philosopher's stone were highly dramatic. François Galaup de Chasteuil,
second of the name--he belonged to an illustrious family of Languedoc,
which had produced men of the highest distinction in arms, religion, and
literature--was its chief, or to use the cant expression of the cabala,
its 'author.' His life had been more than ordinarily romantic. Born at
Aix, on November 15, 1625, he was the second son of Jean Galaup de
Chasteuil, attorney-general of the Exchequer Court of Aix. His elder
brother Hubert, solicitor-general to the Parlement of the same town, was
'renowned for the nobility of his mind and the profundity of his
knowledge'; his younger brother Pierre was a poet, the friend of
Boileau, La Fontaine, and Mademoiselle de Scudéry. After a successful
student career, François was admitted doctor of law. In 1644 he became a
knight of Malta. He did signal service to the Order, and Lascaris, the
grand master, placed on his breast the cross of honour. He then became
captain of the guards of the great Condé. In 1652 he retired to Toulon,
fitted out a ship, and under the Maltese flag went privateering against
the Mussulmans. Algerian corsairs captured him and led him into
captivity. After two years of slavery he came to Marseilles, where he
turned monk and became prior of the Carmelites. He smuggled into the
convent a young girl--a slender, fair-haired child, with large, bright
blue eyes; and there he kept her locked up in his cell. When she was on
the point of giving birth to her child, Chasteuil, assisted by a lay
brother, strangled her in her bed, and on a pitch-dark night carried her
into the chapel of the convent, where he lifted several slabs of the
floor and dug out a grave in which to bury her. The silence of the
arches was disturbed by a dull sound. A pilgrim, lying asleep against a
pillar, woke up, and saw the sinister toilers by the light of the moon
which shone through the stained windows. Transfixed with fright, he
remained hidden out of sight in a dark corner until dawn, when the
chapel was opened, and he ran to inform the magistrates. Chasteuil was
arrested, tried, and condemned. He was on the way to execution when, at
the foot of the gibbet, up came Louis de Vanens, captain of the galleys,
along with several soldiers. Chasteuil and Vanens were old friends.
Chasteuil was rescued, and, taking his rescuer with him, he fled to
Nice.
Hiding in a quiet spot, the two friends began working at the
philosopher's stone, that is, at converting copper into silver and gold.
Chasteuil had some experience of alchemy, and fancied he was master of
the famous secret. Full of gratitude for the service done him, he gave
Vanens the secret so far as silver was concerned, but would tell him
nothing about the gold, 'not thinking Vanens prudent enough for that.'
Shortly afterwards we find Chasteuil in the service of the Duke of
Savoy, captain of the guards of the White Cross, and--extraordinary
fact--tutor to his son! While occupied with the education of the young
Prince of Piedmont, Chasteuil continued his 'philosophy,' and discovered
an oil, which, as he appeared convinced himself, would turn metals into
gold. He also wrote translations of authors sacred and profane--the
minor prophets, Petronius, the Thebaïd of Statius; and he dabbled in
poetry. He had just passed his fortieth year. A contemporary gives us
his portrait: 'Middle height, very thin, always troubled with a nasty
cough caused by a wound he received in the body, round-shouldered,
slightly crooked, with a wry mouth, scanty beard, hair black and flat,
complexion swarthy and sallow.' Moréri adds: 'Monsieur de Chasteuil was
one of the most accomplished of gentlemen, and a perfect master of the
platonic philosophy.'
Vanens and Chasteuil struck up an alliance with Robert de Bachimont,
lord of La Miré, who had married a cousin of Superintendent Fouquet.
Bachimont had at Paris a house near the Temple, with four smelting
furnaces: a large one on the third floor, two smaller ones in an
ante-room, and a large one in the cellar. He also had apartments at
Compiègne in the _Ecu de France_, where there was nothing but crucibles,
alembics, vessels of glass and of earthenware, cucurbits, philosophical
stoves open and closed, grates and mortars, retorts and matrasses,
sal-ammoniac and iron filings, and a thousand varieties of powders,
pastes, and liquids. Finally, he had another establishment at the abbey
of Ainay, near Lyons, completely fitted up for the fusion of metals, the
distillation of herbs, and other practices of alchemy. Before long the
association was enlarged by the addition of a person of some importance,
Louis de Vasconcelos y Souza, Count of Castelmelhor, who had been
practically the governor of Portugal for five or six years as the
favourite of King Alfonso VI. Bachimont says that Castelmelhor taught
him the secret of colouring glass red. After the death of the Duke of
Savoy on June 12, 1675, Castelmelhor withdrew to England, where he
gained the favour of Charles II., an ardent alchemist and astrologer. He
was present at the death of the English king, and it was he that brought
in the Catholic priest who gave him extreme unction.
Chasteuil and his partners spent their time in the quest for the
philosopher's stone, contact with which was to convert metals into gold;
and, like the majority of alchemists, they believed that it was to be
found in the solidification of mercury. 'The hermetic philosophers,'
writes M. Huysmans, 'discovered--and modern science to-day does not deny
that they were right--that the metals are compound bodies of identical
composition. Their varieties are due simply to the different proportions
of the elements in combination; it is possible then, by the aid of an
agent that would alter these proportions, to change these bodies one
into another--to transmute mercury, for instance, into silver, and lead
into gold. And this agent is the philosopher's stone, mercury: not
ordinary mercury, which, to alchemists, is only a bastard metal' (M.
Huysmans uses another expression), 'but the mercury of the philosophers,
called also _lion vert_.'
Among the papers of La Voisin was found an MS. poem in honour of the
philosopher's stone:
'De l'or glorifié qui change en or ses frères.'
The secret consisted in an elixir, of which a single drop, cast
'dans une mer profonde
Où couleraient fondus tous les métaux du monde,
Suffirait pour la teindre et fixer en soleil.'[7]
Chasteuil and his fellows did not merely seek the solidification of
mercury, which was to produce the philosopher's stone, but the
liquefaction of gold by cold: this was to furnish a universal panacea.
'Liquid gold restores health and strength, gives flesh to greybeards
and colour to the cheeks of girls, cures the plague,' and so on.
Solid mercury being unobtainable, they sought, for the transmutation of
metals, those powders or oils about which we hear so frequently at that
period; and, as we shall see, they had the best reasons in the world for
believing that they had put their finger on the secret, at least as far
as silver[8] was concerned.
In 1676 our partners all established themselves at Paris, where they
added to their company three collaborators, all important in different
ways: the quack Rabel, a physician celebrated in his day; a rich banker
of Paris named Pierre Cadelan, secretary to the king; and a young
Parlement advocate named Jean Terron du Clausel. Du Clausel lodged with
Vanens in the Rue d'Anjou, in a house which had for sign _Le Petit Hôtel
d'Angleterre_. He was a valuable addition to the band, because he could
distil at pleasure, being 'licensed.' Rabel seems to have been possessed
of considerable real science. Rabel water, which he invented, is still
used in our own day--a mixture of alcohol and sulphuric acid, which acts
as an astringent in cases of hæmorrhage. Rabel had compounded another
elixir, whose innumerable merits were celebrated in notices in prose and
verse which the most glowing of modern advertisements have not
surpassed. Cadelan supplied funds. Bodin speaks in very precise terms
about the alchemists: 'They extract the quintessence of plants, and make
admirable and salutary oils and waters, and discourse subtly on the
virtues and the transmutation of metals; but they also make false
money.' At the moment when Cadelan and his associates were arrested, he
was on the point of farming the Paris mint. Was this in order to make
false _louis d'or_, as historians have supposed? We believe rather that
it was to find means of circulating the products of the alchemical
experiments of his associates, for by that time they had no manner of
doubt about the efficacy of Chasteuil's formulae. A bar of silver cast
by Vanens, and taken by Bachimont to the mint, had just been accepted
there at a good price as pure metal. It is scarcely necessary to add
that this could only have been due to an error of the mint official;
this famous silver made out of copper by Vanens and Chasteuil was
nothing but 'white metal.' Nevertheless, it was a success which opened
before the eyes of our partners splendid vistas of future wealth.
When Louis de Vanens was arrested on December 5, 1677, Louvois believed
that he had seized a spy. But he had put his hand on an alchemist, and
soon the whole band--Terron, Cadelan, Monsieur and Madame Bachimont,
Barthomynat (known as La Chaboissière), de Vanens' valet--were laid by
the heels, some in the Bastille, the others at Pierre-en-Cize. Chasteuil
had just died quietly at Verceil. Rabel had escaped into England, where
Charles II lodged and fed him, gave him a pension, and loaded him with
presents. Later he returned to France, and was incarcerated in his turn.
We regarded it as essential to say something of this band of alchemists
and 'philosophers' by way of introduction to Louis de Vanens. This young
noble of Provence, 'a man of well-knit and graceful figure,' had
brilliant connections at court, where he was on a footing of intimacy
with the king's dazzling mistress, Madame de Montespan. On the other
hand, he was an assiduous visitor to La Voisin, and was even for some
time her 'author.' Vanens was the link between the alchemists and the
witches. He was devoted to demoniacal practices. His valet, La
Chaboissière, declared that one night he had to accompany his master and
a cleric into the woods on the outskirts of Poissy, where they searched
for treasures with incantations and invocations to the 'spirit.' Vanens
was a diabolical character. He was confined at the Bastille in the same
room with other prisoners, as the custom was. He had with him a sort of
white and tan spaniel. As midnight approached, he recited some prayer
over the body of the dog, and went through the ceremony of consecration.
Then he took a prayer-book containing a picture of the Virgin, and laid
the picture on the back of the dog, saying, 'Avaunt, devil! Behold thy
good mistress!' To the remarks of his companions in captivity, he
replied: 'Neither God nor the king shall prevent me from doing what I
have done.' To gauge the strange and passionate vigour of these
superstitions, we must remember that Vanens was in the Bastille, quite
aware that these practices might bring him to the stake.
We shall see in the sequel the importance of Vanens when we recall the
following lines found in the notes of Nicolas de la Reynie: 'To see La
Chaboissière again about his reluctance to have written down in his
statement, after hearing it read, that Vanens had been concerned in
giving Madame de Montespan counsel which deserves that he should be
drawn and quartered.'
_La Voisin_
To the portraits of Chasteuil the alchemist and of Vanens, we must add
that of the most famous of the witches, Catherine Deshayes, known as La
Voisin. It was of her that La Fontaine wrote:
'Une femme à Paris faisait la pythonisse.'
La Voisin stated to La Reynie: 'Some women asked if they would not soon
become widows, because they wished to marry some one else; almost all
asked this and came for no other reason. When those who come to have
their hands read ask for anything else, they nevertheless always come to
the point in time, and ask to be ridded of some one; and when I gave
those who came to me for that purpose my usual answer, that those they
wished to be rid of would die when it pleased God, they told me that I
was not very clever.' Margot, La Voisin's servant, said that the whole
world came there, adding: 'La Voisin is to-day dragging a great ruck
down with her--a long chain of persons of all sorts and conditions.' The
Parisians used to go in companies to the house of the fortune-teller:
they were quite pleasure parties. The merry crew would overflow into the
garden lawns surrounding the cottage at Villeneuve-sur-Gravois. This was
the district, but sparsely inhabited, between the ramparts and the St.
Denis quarter.
The sorceress was brought into the city drawing-rooms as nowadays
fashionable singers are brought. 'At that time, La Voisin had as much
money as she wanted. Every morning, before she rose, people were waiting
for her, and she had visitors all the rest of the day: after that, in
the evening, she kept open house, engaged fiddlers, and enjoyed herself
thoroughly; this went on for several years.' This life had little
resemblance, it will be seen, to that of her ancestress, the witch
described by Michelet: 'You will find her in the most dismal places,
isolated,--in houses of ill-fame and ruined huts and hovels. Where could
she have lived except on wild heaths--the hapless wretch who was so
hunted down, the accursed, proscribed, hated poisoner?'
La Voisin earned in a year as much as £2000 or even £4000 in English
money; but her gains were spent in revelry. She entertained her lovers
in princely style, for she would have thought it unworthy of her if they
were not comfortable; and her lovers were many. We find in the first
rank of them André Guillaume, the executioner of Paris, who beheaded
Madame de Brinvilliers, and who, by a horrible coincidence, only just
escaped executing La Voisin herself: among them also the Viscount de
Cousserans, the Count de Labatie, Fauchet the architect, a wine merchant
of the neighbourhood, Lesage the magician, the alchemist Blessis, and
others.
We must add that Blessis and Lesage spent much money on her, ostensibly
in connection with the philosopher's stone, for La Voisin had a sincere
faith in alchemy. She subsidised great enterprises, and helped to
establish manufactures, being much interested in scientific and
industrial progress; but in regard to industrial undertakings she fell
mainly into the hands of sharpers who swindled her out of her money.
However, La Voisin, proud of her trade as sorceress, which brought
persons of the highest rank to bend before her in obsequious and
suppliant attitudes, did not stick at any expense that seemed likely to
augment her glory. She delivered her oracular sayings clothed in a robe
and a cloak specially woven for her, for which she paid 15,000 livres
(£3000 of English money). The queen herself had no finery more beautiful
than this 'imperial robe,' which 'was the talk of all Paris.' The cloak
was of crimson velvet studded with 205 two-headed eagles of fine gold,
lined with costly fur; the skirt was of bottle-green velvet, edged with
French point. Even her shoes were embroidered with golden two-headed
eagles. The mere weaving of the eagles on the cloak cost 400 livres (£80
to-day). We possess the bills of the maker.
But under the glittering shows of wealth La Voisin had preserved most
dissolute manners. She was constantly drunk. She indulged in fishwife's
brawls with Lesage. Latour, who was her 'great author,' used to thrash
her. She fought with Marie Bosse and tore her hair out. 'One day, Latour
being with her on the ramparts, she got him to give her husband fifty
blows with a stick, while she held Latour's hat.' On that occasion,
Latour bit poor Monvoisin's nose. But on the other hand, the sorceress
regularly attended the church of the Abbé de Saint-Amour, rector of the
University of Paris, an austere Jansenist; and Madame de la Roche-Guyon
stood god-mother to her daughter.
The husband whom La Voisin so brutally got beaten, appears to have been
a decent man. In those days there was at Montmartre a chapel dedicated
to St. Ursula, who enjoyed the power to 'improve' husbands. The
procedure was to carry there, some Friday morning, a shirt of the wicked
spouse. Our sorceress had the most implicit faith in the efficacy of
this practice, and we must do her the justice to state that she always
began by sending to Montmartre women who came to her with tales of their
troubles. She availed herself of the remedy on her own account, and poor
Monvoisin had to march to the place carrying his shirt under his arm. He
was a husband for whose improvement St. Ursula does not appear to have
been required to spend much effort.
Lesage, the witch's lover, advised her to get rid of Monvoisin. A
sheep's heart was bought, 'to which Lesage did something,' and then it
was buried in the garden behind the gate. Lo and behold, Monvoisin was
seized with severe pain in the stomach. He cried out that if there was
anybody who wished to do for him, he had better shoot him at once
instead of letting him linger. La Voisin, struck with remorse, hastened
to the Augustines to confess and obtain a general absolution; she took
the sacrament, and on her return compelled Lesage to undo his wicked
charms.
She related very simply and frankly to La Reynie the first steps of her
career. Her husband, at that time, was doing nothing, but he had been a
hawking jeweller, and then a shopkeeper on the Pont-Marie. He had lost
his shop, and then, seeing her husband ruined, 'she had devoted herself
to cultivating the powers that God had given her.' 'It was chiromancy
and face-reading that I learnt at the age of nine. I have been
persecuted for fourteen years: that is the work of the missionaries'
(these were the members of a community established by St. Vincent de
Paul, then very popular, who were actively occupied in converting
sinners and removing scandals of all kinds). 'However,' she continued,
'I gave an account of my art to the vicars-general, the Holy See being
vacant, and to several doctors of the Sorbonne to whom I had been sent,
and they found nothing to object to.' Marie Bosse also spoke of the
time when her friend went to the Sorbonne to argue on astrology with the
professors.
Thus La Voisin set up as fortune-teller in order to restore order and
comfort to her household. One of her friends, La Lepère, told her
sometimes that she ought not to engage in such great crimes. 'You are
mad!' cried the witch, 'the times are too bad. How am I to feed my
family? I have six persons on my hands!' And in fact, until her arrest,
La Voisin had been the constant support of her old mother, to whom she
gave money every week.
La Voisin's claim that her art was founded on face-reading was quite
genuine. She had made a profound study of physiognomy. We find
innumerable references to this subject in the documents of her case, and
also a 'Treatise on physiognomy, supported on six immovable columns: (1)
sympathy between body and mind; (2) relations between rational and
irrational animals; (3) the differences between the sexes; (4) national
diversities; (5) physical temperaments; (6) diversities of age; not
depending on a single sign, for men are often attacked by some defect
which force of mind, aided by grace, can assuredly overcome.' When the
Countess de Beaufort de Canillac came to consult the fortune-teller,
'the lady wishing to give me her hand without unmasking, I told her that
I did not know physiognomies of velvet, whereupon the lady removed her
mask.' La Voisin confessed that she read much more in the features than
in the lines of the hand, 'it being no easy thing to conceal a passion
or any considerable disturbing emotion.' She was not merely a
physiognomist, but an expert psychologist, and that was how she gave a
real foundation to her sorcery. We may cite the following incident among
many others.
Marie Brissart, widow of a Parlement counsellor, tenderly loved and
handsomely supported a captain of guards named Louis Denis de Rubentel,
Marquis de Mondétour, who became lieutenant-general in 1688. He was a
personage of whom Saint-Simon, a severe censor, speaks thus: 'He had
been able to contemn basenesses, and to withdraw into his virtue, which
was beyond his wealth.' Madame Brissart used to send him money when he
was on service, after having equipped him from top to toe on his
departure. It happened that the cavalier displayed some coldness towards
his mistress, with the idea of getting her purse to open still more
generously. The widow, seeing nothing of her captain, became alarmed,
and hastened to La Voisin. She began her incantations, with the
assistance of Lesage. The magician walked up and down the garden with a
wand, with which he struck the earth, repeating the words, _Per Deum
sanctum, per Deum vivum!_ Then he said: 'Louis Denis de Rubentel, I
conjure thee in the name of the Almighty to go find Marie Miron (Madame
Brissart's maiden name): she to possess thee wholly, body, soul, and
spirit, and thou to love none but her!' On another occasion, he put into
a little ball of wax a paper on which the names of Rubentel and Madame
Brissart were written, and in the presence of the latter threw the ball
into the fire, where it burst with a loud noise. These fine charms were
still without result, when one morning La Voisin, with the intuition of
a clairvoyant, said to her weeping client: 'You write every day and send
your maid to Rubentel, but he pays no attention to you; it is mad
conduct to write and send every day'; and the lady having ceased to
write and send, Monsieur de Rubentel, who in turn began to be afraid
lest so precious a fount should dry up, returned to her 'without
anything else having been done; yet the lady, believing that La Voisin
had done some extraordinary thing, gave her twelve pistoles.'
The witch heard all sorts of confessions. There were wonderful dreams of
adoring affection told her by lovers of twenty years, who came to her
red with emotion, or wrote thrilling letters in order to bring their
torment to an end, begging her to soften the hard hearts of their
mistresses, or to bend the opposition of a cruel father. Or it was the
fierce carnal love of mature women obstinately clinging to the lovers
who were neglecting them for fresher girls. There were also the passions
of ambitious women, greedy for money and honours, which bring us to the
horrors of the 'black mass.'
La Voisin was assisted in these monstrous rites by a priest 'squint-eyed
and old,' with bloated face, and prominent blue veins forming a network
on his cheeks--the terrible Abbé Guibourg. Formerly chaplain to the
Count de Montgommery, he was at this time sacristan of St. Marcel, at
St. Denis. He used to say mass, according to the proper rites, wearing
the alb, stole, and maniple. 'The women on whose bodies mass was said
were laid stark naked, without even their chemise, upon a table which
served as altar; their arms were stretched out, and they held a taper in
each hand.' Sometimes they did not actually undress themselves, 'but
only tucked up their garments as high as the throat.' The chalice was
placed on the bare belly. At the moment of the _offertoire_, a child had
its throat cut. Guibourg usually stuck a long needle into its neck. The
blood of the expiring victim was poured into the chalice, and mixed with
the blood of bats and other materials obtained by filthy means. Flour
was added to solidify the mess, which was thus made to resemble the
Host, to be consecrated at the moment when, in the sacrifice of the
mass, transubstantiation takes place. The scene is reconstructed by La
Reynie according to the testimony of the accused.
Black masses were not the only sorceries whose rites required the
sacrifice of children. La Voisin and her fellow-witches perpetrated a
terrible slaughter of them. Children deserted by their unmarried
mothers, others bought from poor women, did not suffice: several
sorceresses were convicted of having killed their own children for these
atrocious proceedings. Here, for instance, is a horrible detail: the
daughter of La Voisin, on the very eve of her trouble, not trusting her
mother, fled the house, and only returned after placing her infant in
safety. The witches ran off with children in the streets. La Reynie
wrote to Louvois: 'Remember the great disturbance in Paris in 1676, when
there were seditious gatherings and mobs and runnings to and fro in
several parts of the city, through the rumour that people carried off
children to cut their throats, though no one then understood what the
cause of the rumour could be. The mob, however, proceeded to various
excesses against the women suspected of being child-stealers. The king
ordered an inquiry. Proceedings were taken (against those who rose
against the witches), and a woman who was guilty of violence was
condemned to death, but obtained a special pardon.'