me,' says Pirot, 'with a gentle countenance and an expression full of
gratitude and tenderness, and with tears in her eyes. "Sir," she said to
me in a pretty loud tone, which showed how self-possessed she was, but
as courteous as it was firm, "we are not yet to separate. You promised
not to leave me till my head is off; I hope that you will keep your
word." And as I answered nothing, because the tears and sighs which I
could only with difficulty restrain robbed me of all power of speech,
she added, "I beseech you, sir, to forgive me and not to regret the time
you have given to me. I am sorry, for my part, to have given you so
little satisfaction, at least at certain moments; I beg your pardon for
it. But I cannot die without asking you to say a _De profundis_ on the
scaffold at the moment of my death, and a mass to-morrow. Remember me,
sir, and pray for me."' Pirot remarks, 'If I had not been at that moment
more deeply moved than I had ever been in my life, I should have had
many things to reply to her courtesies, and I should have promised her
more than one mass; but I found it impossible to say anything more than
"Yes, madam, I will do all that you bid me."'
Just as she was walking up the steps Madame de Brinvilliers found
herself next to Desgrez. She then asked his forgiveness for the trouble
she had given him, and begged him to say a few masses and to pray for
her. She ended her 'compliment' by saying that 'she was his servant, and
so she would die on the scaffold.' Then she added, 'Adieu, sir.'
The throng was immense. Madame de Sévigné, who had come to witness the
execution from the window of one of the houses on the bridge Notre Dame,
writes: 'Never was such a crowd seen, nor Paris so moved or so eager.'
The marchioness knelt down on the scaffold, her face turned towards the
river. 'It was at that moment,' says Pirot, 'that I saw her so intent
upon herself, so wholly occupied with what I had said we would do on the
scaffold, telling me with such wonderful composure all that was
necessary, and making me pass from one thing to another in due order
without any prompting from me, wholly absorbed in what I said to her to
prepare her for death, without the appearance of any wandering in her
thoughts.
'She was absolutely without fear. She was gentle, courteous, steadfast,
and self-forgetful. She had very great patience to endure with
extraordinary docility all the executioner's preparations. He undid her
hair while she was on her knees; he cut it behind and at both sides; to
do so he made her turn her head several times in different ways, and he
even turned it himself sometimes with no great gentleness: that lasted
quite half an hour. She felt keenly the shame of the proceeding in the
sight of so great a company; but she overcame her grief and submitted to
everything even with joy. I fancy that she had never allowed her hair to
be done so quietly as she then let it be cut and shaved; the
executioner's hand felt no rougher to her than that of a maid doing her
hair; she punctually obeyed his instructions as to turning, lowering,
and raising her head when he pleased. He tore off the top of the shirt
which he had put over her cloak when she left the Conciergerie, so as
to uncover her shoulders. She let him bind her hands as though he were
putting on golden bracelets, and knot the rope about her neck as if it
had been a necklace of pearls.
[Illustration: MADAME DE BRINVILLIERS
ON THE WAY TO EXECUTION. HER DRESS IS COVERED BY THE SHIRT WORN BY
CONDEMNED CRIMINALS. ON THE RIGHT IS THE PROFILE OF HER CONFESSOR, THE
ABBÉ PIROT
(_From a Sketch by Charles Le Brun, preserved in the Louvre_)]
'"I should like to be burned alive," she said, "to render my sacrifice
more meritorious, if I could have sufficient confidence in my courage to
bear that kind of death without falling into despair."'
The Abbé Pirot chanted the _Salve_, and the people crowding round the
scaffold continued the chant that he began. Then he told the lady that
he was about to give her absolution. Thereupon she said, her soul at
peace, 'Sir, you promised me just now to give me a second penitence on
the scaffold, when I pleaded that what you gave me was too easy, and now
you say nothing about it.' 'I asked her to say an _Ave_ and a _Sancta
est Maria mater gratiae_. At the end of which, saying to her, "Madam,
renew your contrition," I gave her absolution, saying only the
sacramental words because time was pressing.'
The expression of her face was transformed. It was an expression of
hope and joy, of serene faith and love, mingled with the exaltation of
the penitent. 'Never have I seen anything more touching,' says Pirot,
'than her eyes appeared to me, and if I had to paint a countenance full
of contrition and sorrow of heart and hope of pardon, I could wish for
no other features than those I remember still, and shall remember all my
life long.'
Guillaume the executioner bandaged the eyes of the condemned woman. She
repeated the last prayers along with her confessor. Guillaume with the
back of his sleeve wiped away the beads of sweat which covered his brow.
Suddenly Pirot heard a dull blow, and ceased to speak. 'Madame de
Brinvilliers held her head very straight. The executioner severed it at
a single stroke, which cut so clean that it remained for a moment on the
trunk before falling. I was indeed in agony for an instant, fearing that
he had missed his aim and that he would have to strike a second time.'
'Sir,' said the headsman, 'isn't it a fine stroke?'
He added: 'On these occasions I always commend myself to God, and
hitherto he has been with me; five or six days ago this lady was
troubling me and I couldn't get her out of my head: I will have six
masses said.' And, uncorking a bottle, he drank a good draught of wine.
The body was borne to the stake; the flames consumed it, and then the
ashes were scattered; but the mob struggled to collect some fragments of
the charred bones: all who had been able to get near the scaffold had
seen the face of the criminal illumined with a halo, and they departed
saying that the dead woman was a saint. Madame de Sévigné writes that
Pirot repeated the saying to every one he met.
The children of the Marquis de Brinvilliers took the name of Offémont.
Pennautier was acquitted and left the prison on July 27. He recovered
his high position and the repute in which he had been held.
* * * * *
In declaring that she had had no other accomplices than Sainte-Croix and
her lackeys Madame de Brinvilliers was speaking the truth. But at that
period crimes as great as hers were being committed in Paris, and it
was not long before the judges discovered them. There was for instance
the celebrated case heard by the 'Chambre Ardente,' to which that of
Madame de Brinvilliers serves as introduction.
THE POISON DRAMA AT THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV
I. THE SORCERESSES
_The Dinner of La Vigoureux._
The trial of Madame de Brinvilliers had just caused an immense
sensation. The penitentiaries of Notre Dame, without naming any person,
declared that 'the majority of those who had confessed to them for some
time accused themselves of poisoning somebody.' The court and the city
were still disturbed by the catastrophe which had at St. Cloud suddenly
carried off the charming Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, by the sudden
death of Hugues de Lionne, the great statesman, and by the startling
fate which had just befallen the Duke of Savoy. A note found on
September 21, 1677, in the confessional of the Jesuits in Rue
Saint-Antoine denounced a plot to poison the king and the dauphin. On
December 5 following, La Reynie, lieutenant of police, caused the arrest
of Louis de Vanens, who said he had been an officer. The papers seized
on him and on Finette, his mistress, brought to light an association of
alchemists, coiners, and magicians, in which priests, officers,
important bankers like Cadelan were associated with light women,
lackeys, and vagabonds. The Parlement was investigating the matter, when
La Reynie put his hand on a second association, like the first to all
appearance, but soon to reveal itself to the eyes of the magistrates as
an affair of much greater importance still.
Towards the end of the year 1678, an advocate in small practice named
Maître Perrin was dining in Rue Courtauvilain with a certain Madame
Vigoureux, wife of a ladies' tailor--the trade, it will be seen, existed
before to-day. The company was merry, and the wine flowed freely. Among
the party was a 'big, powerful, large-faced woman,' who choked with
laughter as she poured out for herself bumpers of burgundy that would
have made a grenadier stagger. Her name was Marie Bosse, and she was
the widow of a horse-dealer. She was further a well-known
fortune-teller--'devineresse,' as they said in those days. 'A fine
trade!' she cried, and spoke of the grand people who frequented her
little rookery in the Rue du Grand-Huleu--duchesses and marchionesses
and princes and lords. 'Another three poisonings, and she would retire
with her fortune made!' At this remark the guests began to laugh still
more loudly: this fat woman was irresistibly funny. Maître Perrin alone
saw, by a sharp and rapid frown on the face of Madame Vigoureux, that
there was something serious in it. He knew Desgrez, the police officer
who had arrested Madame de Brinvilliers, and to him he related the
incident. Desgrez did not laugh at all, and that very day he sent the
wife of one of his archers to the fortune-teller with a complaint
against her husband. The fortune-teller, at the first visit, promised
her assistance; at the second, she gave her a phial of poison, which the
wife at once carried home to her dumfounded husband. La Reynie
forthwith ordered the arrest of Madame Vigoureux, of Marie Bosse, with
her daughter Manon, and her two sons, one of whom was a soldier in the
guards, and the other, a boy of fifteen, was just leaving the workhouse
of Bicêtre, where he had been placed to 'improve his morals and give him
a taste for work.' Marie Bosse was arrested at her own house on the
morning of January 4, 1679, in bed with her two sons. Her daughter had
just risen. 'There was only one bed, in which they all slept together.'
The preliminary inquiry brought to light a crime, the news of which
created a sensation almost as great as that evoked by the poisonings by
Madame de Brinvilliers.
An order in council, dated January 10, instructed La Reynie to proceed
against the women Bosse, Vigoureux, and their accomplices. On March 12
an officer set about the arrest of Catherine Deshayes, wife of Antoine
Monvoisin, a peddling jeweller. This woman, usually known as La Voisin,
was the greatest criminal of whom history has any record. She was
arrested as she left the church of Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle after
hearing mass. In her track La Reynie was to penetrate into a region of
crime that the imagination can scarcely conceive. 'Human life is
publicly trafficked in,' he wrote in utter consternation: 'death is
almost the only remedy employed in family embarrassments; impieties,
sacrileges, abominations are common practices in Paris, in the country,
in the provinces.'
_Sorcery in the Seventeenth Century_
To understand the facts and the characters of the persons we are going
to study, we must dwell briefly upon the beliefs of that time--a time
when beliefs were dominant influences in the life of men. We know what
power religious sentiments had in the seventeenth century--sentiments of
an intensity and a simplicity we know little of to-day, and the
corruption of which could not but engender the most absurd
superstitions. That was the epoch when the sweet Marguerite Alacoque, in
her divine ecstasy, exchanged her heart with that of Christ, and wrote
in her own blood, under dictation from on high, the contract which
ascribed to God these words: 'I constitute thee heiress of my heart and
all its treasures for time and eternity; I promise thee that thou shalt
only lack succour when I lack power; thou shalt be for ever the
well-beloved disciple, the plaything of my good pleasure and the
burnt-offering of my love.' And that, too, was the period when Catherine
Monvoisin, the terrible sorceress of Villeneuve-sur-Gravois, found
numerous and ardent followers.
The beliefs in the action of the devil, and in the power of the
sorcerers, so deeply rooted in the imagination of the seventeenth
century, were summed up in 1588 in the _Démonomanie des Sorciers_ of the
famous Jean Bodin. He defined the sorcerer as one who 'by devilish and
unlawful means endeavours to attain some end'; but in his book he speaks
for the most part of witches. As Sprenger, the German inquisitor,
remarked, 'We should talk of the heresy of the witches, and not of
sorcerers, for these are of little account.' In Bodin are to be found
most of the practices in black magic still flourishing at the end of the
seventeenth century. Sorcerers and witches formed a sort of vast
fraternity. There were entire families whose formulae and whose
customers were handed down as heritable property. Jeanne Harvillier,
burnt to death on April 30, 1579, may serve as type. Her mother, a witch
like herself, had been burnt to death thirty years before. Such a death
was the natural end to her career, an end foreseen, and one that
terrified those fascinated by the strange vocation much less than one
would imagine. Jeanne was born about 1528, at Verberie near Compiègne.
At the age of twelve she was presented by her mother to the devil, who
appeared to her in the shape of a very tall dark man. Jeanne renounced
God, and consecrated herself to the 'Spirit.' 'At the same time she had
carnal intercourse with him, which continued from the age of twelve to
the age of fifty, when she was arrested. It sometimes happened that her
husband, lying by her side, failed to perceive what was going on.' This
was the _incubat_. Jeanne Harvillier was brought to justice on the
charge of causing the death of men and beasts by witchcraft. She
confessed to it with the greatest frankness, and told the story of her
last homicide: 'She laid some powders, prepared for her by the devil,
in the place where the man who had beaten his daughter was to pass.'
Another man came by to whom she wished no harm, and immediately he felt
a sharp pain all over his body. She promised to cure him, and in fact
took her place at the bedside of the sick man and tended him with the
gentleness of a sister of mercy. She fervently besought the devil to
restore life to the dying man, but the devil replied that it was
impossible.
Bodin gravely recounts how witches on the Sabbath flew through the air
on broomsticks. He adds: 'What we have said of the travels of the
witches, both in body and in spirit, and the frequent and memorable
experiences of the same, show as in broad daylight, and bring to the
test of touch and sight, the error of those who have written that the
flights of witches are imaginary, and nothing but a trance.' This last
opinion had been maintained by John Wier, physician to the Duke of
Cleves, in a book which is almost a work of genius for that period.
Bodin devoted all his energy to its refutation, for to throw any doubt
upon the fact that the devil transports witches from one place to
another would be, he said, to bring gospel history into ridicule.
Coming to study the maladies attributed to the incantations of
sorcerers--consumption, hysteria, melancholy, delusions, debility--John
Wier found the remedies to consist in a regular life, in conformity with
the laws of God, and in the skill of physicians. What an abominable
doctrine! says Bodin. He had lost all respect, then, for anything. Bodin
was beside himself. John Wier, he says, wrote under the dictation of
Satan. Moreover, had he not himself confessed that he was a disciple of
Agrippa, 'the greatest sorcerer that ever was'? When Agrippa died in the
hospital of Grenoble, a black dog which he called 'Monsieur' instantly
went and sprang into the river. Wier declared, it is true, that this dog
was not the devil, but there was not a single sensible person who
believed him.
Without taking a side in this famous dispute between Bodin and John
Wier, we are bound to state that the writings of the latter had no
success, at any rate in France, while Bodin's book became a classic.
Bossuet, for all his powerful intellect, firmly believed in sorcery. At
the close of the seventeenth century, Bonet was obliged to go to a
Protestant republic to get his treatise on medicine printed, in which he
spoke lightly of magic and demoniacal possession. We have to come far
into the eighteenth century to find one Abraham de Saint-André--and he
was physician to Louis XV--daring, in his famous _Letters_, to cast
doubt on the magic and witchcraft of sorcerers.
The following case, tried at the period in which the events of our story
occurred, and reproduced here after the archives of the Bastille, will
enable us to understand the ardour of belief with which the sorcerers
themselves were animated.
By sentence of the Tournelle on September 2, 1687, a certain Pierre
Hocque was condemned to the galleys. He was a shepherd, skilled in
magic, who had, as the judgment declared, caused the death, by a spell
he cast over them, of 395 sheep, 7 horses, and 11 cows belonging to
Eustache Visié, receiver of taxes at Pacy-en-Brie. Hocque was chained
up with the other galley prisoners. Nevertheless, the cattle of Eustache
Visié continued to die. He had no sooner bought a cow or a sheep and
placed it in his farm than it perished. Clearly the only remedy was to
get Pierre Hocque to remove the direful spell he had imposed. Visié won
over, by a promise of money, the galley prisoner who was fastened to the
chain next to Hocque--a man named Béatrix. He spoke to the shepherd, who
replied that he had in fact cast a poison-spell over the cattle of
Visié, and that, failing himself, only two shepherds named Bras-de-Fer
and Courte Epée had the power to remove the fatal charm. At the urgent
request of Béatrix, Hocque dictated a letter to be sent to Bras-de-Fer,
but the letter was no sooner despatched than he fell into a horrible
despair. He cried hoarsely that Béatrix had made him do something that
would cause his death, which he would be unable to escape from the
moment Bras-de-Fer began to raise the spell he had cast on the cattle.
And the unhappy wretch writhed about in such dreadful contortions that
the other prisoners would have murdered Béatrix but for the intervention
of the guards. The despair and the convulsions lasted for several days,
and then Hocque died. 'And it was the exact time,' says the official
document, 'when Bras-de-Fer began to exorcise the cattle.' The judges
add: 'It is established that Pierre Hocque died because Bras-de-Fer
removed the poison-spell from the horses and cows, and it is true that
since that time no more of Eustache Visié's horses and cows have died.'
The conviction of the unhappy sorcerer that he was bound to die as soon
as his mate undid his work was so strong that he did die. Is it possible
to imagine a more striking proof of the robust faith people then had in
all these devilries?
_The practices of the Witches_
To magic, black or white, the witches added medicine and pharmacy. They
kept drugstores with phials innumerable: syrups, juleps, ointments,
balms, emollients in infinite variety. They were old wives' remedies,
but their efficacy had been proved by experience, and their preparation
was perfected from age to age. Paracelsus, the great Renaissance
physician, burnt in 1527 the medical books of his time, declaring that
nothing but the formulae of the witches was of any use. The old hags had
soothing draughts for pain, healing ointments for wounds, and they acted
on nervous maladies by suggestion. That was the serious side of their
art. Most often the witch was a midwife too; but just as in that strange
world the poisoner lurked behind the druggist, and the alchemist and the
coiner were one, so the midwife played the part of baby-farmer. Finally,
the witches were fortune-tellers, who cast one's horoscope according to
the drawing of cards or the lines of the hand.
What were the declarations of the witches arrested by La Reynie? Marie
Bosse said that 'nothing better could be done than to exterminate all
that sort of people who examine the hand, because they are the ruin of
many a woman, women of quality as well as others; the fortune-teller
soon finds out their weak spot, and thereby knows how to take them and
lead them wherever she will.' She added that in Paris there were more
than 400 fortune-tellers and magicians 'who ruined a great many people,
especially women, and of all conditions.' She went on to speak of the
money her cronies earned, telling how they bought places for their
husbands and built houses, and that they did not realise such fortunes
merely by looking at people's hands. La Voisin said that nothing could
be better than to hunt up all the people who looked at hands, that those
engaged in the business 'heard strange things when love intrigues were
not prospering, that poisonings were an everyday occurrence, that many
of them were paid as much as 10,000 livres' (£2000 of our money).
Similar declarations were made by Leroux, another witch, and by the
magician Lesage. 'It is extremely important,' said the latter, 'to get
to the bottom of these wretched practices, and to fathom this mystery of
iniquity which exists among all those who ostensibly are seekers after
treasure, after the philosopher's stone, and other like things, but who
keep up their trade by very different means: abortions and other crimes
are greater treasures than the philosopher's stone and fortune-telling;
the people who apply to the workers in mystery discuss usually the
poisoning of a husband, or a wife, or a father, and even sometimes of
babies at the breast.' He went on to say that 'these wretched people had
obtained the protection of very powerful friends, so that they acted
with perfect assurance and in almost perfect freedom.' These statements
are confirmed by the documents La Reynie was able to get together.
What the public asked of the witches was, first of all, to withdraw the
veil from the future, and then to enable them to discover treasures. For
this purpose various means were employed, all tending to the same
end--to compel the 'Spirit,' that is the devil, by charms and
incantations to present himself and reveal the mysterious spot where
treasures lay hid. 'A woman,' writes Ravaisson, 'usually a prostitute on
the eve of accouchement, was placed at the centre of a circle drawn on
the floor, and surrounded with dark candles; when the child was born,
the mother gave up her son to be consecrated to the devil. After
pronouncing filthy incantations, the priest cut the victim's throat,
sometimes under the very eyes of its mother; but more often he carried
it away to sacrifice it elsewhere, because at the last moment outraged
nature asserted her rights, and these unhappy creatures snatched their
babes from death. At other times, they were content to cut the throat of
a deserted child; of such there was no lack; imprudent girls, light
women, gave the witches authority to dispose of the fruits of an
unlawful love. There were even licensed midwives who did a large
business in procuring abortion; the children after being baptized were
put to death and carried at once to the cemetery; most often they were
buried in the corner of a wood or consumed in an oven.' And the witch
Marie Bosse added: 'There are so many of this sort of people in Paris
that the city is choke-full of them.'
These were the practices, with others more abominable still, which
caused La Reynie to write: 'It is difficult to think merely that these
crimes are possible; one can hardly bring oneself to consider them. Yet
it is those who have committed them that themselves declare them, and
these villains give so many particulars that it is difficult to harbour
any doubt.'
_The Alchemists_
Alongside of the group of witches and magicians appears another group,
that of the alchemists and 'philosophers,' represented by such people as
Vanens, Chasteuil, Cadelan, Rabel, and Bachimont. We have mentioned the
arrest of Louis de Vanens on December 5, 1677.