papers were found recipes for the cure of pimples, a remedy for
headache, the prescription for 'a quintessence of hellebore which kept
the Dean of Westminster alive for 166 years.' She was a midwife, and
especially a procurer of abortion. 'Above the room (where she gave
consultations) there was a sort of loft in which she procured abortions,
and behind the room there was a recess with a stove, in which were found
the charred remains of small human bones.' Little children were burned
in this stove. One day, in an effusive moment, La Voisin confessed that
'she had burnt in the stove, or buried in the garden, the bodies of more
than 2500 children prematurely born.' Here again we come upon surprising
particulars. The witch was very insistent that children thus brought
into the world should be baptized before death. One evening La Lepère, a
midwife friend of La Voisin, happened to be in the famous room with the
witch's husband. La Voisin, who was in the loft, came down suddenly in
joyous haste and with radiant countenance, crying: 'What luck! the child
has been dipped!'
Such was the strange and horrible creature--the last of the great
sorceresses who haunted the imagination of Michelet--the extraordinary
woman whose crimes sent a shudder through the man who had heard the
confessions of the most redoubtable criminals of his time--Nicolas de la
Reynie.
We have a portrait of La Voisin by Antoine Coypel. She is represented on
the way to execution in the linen shift of condemned criminals.
Contemporaries depict her as a small stoutish woman, rather pretty,
owing to her eyes, which were extraordinarily bright and piercing. The
artist has given her a froglike expression, but no doubt he sketched her
under the influence of a preconceived idea. Madame de Sévigné, who had a
singular taste for this sort of spectacle, saw her mount to the stake:
'La Voisin,' she wrote, 'very prettily surrendered her soul to the
devil.' The confessor of the sorceress has given his testimony to her
edifying end: 'I am loaded with so many crimes,' she said with simple
and profound emotion, 'that I could not wish God to work a miracle to
snatch me from the flames, because I cannot suffer too much for the sins
I have committed.'
_The Magician Lesage_
La Voisin's principal coadjutor was the magician Lesage. He was one by
himself in this world of sorceresses, alchemists, and magicians. A
sceptic among believers, he duped the women with whom he worked as well
as the fashionable ladies who came to avail themselves of his art.
Originally from Venoix near Caen, his real name was Adam Coeuret. His
portrait is sketched by La Vigoureux: 'he wore a ruddy wig, was ill
formed, clothed as a rule in grey, with a cloak of homespun.' He was a
wool merchant. Though he had a wife in Lower Normandy, he promised La
Voisin that he would marry her if she became a widow. The first alias
he chose was Duboisson. In 1667 he was arrested, condemned to the
galleys for dealings with the devil, and liberated in 1672 through the
kind offices of La Voisin. The galley in which he rowed was lying in
sight of the port of Genoa when the pardon reached him.
Set at liberty, Coeuret returned to Paris, where he renewed his
relations with the witches.
His whole art consisted in a remarkable talent for jugglery, by which he
deceived the witches themselves, persuading them that he possessed 'all
the science of the cabala.' They adopted him as partner in their
lucrative operations. The reports of the examination of La Voisin give
curious information on this head. 'Lesage took a live pigeon in the Vale
of Misery (on the quay of La Mégisserie, where poultry was sold) and
burnt it in a warming-pan. Having then sifted its ashes, he put them in
his room. It was the beginning of Lent, during which he used to recite
the Passion of our Lord daily, with his feet in water, though it was
freezing hard. Then he put a white cloth on the table, lit two tapers,
and sent for three crystal glasses, with which having performed his
"mystery," which was Greek to La Voisin, he shut them up in a cupboard
with a twig of laurel, and then, though he retained the key, he asked
her for the three glasses and the laurel twig which he had locked in the
cupboard. They were not found there; and then he said that he would give
her nothing else to keep, and having sent her into the garden, she found
them all three in a row in the summer-house. And when she asked him how
he did that, Lesage said that he was one of the apostles and of the
company of the Sibyls.'
At other times Lesage celebrated a sort of mass, got up as a priest. At
the moment of the offertory he would break two pieces of ordinary bread,
and after having made La Voisin and her husband kneel down, he gave them
each a piece of bread 'just as if they were at communion, and then made
them drink some holy water which, as he said, he had turned into wine,
and it was a liquid of an extremely pleasant taste.' 'A sergeant having
come to La Voisin's house to distrain on her at the instance of an
upholsterer named Lenoir, La Voisin sent for Lesage, told him that she
was ruined, and that there was something in the cupboard which must be
taken away, namely, a consecrated wafer; and at the same time Lesage
sent away the Marquise de Lusignan, who happened to be in the house, and
told her to go home, and when she got there to put a white napkin on her
bed, for something he was going to send her. And in fact the wafer was
found by the marquise at her own house, without any one seeing who had
taken it there.'
The pretended sorceries of Lesage thus consisted simply of clever
conjuring tricks. They sufficed to amaze his clients. He made them
write, for instance, requests to the devil in notes which he then
pretended to throw in the fire, enclosed in balls of wax; and some days
after he gave them back to them, saying that the devil, who had received
them through the flames, had returned them.
Lesage was arrested for the second time on March 17, 1679, and we shall
see the importance of the statements he made to the magistrates.
_The 'Chambre Ardente'_
The consternation of Louis XIV, his ministers, and the lieutenant of
police at the discovery of such crimes may be imagined. The terror was
all the intenser because chemists and able physicians were then
powerless to discover traces of poison in a corpse. The matter was
intrusted to a special commission, in the hope that by a more
expeditious and energetic procedure than that of the ordinary courts, it
would succeed in cutting the evil at the root. This was the famous
Chambre Ardente.
The president was Louis Boucherat, Count de Compans--an amiable man,
says Madame de Sévigné, and of much good sense. Later, he became
Chancellor of France. Louis Bazin, Lord of Bezons, nominated to act as
judge-advocate along with La Reynie, was a member of the Academy. The
office of clerk was filled by Sagot, La Reynie's confidential secretary
and ordinary clerk of the Châtelet. 'The Commission,' writes Ravaisson,
'was composed of the élite of the councillors of state, and all these
magistrates have left a high reputation.' The court was called the
Chambre Ardente, because in former days tribunals specially constituted
to deal with great crimes sat in a chamber hung with black and lit by
torches and candles.
The court met for the first time on April 10, 1679, and decided to keep
its proceedings secret, so as to withhold details of these practices
from the knowledge of the public. The magistrates themselves had no
doubt of the efficacy of these dealings with the devil, nor of the
formidable composition of the poisons.
The method of procedure was as follows:--
The individuals regarded as suspicious by La Reynie, the examining
magistrate, were arrested by royal warrant, that is, by a _lettre de
cachet_, which took the place of the modern magistrate's warrant. The
first depositions were submitted to the attorney-general, and it was
only on his requisition that the officials proceeded to the
confrontation of the prisoners, after which the commissaries submitted a
detailed report to the court. The attorney presented to them his general
conclusions, and the court decided whether the accused person should be
'recommended,' that is, remain a prisoner in virtue of a warrant issued
by them. In that case the investigation followed its course. When this
was ended, all the documents concerning the accused were read to the
judges, the king's attorney delivered his address in favour of acquittal
or condemnation, the accused was heard for the last time, and the court
pronounced judgment, which was without appeal.
The Chambre Ardente sat in the hall of the Arsenal. From April 10, 1679,
the day of its first meeting, to July 21, 1682, when it closed its
doors, it held 210 sittings, after having been suspended, for reasons
that will be explained later, from October 1, 1680, to May 19, 1681.
The Chambre Ardente deliberated on the fate of 442 accused persons, and
ordered the arrest of 367 of these. Of these arrests, 218 were
sustained. Thirty-six prisoners were condemned to the extreme penalty,
torture ordinary and extraordinary and execution; two of them died a
natural death in jail; five were condemned to the galleys; twenty-three
were exiled; but the most guilty had accomplices in such high places
that their cases were never carried to an end. We must add the prisoners
who committed suicide in prison, such as La Dodée, a sorceress aged
thirty-five, still very pretty, who was arrested with La Trianon, and
cut her throat at Vincennes after her first examination; 'she covered
the wound with her chemise, in which the greater part of her blood
flowed, and was found dead when her room was opened in the morning to
take her her breakfast.'
* * * * *
Among the many cases which came before this court one or two will serve
as types.
Madame de Dreux was the wife of a Parlement _maître des requêtes_. She
was not yet thirty, and was endowed with much grace and beauty, a
delicate and dainty beauty, with infinite charm and distinction. She was
so fond of Monsieur de Richelieu, declared La Joly, one of the
sorceresses tried by the court, 'that as soon as she knew that Monsieur
de Richelieu was even looking at any one else, she thought of doing away
with him.' She had further poisoned 'Monsieur Pajot and Monsieur de
Varennes and many others,' and, in particular, one of her lovers, to
avoid, as she said, the bother and annoyance of a rupture. She had also
tried to poison her husband, and to get rid of Madame de Richelieu by
sorcery. All these details were widely known in Paris, where society,
difficult as it is to believe it, was wonderfully amused by them. The
husband was riddled with epigrams, which Madame de Sévigné declares
'divinely diverting.' Madame de Dreux was too pretty, really!--and
besides, she was a cousin of two of the judges of the Chambre Ardente;
the result was that on April 27, 1680, the judges contented themselves
with admonishing her. 'Monsieur de Dreux and her whole family,' writes
Madame de Sévigné, 'went to the court to meet her.' Set at liberty, the
young woman was fêted and petted by the whole world of fashion. 'There
was joy and triumph and kisses from all her family and friends. Monsieur
de Richelieu did wonders in this business.' A fact which will appear
incredible is, that after she left prison, Madame de Dreux returned to
the sorceresses, met La Joly in the Jesuits' church, and asked and
obtained from her powders to poison a lady whom Monsieur de Richelieu
was 'considering.'
Truth to tell, La Joly was arrested while this was going on, and, as a
result of her revelations, a fresh warrant was issued against Madame de
Dreux; but she was warned, and escaped. She was proceeded against for
contumacy. Her husband and Monsieur de Richelieu were then seen pleading
for her in company. On January 23, 1682, Madame de Dreux was condemned
to banishment beyond the kingdom, but the king allowed her to remain in
France provided she lived in Paris with her husband.
Madame Leféron, who also belonged to judicial society, was less pleasant
in appearance. The daughter of a Parlement counsellor, her maiden name
was Marguerite Galart. Her husband, president of the first court of
_enquêtes_, is represented in the _Tableau du Parlement_ of 1661 as 'a
good judge, of solid judgment and firm opinion, never changing except on
good grounds, unprejudiced, loving rule and order, a good and
disinterested man.' He had given proof of independence of character at
the time of Fouquet's case, by showing clemency to the superintendent.
Madame Leféron found him a bore, avaricious, and further--how can one
say it?--insufficient. Yet the fair dame had passed her fiftieth year.
But she was madly smitten with one Monsieur de Prade, who on his side
was in love with her money. She asked La Voisin for poisons to kill her
husband, and de Prade went to her for charms to help him win the heart
of his mistress. La Voisin gave them all they wanted: phials to the
lady, and to the gallant a mask of virgin wax representing the face of
Madame Leféron. This, enclosed in a zinc box, was to be warmed every now
and then, which would warm the heart of the lady. De Prade gave La
Voisin a note for 20,000 livres--£4000 to-day.
The phials produced their effect, and Leféron died on September 8, 1669.
The waxen mask was equally successful, and Madame Leféron married de
Prade. On February 20, 1680, as she went to the stake, La Voisin said to
Sagot, clerk to the court: 'It is quite true that Madame Leféron came to
see me, most joyous at being a widow, and when I asked her if the phial
of liquid had taken effect, she said, "Effect or not, he is done for!"'
De Prade appeared no less happy. He scoured the city in a brand-new
carriage, 'with three or four lackeys behind.' His joy was short. The
lady saw that her new husband thought chiefly of getting 'donations' out
of her, and the husband soon saw that his wife was trying to poison him
in his turn. He fled to the Turks. On April 7, 1680, Madame Leféron was
condemned to banishment beyond the borders of the viscounty of Paris and
to a fine of 1500 livres, though there were, as Louvois wrote to Louis
XIV, thirteen or fourteen witnesses of her crime.
Madame de Dreux and Madame Leféron owed this remarkable indulgence to
Madame de Poulaillon. Born Marguerite de Jehan, of a noble Bordeaux
family, she had come to Paris when very young to associate with the
alchemists, having a passion for the occult sciences. She had married
Alexandre de Poulaillon, much older than herself, but very rich.
Contemporaries are unanimous in praising the pretty face, the delicate
and keen intelligence, and the exquisite distinction of the young lady.
Unhappily for herself, she met a certain La Rivière, who had a wonderful
talent for getting money out of ladies. As we know, in the seventeenth
century, a talent of this sort was not the discreditable thing it is
to-day. Her excellent husband, becoming suspicious, drew his
purse-strings tight and locked his safes. Madame de Poulaillon had
recourse to various expedients. She sold the house furniture, chairs,
sofas, 'the big gilded bed upholstered in English watered silk,' the
plate, and even the clothes of her husband. He, in a furious temper--we
may suppose so, at least--ceased to give his wife even money for her
toilet, and bought her dresses and ribbons himself.
In despair, the young woman opened relations with La Vigoureux: she
required money for her lover, and the riddance of her husband. With this
intent she planned the most audacious strokes. Two or three hired
bravoes would do: 'While one held Poulaillon by the throat in his study,
the other would throw bags of money out of the window, and she would
open the study door herself.' Another time she thought of getting her
husband kidnapped alive. She was quite ready herself for the enterprise,
but failed to find men to assist her. At last she saw Marie Bosse, who
from the first appeared to her more plucky. However, Madame de
Poulaillon displayed so furious a haste to get rid of her 'old goodman,'
that Marie Bosse, hardened as she was, fairly took fright. She would not
give her in one dose the powder necessary for the poisoning, for fear
that the lady, by giving it all at once, would create a scandal. The
sorceress was prudent enough to begin with the shirt, one of the most
horrible of these hags' inventions. The shirts of the husband were
washed in arsenic. This left no trace. Whoever put them on was before
long attacked by a violent inflammation in the limbs and the lower part
of the body. And every one sympathised with the wife whose husband was
suffering from a disgraceful malady caused by debauchery! Arsenic was
put also into the injections, which in those days were in common use.
The contents of a phial poured into the wine or soup hastened the
operation.
The negotiations between Madame de Poulaillon and Marie Bosse were
carried on in the church of the Carmelites. The young woman gave 4000
livres (£800) for the phial and the preparation for the shirts.
Poulaillon was warned by an anonymous letter; moreover, his wife could
not obtain the necessary assistance from her servants. Then in her rage
she applied to some soldiers, and asked them to wait for her husband at
the corner of a road she pointed out to them, where it would be the
easiest thing in the world, she said, to do for him. The soldiers took
her money and hastened to inform Poulaillon, who now lost all patience,
shut his wife up in a convent, and laid an information before the
Châtelet. It was at this time that the lady had a writ issued against
her by the Chambre Ardente.
As soon as he saw the storm threatening, La Rivière, to whom Madame de
Poulaillon had sacrificed everything, fled to Burgundy, where he hid
behind the skirts of Madame de Coligny, daughter of the famous
Bussy-Rabutin, and widow of the Marquis de Coligny. She fell in love
with La Rivière, who, kept informed of the progress of the trial, joked
pleasantly with his new flame on the misfortunes of his old mistress.
She, though madly in love with the gallant, was shocked. 'If the
misfortune of the lady who has so much merit, I hear, and who loves you
and has loved you so passionately, no longer touches you, what reason
have I to flatter myself I shall keep you always?' This brilliant
cavalier, who insisted on being called the Marquis de la Rivière, Lord
de Courcy, was really a bastard son of the Abbé de la Rivière, Bishop of
Langres.
Madame de Poulaillon was finally examined on June 5, 1679. The
attorney-general had demanded the penalty of torture and death on the
Place de Grève; but the memory of the edifying and touching end of
Madame de Brinvilliers was still strong in the minds of the judges, and
had almost stricken them with remorse. Madame de Poulaillon displayed
before her judges even more grace, more submission to the hand of God,
more sweet and tranquil resignation. So strongly were these men of law
moved, that they could not bring themselves to order the severing of
that charming head. 'This lady, who had infinite spirit,' notes Sagot
the clerk, 'cared little about death, and though she did not expect to
escape, showed during her whole examination an extraordinary presence of
mind, which won the judges' admiration and pity.' La Reynie writes that
the judges were touched 'by her spirit, and by the grace with which at
the last she explained her unhappiness and her crime.' 'The
commissioners,' says Sagot, 'remained in deliberation for four whole
hours, all of them, especially those who had some interest in these
ladies, being prepared for anything which might serve, if not for the
discharge of Madame de Poulaillon, at any rate for the mitigation of the
facts they could not dispute, in so far as that could be done without a
manifest miscarriage of justice. Monsieur de Fieubet was the one who
dilated most on this view, employing all the power of his natural
eloquence; and he it was who saved the life of Madame de Poulaillon,
having brought round to his way of thinking three of the six judges who
had previously decided for death. This was a precedent fortunate for
Mesdames de Dreux and Leféron and other prisoners, and in fact it was
through this that the court lost credit.'
'The great difficulty,' adds La Reynie, 'was afterwards to console
Madame de Poulaillon when she found that she was only condemned to exile
instead of the death she had herself pronounced in presence of the
judges, after having declared the joy she had in thus expiating her
crime, and at the same time winning deliverance from all her other
woes.' On the demand of the young lady herself, her punishment was
increased by royal warrant to detention with the Penitents at Angers.
Meanwhile La Rivière, after making Madame de Coligny a mother, married
her without a trace of compunction. True, shortly afterwards,
Bussy-Rabutin and his daughter, undeceived about the man, endeavoured to
dissolve the union; but the gay spark resisted, and Madame de la Rivière
was forced to pension him off at a very high figure before he would
agree to desert her.
The best society applauded the acquittal of Madame de Poulaillon, while
the middle classes murmured, with so much the more reason that soon
afterwards a certain widow lady named Brunet was condemned with the
greatest harshness, though no more guilty than Mesdames de Poulaillon,
de Dreux, and Leféron.
She had been the wife of a wholesale tradesman in the city. Monsieur and
Madame Brunet entertained very largely, for they provided excellent
music. The fashionable flutist, Philibert Rébillé, musician to the king,
was constantly to be heard there. Brunet worshipped the flutist for his
delightful skill, and Madame Brunet for his charming person. As the
excellent people kept a good table, and the wife was charming, the
artiste responded with great enthusiasm to this double passion. It was
perfect bliss, which might have lasted for a long time to the melodious
sounds of the flute, if Brunet, with the idea of permanently attaching
to himself so pleasant a musician, had not taken it into his head to
offer him his daughter with a handsome dowry, and if Philibert,
delighted with the ducats and the daughter, had not accepted them with
alacrity. Madame Brunet uttered a cry of horror! Philibert explained to
her that he had consulted apostolic notaries, and that for a
consideration it would be possible to obtain canonical letters which
would set things right; and festivities were got up for the betrothal.
In desperation Madame Brunet confided in La Voisin: 'If she had to do
penance for ten years, it was necessary that God should carry off
Brunet, her husband, for she could not abide to see Philibert, whom she
loved passionately, in the arms of her daughter.' She even took her
lover to the sorceress. Philibert deposed at the trial that, under
pretext of showing him a garden, Madame Brunet took him to see a woman
who proceeded to look at his hand: 'I know not who she is, for the woman
was so drunk that she could not say a word.' La Voisin, on being
questioned, related the proceedings of Madame Brunet, adding: 'There are
other details which I would not tell for anything in the world, I would
rather have a dagger thrust into my heart: that is kept for confessors,
not for judges.' François Ravaisson, in publishing this dramatic
declaration, thus comments on it: 'These details were imparted by La
Voisin to La Reynie later; they did honour to Philibert's disposition.
The details given by the judges brought this flute-player into the
height of fashion, and ladies of the court and the city scrambled for
him when he came out of prison.'
Meanwhile, Marie Bosse undertook the operation, for 2000 livres--£400
to-day.
Brunet was poisoned in 1673, and Philibert married the widow.
'My friends advised me,' he declared naïvely before the judges, 'to wed
the mother rather than the daughter, which I did, under the good
pleasure of the king, who signed the contract.'