Mind your own affairs, Paul La Crosse, and I will mind mine!
Mademoiselle des Meloises paid you to bring me to St. Valier, not to ask
me impertinences. That is enough for you! Here is your fare; now you
can return to the Sault au Matelot, and drink yourselves blind with the
money!”
“Very good, that!” replied the Indian. “I like to drink myself blind,
will do it to-night! Like to see me, eh? Better that than go see La
Corriveau! The habitans say she talks with the Devil, and makes the
sickness settle like a fog upon the wigwams of the red men. They say she
can make palefaces die by looking at them! But Indians are too hard
to kill with a look! Fire-water and gun and tomahawk, and fever in the
wigwams, only make the Indians die.”
“Good that something can make you die, for your ill manners! look at my
stocking!” replied Fanchon, with warmth. “If I tell La Corriveau what
you say of her there will be trouble in your wigwam, Pierre Ceinture!”
“Do not do that, Ania!” replied the Indian, crossing himself earnestly;
“do not tell La Corriveau, or she will make an image of wax and call it
Pierre Ceinture, and she will melt it away before a slow fire, and as it
melts my flesh and bones will melt away, too! Do not tell her, Fanchon
Dodier!” The Indian had picked up this piece of superstition from the
white habitans, and, like them, thoroughly believed in the supernatural
powers of La Corriveau.
“Well, leave me! get back to the city, and tell Mademoiselle I arrived
safe at St. Valier,” replied Fanchon, turning to leave them.
The Indians were somewhat taken down by the airs of Fanchon, and they
stood in awe of the far-reaching power of her aunt, from the spell
of whose witchcraft they firmly believed no hiding-place, even in the
deepest woods, could protect them. Merely nodding a farewell to Fanchon,
the Indians silently pushed their canoe into the stream, and, embarking,
returned to the city by the way they came.
A fine breezy upland lay before Fanchon Dodier. Cultivated fields
of corn, and meadows ran down to the shore. A row of white cottages,
forming a loosely connected street, clustered into something like a
village at the point where the parish church stood, at the intersection
of two or three roads, one of which, a narrow green track, but little
worn by the carts of the habitans, led to the stone house of La
Corriveau, the chimney of which was just visible as you lost sight of
the village spire.
In a deep hollow, out of sight of the village church, almost out of
hearing of its little bell, stood the house of La Corriveau, a square,
heavy structure of stone, inconvenient and gloomy, with narrow windows
and an uninviting door. The pine forest touched it on one side, a
brawling stream twisted itself like a live snake half round it on the
other. A plot of green grass, ill kept and deformed, with noxious weeds,
dock, fennel, thistle, and foul stramonium, was surrounded by a rough
wall of loose stones, forming the lawn, such as it was, where, under
a tree, seated in an armchair, was a solitary woman, whom Fanchon
recognized as her aunt, Marie Josephte Dodier, surnamed La Corriveau.
La Corriveau, in feature and person, took after her grand-sire Exili.
She was tall and straight, of a swarthy complexion, black-haired, and
intensely black-eyed. She was not uncomely of feature, nay, had been
handsome, nor was her look at first sight forbidding, especially if she
did not turn upon you those small basilisk eyes of hers, full of fire
and glare as the eyes of a rattlesnake. But truly those thin, cruel lips
of hers never smiled spontaneously, or affected to smile upon you unless
she had an object to gain by assuming a disguise as foreign to her as
light to an angel of darkness.
La Corriveau was dressed in a robe of soft brown stuff, shaped with
a degree of taste and style beyond the garb of her class. Neatness in
dress was the one virtue she had inherited from her mother. Her feet
were small and well-shod, like a lady's, as the envious neighbors used
to say. She never in her life would wear the sabots of the peasant
women, nor go barefoot, as many of them did, about the house. La
Corriveau was vain of her feet, which would have made her fortune, as
she thought with bitterness, anywhere but in St. Valier.
She sat musing in her chair, not noticing the presence of her niece,
who stood for a moment looking and hesitating before accosting her. Her
countenance bore, when she was alone, an expression of malignity which
made Fanchon shudder. A quick, unconscious twitching of the fingers
accompanied her thoughts, as if this weird woman was playing a game of
mora with the evil genius that waited on her. Her grandsire Exili had
the same nervous twitching of his fingers, and the vulgar accused him of
playing at mora with the Devil, who ever accompanied him, they believed.
The lips of La Corriveau moved in unison with her thoughts. She was
giving expression to her habitual contempt for her sex as she crooned
over, in a sufficiently audible voice to reach the ear of Fanchon, a
hateful song of Jean Le Meung on women:
“'Toutes vous êtes, serez ou futes,
De fait ou de volonté putes!'”
“It is not nice to say that, Aunt Marie!” exclaimed Fanchon, coming
forward and embracing La Corriveau, who gave a start on seeing her niece
so unexpectedly before her. “It is not nice, and it is not true!”
“But it is true, Fanchon Dodier! if it be not nice. There is nothing
nice to be said of our sex, except by foolish men! Women know one
another better! But,” continued she, scrutinizing her niece with her
keen black eyes, which seemed to pierce her through and through,
“what ill wind or Satan's errand has brought you to St. Valier to-day,
Fanchon?”
“No ill wind, nor ill errand either, I hope, aunt. I come by command of
my mistress to ask you to go to the city: she is biting her nails off
with impatience to see you on some business.”
“And who is your mistress, who dares to ask La Corriveau to go to the
city at her bidding?”
“Do not be angry, aunt,” replied Fanchon, soothingly. “It was I
counselled her to send for you, and I offered to fetch you. My mistress
is a high lady, who expects to be still higher,--Mademoiselle des
Meloises!
“Mademoiselle Angélique des Meloises,--one hears enough of her! a high
lady indeed! who will be low enough at last! A minx as vain as she is
pretty, who would marry all the men in New France, and kill all the
women, if she could have her way! What in the name of the Sabbat does
she want with La Corriveau?”
“She did not call you names, aunt, and please do not say such things of
her, for you will frighten me away before I tell my errand. Mademoiselle
Angélique sent this piece of gold as earnest-money to prove that she
wants your counsel and advice in an important matter.”
Fanchon untied the corner of her handkerchief, and took from it a broad
shining louis d'or. She placed it in the hand of La Corriveau, whose
long fingers clutched it like the talons of a harpy. Of all the evil
passions of this woman, the greed for money was the most ravenous.
“It is long since I got a piece of gold like that to cross my hand with,
Fanchon!” said she, looking at it admiringly and spitting on it for good
luck.
“There are plenty more where it came from, aunt,” replied Fanchon.
“Mademoiselle could fill your apron with gold every day of the week if
she would: she is to marry the Intendant!”
“Marry the Intendant! ah, indeed! that is why she sends for me so
urgently! I see! Marry the Intendant! She will bestow a pot of gold on
La Corriveau to accomplish that match!”
“Maybe she would, aunt; I would, myself. But it is not that she wishes
to consult you about just now. She lost her jewels at the ball, and
wants your help to find them.”
“Lost her jewels, eh? Did she say you were to tell me that she had lost
her jewels, Fanchon?”
“Yes, aunt, that is what she wants to consult you about,” replied
Fanchon, with simplicity. But the keen perception of La Corriveau saw
that a second purpose lay behind it.
“A likely tale!” muttered she, “that so rich a lady would send for La
Corriveau from St. Valier to find a few jewels! But it will do. I will
go with you to the city: I cannot refuse an invitation like that. Gold
fetches any woman, Fanchon. It fetches me always. It will fetch you,
too, some day, if you are lucky enough to give it the chance.”
“I wish it would fetch me now, aunt; but poor girls who live by service
and wages have small chance to be sent for in that way! We are glad to
get the empty hand without the money. Men are so scarce with this cruel
war, that they might easily have a wife to each finger, were it allowed
by the law. I heard Dame Tremblay say--and I thought her very right--the
Church does not half consider our condition and necessities.”
“Dame Tremblay! the Charming Josephine of Lake Beauport! She who would
have been a witch, and could not: Satan would not have her!” exclaimed
La Corriveau, scornfully. “Is she still housekeeper and bedmaker at
Beaumanoir?”
Fanchon was honest enough to feel rather indignant at this speech.
“Don't speak so of her, aunt; she is not bad. Although I ran away from
her, and took service with Mademoiselle des Meloises, I will not speak
ill of her.”
“Why did you run away from Beaumanoir?” asked La Corriveau.
Fanchon reflected a moment upon the mystery of the lady of Beaumanoir,
and something checked her tongue, as if it were not safe to tell all
she knew to her aunt, who would, moreover, be sure to find out from
Angélique herself as much as her mistress wished her to know.
“I did not like Dame Tremblay, aunt,” replied she; “I preferred to live
with Mademoiselle Angélique. She is a lady, a beauty, who dresses to
surpass any picture in the book of modes from Paris, which I often
looked at on her dressing-table. She allowed me to imitate them, or wear
her cast-off dresses, which were better than any other ladies' new ones.
I have one of them on. Look, aunt!” Fanchon spread out very complacently
the skirt of a pretty blue robe she wore.
La Corriveau nodded her head in a sort of silent approval, and
remarked,--“She is free-handed enough! She gives what costs her nothing,
and takes all she can get, and is, after all, a trollop, like the rest
of us, Fanchon, who would be very good if there were neither men nor
money nor fine clothes in the world, to tempt poor silly women.”
“You do say such nasty things, aunt!” exclaimed Fanchon, flashing with
indignation. “I will hear no more! I am going into the house to see dear
old Uncle Dodier, who has been looking through the window at me for ten
minutes past, and dared not come out to speak to me. You are too hard
on poor old Uncle Dodier, aunt,” said Fanchon, boldly. “If you cannot be
kind to him, why did you marry him?”
“Why, I wanted a husband, and he wanted my money, that was all; and I
got my bargain, and his too, Fanchon!” and the woman laughed savagely.
“I thought people married to be happy, aunt,” replied the girl,
persistently.
“Happy! such folly. Satan yokes people together to bring more sinners
into the world, and supply fresh fuel for his fires.”
“My mistress thinks there is no happiness like a good match,” remarked
Fanchon; “and I think so, too, aunt. I shall never wait the second time
of asking, I assure you, aunt.”
“You are a fool, Fanchon,” said La Corriveau; “but your mistress
deserves to wear the ring of Cleopatra, and to become the mother of
witches and harlots for all time. Why did she really send for me?”
The girl crossed herself, and exclaimed, “God forbid, aunt! my mistress
is not like that!”
La Corriveau spat at the mention of the sacred name. “But it is in her,
Fanchon. It is in all of us! If she is not so already, she will be. But
go into the house and see your foolish uncle, while I go prepare for
my visit. We will set out at once, Fanchon, for business like that of
Angélique des Meloises cannot wait.”