vain to be allowed to see husband and children for the last time. Her
hand was cut off while she was still alive, then she was hanged, and her
body cast into the fire. Louis XIV, who was fond of his flutist, advised
him to leave France if he was conscious of guilt. But Philibert was a
man of mettle. He went like a gentleman and gave himself up as a
prisoner at Vincennes. He was acquitted on April 7, 1680.
_Louis XIV and the Poison Affair_
Meanwhile the Chambre Ardente was extending its prosecutions over an
ever-widening circle and into higher and higher ranks of society, and by
degrees a singular disquietude awoke, an astonishing uneasiness: it was
no longer the poisoners whom people dreaded, but the magistrates. People
talked about a lady of the highest rank who was declaring everywhere
that the judges and all their proceedings ought to be burnt. La Reynie
asked for the protection of an escort when he went to Vincennes, where
the principal accused persons were. Madame de Sévigné, speaking of the
great lieutenant of police, wrote: 'His life is a proof that there are
no poisoners now.' On February 4, 1680, Louvois wrote to the president
of the court:--
'His Majesty, having been informed of what was said in Paris in
regard to the decrees issued a few days ago by the Chamber, has
commanded me to acquaint you with His Majesty's desire that you
should assure the judges of his protection, and let them understand
that he expects them to continue dispensing justice with firmness.'
Louis sent for Boucherat, the president, the two examining
commissioners, La Reynie and Bezons, and the attorney-general, and they
went out to Versailles. 'On rising from dinner,' writes La Reynie, 'His
Majesty recommended us to do justice and our duty, in extremely strong
and precise terms, indicating to us that he desired, on behalf of the
public weal, that we should penetrate as deeply as possible into the
terrible traffic in poisons, so as to cut its root if this were
possible; he commanded us to do strict justice, without distinction of
person, rank, or sex; and this His Majesty told us in clear and vigorous
terms.'
The determination so vigorously expressed by the king filled La Reynie
with confidence and zeal; it encouraged him in the accomplishment of the
arduous task imposed on him. And such courage was necessary: what
frightful revelations he heard! Was it due to these revelations that,
suddenly, the intentions of the court of Versailles underwent
modification? La Voisin had just been condemned to suffer torture. She
was subjected to it, but only as a matter of form. 'La Voisin was not
tortured at all,' writes La Reynie in indignation, 'and this means not
having been applied, has naturally produced no effect.' It was feared
that the sorceress, whose discretion had been so remarkable hitherto,
might say too much in the agony of torture, and, independently of La
Reynie, the torturers had received their orders. The judges had also
received independent orders, and their reluctance to interrogate the
accused woman was such that, at the moment of her execution, La Voisin,
struck with remorse, conceived it her duty to confess spontaneously
before being handed over to the confessor: 'She felt obliged to say, to
ease her conscience, that a large number of persons of all ranks and
conditions had applied to her for means to procure the death of many
persons, and that debauchery was the chief motive of all these crimes.'
But after the execution of La Voisin, the examinations of her partner
Lesage, of her accomplice the Abbé Guibourg, and of her daughter,
Marguerite Monvoisin, were proceeded with. On August 2, 1680, Louis XIV
wrote from Lille to La Reynie:--
'Having seen the declaration made on the 12th of last month by
Marguerite Monvoisin, prisoner at my castle of Vincennes, I write
you this letter to inform you of my intention that you should
devote all possible care to elucidate the facts contained in the
said declaration--that you should take care to have written down in
separate reports the examinations, confrontations, and everything
concerning the inquiry that may be made of the said declaration,
and that meanwhile you defer reporting to my royal Chamber sitting
at the Arsenal the depositions of Romani and Bertrand.'
Romani and Bertrand were two prisoners with whom we shall have a good
deal to do by and by.
Thus Louis XIV gave orders for the declarations of the girl Monvoisin,
and those of Romani and Bertrand, to be detached from the documents
submitted to the court. On the other hand, Louvois had had the
imprudence to promise Lesage his life if he revealed all he knew. Lesage
related most horrible things. Word then went round not to listen to any
more; he was a liar. But on September 30 and October 1, 1680, these
narratives were confirmed in the most precise manner by the sorceress
Françoise Filastre while under torture. The declarations of Filastre
struck on the ears of Louis XIV like a clap of thunder. In the registers
of the royal council we read as follows:--
'The king, having had shown to him the official report of the
torture of Françoise Filastre, being unwilling to permit, for good
and just considerations important to his service, that certain
facts should be inserted in the copies made for the convenience of
the Court of the Arsenal, His Majesty in Council has commanded that
the minutes and originals of the said proceedings be laid before
the chancellor by the clerk to the commission, and that the said
clerk draw up in his presence a summary of the said proceedings,
in which the said facts shall not be inserted. Given by His Majesty
in Council held at Versailles, May 14, 1681.
(_Signed_) LE TELLIER.'
Thus the king for the second time intervened, and withdrew from the
court certain documents containing new declarations. He saw now,
moreover, that these were in accordance with the truth, and that if the
examinations were continued, it would be impossible to prevent them from
being divulged. On October 1, 1680, the sittings of the court were
suspended.
The documents which the king had thus caused to be separated from the
rest were locked and sealed up in a casket, which was deposited with
Sagot, the clerk, who lived in the Rue Quincampoix. When Sagot died, on
October 10, 1680, the casket was removed to Rue
Sainte-Croix-de-la-Bretonnerie, to the house of his successor in the
clerkship to the Châtelet and the Chambre Ardente, Nicolas Gaudion. On
July 13, 1709, the casket was taken to the king's private room, where,
in the presence of Chancellor Pontchartrain, Louis XIV burnt the papers
in his grate: 'His Majesty in Council, after having looked through and
examined the minutes and proceedings laid before him by the chancellor,
and having had them burnt in his presence, commanded that Gaudion should
then be wholly and formally discharged of the same.'
Louis XIV had just suffered a cruel blow, not only in his deepest
affections, but in his dignity as sovereign, by the declarations of
obscure and infamous criminals made before the Chambre Ardente. The very
throne of France was befouled by them. Colbert and Louvois were for a
moment in dire alarm. The all-powerful monarch, aided by his two great
ministers, believed that he had buried in unfathomable darkness the
terrible story of his shame and grief. But one flame had not been
extinguished. It had not been noticed. But it has continued to burn, and
grown larger, and thrown its blaze widely around. It is in the full
daylight glare that the facts are about to appear before our eyes.
II. MADAME DE MONTESPAN
The Marquise Françoise Athénais de Montespan was born in 1641 at the
castle of Tonnay-Charente, the daughter of Gabriel de Rochechouart, Duke
de Mortmart, lord of Vivonne, and of Diane de Granseigne, daughter of
Jean de Marsillac. She was called Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente until
her marriage. 'Her mother,' says Madame de Caylus, 'was anxious to imbue
her with principles of sound piety.' The piety of Mademoiselle de
Tonnay-Charente was violent and inflammatory. Appointed in 1660 maid of
honour to the queen, 'she gave her an extraordinary opinion of her
virtue by taking communion every day.' In 1679, when she had been for
several years the king's mistress, she much astonished the Princess
d'Harcourt by sending her on January 1, as a new year's gift, a
hair-shirt, a scourge, and a prayer-book adorned with diamonds.
Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente married, on January 28, 1663, a noble of
her own province, L. H. de Pardaillan, Marquis de Montespan, who was a
year younger than herself. If she ever loved him, it was not for long.
As a lady-in-waiting to the queen, she was fascinated by the
magnificence surrounding Louise de la Vallière, the favourite of Louis,
who had become, in spite of her reserve and her timid and gentle
bearing, the object of intense and widespread jealousy, hatred, and
wrath. Madame de Montespan especially displayed her spiteful envy in
malicious gibes and insulting irony. Everybody knows it was not long
before she replaced her.
Louise de la Vallière had kept in the shade, shunning publicity and
honours; Madame de Montespan in her pride wished to dazzle all eyes.
'Thunderous and triumphant' is Madame de Sévigné's description of her in
her radiant glory at Versailles. She draws elsewhere a picture of the
court in which the king's favourite shone: 'At three o'clock the king
and queen, with Monsieur, Madame, Mademoiselle, all the princes and
princesses, Madame de Montespan, all her suite, all the courtiers and
ladies, in a word, all that is known as the court of France, were found
in these handsome apartments of the king. They are divinely furnished,
everything is magnificent. Madame de Montespan was dressed in _point de
France_, her hair done in a thousand curls, two hanging from her temples
very low upon her cheeks; black ribbons on her head, with her pearls as
_maréchale_ of the Hospital, and embellished with earrings and pendants;
in a word, a triumph of beauty that threw the ambassadors into admiring
wonder. She knew that people were complaining how she prevented all
France from seeing the king; she has restored him to us, as you see, and
you would not believe what joy it has given everybody, and what beauty
it has given the court.'
'Her beauty is marvellous,' writes Madame de Sévigné on another day,
'and her get-up is as wonderful as her beauty, and her gaiety as her
get-up.' Greater still was the renown of her wit. 'She was always the
best of company,' says Saint-Simon, 'with graces which palliated her
high and mighty airs, and were indeed suited to them. It was impossible
to have more wit, more fine polish, more striking expressions,
eloquence, natural propriety, which gave her, as it were, an individual
style of talk, but delicious, and which by force of habit was so
communicable that her nieces and the persons constantly about her, her
women, and those who, without being her servants, had been brought up
along with her, all caught the style, which is recognisable to-day among
the few survivors.'
She surrounded herself with a brilliant luxury. Here is one of her
dresses as described by Madame de Sévigné: 'Gold upon gold, gold
embroideries, gold edgings, and, over all, gold crimpings, sewed with
one sort of gold blended with another sort, which makes up the divinest
stuff imaginable: it was the fairies who made this masterpiece in
secret.'
In her estates at Clagny, with their immense park, a second Versailles
was to be seen alongside Versailles itself. The king had first had built
there for his mistress a bijou residence--a country villa. 'She said
that that might do for an opera girl.' The house was pulled down and the
château erected, after the plans of Mansard. At Versailles the favourite
had twenty rooms on the first floor; the queen occupied eleven rooms on
the second. Dangeau notes that Madame de Montespan's train was borne by
the Maréchale de Noailles; the queen's was carried by a simple page.
The influence of the young favourite spelled fortune, hope, and honour
to ministers, courtiers, and generals. Her father became governor of
Paris, her brother a marshal of France. In her drawing-room, frequented
by all the most distinguished persons in rank and literature, a quite
unique style of wit came into existence, which her contemporaries often
refer to--a wit at once choice and subtle, natural and pleasant. It must
be added that, by a wonderful coincidence, her reign, which lasted
thirteen years, exactly corresponded with the zenith of the age of Louis
XIV.
Madame de Montespan used to go about escorted by royal bodyguards. As
she journeyed throughout the whole length and breadth of France,
governors and lord-lieutenants offered her their homage in great
ceremony, and cities sent deputations to her. She passed through the
provinces in a six-horse coach, followed by another coach also drawn by
six horses, in which sat six ladies of her suite, and then came the
baggage-wagons and six mules and a dozen cavaliers. It is like a fairy
tale from Perrault.
She had by Louis XIV seven children, whom the Parlement was to
legitimatise and declare royal children of France. The oldest, the Duke
de Maine, received the principality of Dombes and the county of Eu; in
1675, when five years old, he was appointed to the infantry regiment of
Marshal Turenne; in 1682, the king gave him the governorship of
Languedoc; on September 15, 1688, the office of general of the galleys
and the lieutenant-generalship of the Levant. The elder of the
daughters, Mademoiselle de Nantes, married the Duke de Bourbon; the
second, Mademoiselle de Blois, made a still more brilliant match. 'The
king,' says Saint-Simon, 'determined to marry Mademoiselle de Blois to
the Duke de Chartres; this was the king's only nephew, and far higher
than the princes of the blood.'
Madame Palatine[9] said of the Marquise de Montespan: 'She is more
ambitious than dissipated.' There is justice in the saying. She had an
immeasurable pride. Mademoiselle de la Vallière loved the king as a
mistress, Madame de Maintenon as a governess, Madame de Montespan as a
tyrant.
* * * * *
It was in 1666 that historians note the first signs of Madame de
Montespan's ambition. She was then aspiring to the king's love, and it
is precisely at this time that La Reynie, in commenting on the
proceedings of the Chambre Ardente, places her first visits to the
sorceresses.
Marguerite Monvoisin, La Voisin's daughter, spoke thus before the
judges: 'Every time that anything fresh happened to Madame de Montespan,
or she feared any diminution in the favour of the king, she told my
mother, so that she might provide a remedy; and my mother at once had
recourse to priests whom she got to say masses, and gave my mother
powders to be given to the king.' La Voisin's daughter explained that
these powders were for love, composed now in one way, now in another,
according to the various formulae of witchcraft. Among the ingredients
were cantharides, the dust of dried moles, blood of bats, and other vile
substances. Of these a paste was made, which was placed under the
chalice during the sacrifice of the mass, and blessed by the priest at
the moment of the offertory. Louis XIV swallowed this compound mixed
with his food.
'My mother,' said the girl, 'several times took to Madame de Montespan
at Saint-Germain, Versailles, and Clagny, these love-powders to give to
the king--some which had passed under the chalice and others which had
not; my mother sent some to Madame de Montespan by the hand of the
demoiselle Desoeillets (one of her waiting-maids), and I myself gave
her some in the church of the Petits Pères, and another time on the road
to St. Cloud.'
The depositions of Marguerite Monvoisin are important. She had never
been mixed up with her mother's sorceries, but she had known about them.
La Reynie observes that her declarations exhibit 'a certain air of
ingenuousness, or else, if they are false, every one is mightily
deceived.' He adds that 'she mentions so many circumstances and so many
different transactions which are not self-contradictory, that it is
morally impossible for them to have been invented, in addition to which
she is not clever enough to invent and to follow up what she has
invented. Several of these facts are proved genuine; she mentions living
people.' The examining judge says further, that the very denials of the
sorceresses accused by Marguerite of complicity with Madame de
Montespan, their embarrassment, their contradictions, their refusal to
answer when they were conscious of being hard pressed, confirm her
testimony.
When Marguerite Monvoisin made her depositions, her mother had been dead
for several months. In the examination of July 12, 1680, we read:--
'Why did you not sooner give information of these evil designs against
the person of the king?'
'I could not tell what I had heard without ruining my mother; I did not
believe myself obliged to tell; I asked advice of no one, and have
declared all I know on the matter.'
'Did you not know you were bound to tell, and that it would be a great
crime to hide anything concerning this matter?'
'I knew well enough the importance of the things I have stated; I knew
it before I told them, and was sure of it after I had done so; and I
knew there was nothing but was of great importance.'
'Did you know it would be a great crime to make the slightest addition
to the facts which you have declared?'
'Yes, and those of whom I have spoken can tell you a good deal; I think
I have diminished rather than increased; I had no other idea but to
state the truth, having nothing more to fear in regard to my mother; if
I remember any other circumstance, or if any is recalled to my memory, I
will confess the truth.'
Several writers have thought that the sorceresses compromised the
greatest names in France before the judges in the hope of saving their
lives, by connecting themselves with personages so high in station that
no one would dare to lift a hand against them. Quite the contrary. We
see La Voisin concealing, up to the very moment of her execution, her
relations with the king's mistress, for her greatest fear was that the
horrible punishment meted out to regicides might be applied to her. In
an expansive moment, she said to her guards at Vincennes: 'I fear, more
than anything else that I am asked about, a certain journey to court.'
We shall have much to do presently with this journey the sorceress made
to court on behalf of Madame de Montespan. It was at the last moment,
after hearing her death-sentence, against which there was no appeal,
that Françoise Filastre made her startling depositions of September 30
and October 1, 1680, as the result of which Louis XIV, in terror, caused
the sittings of the Chambre Ardente to be suspended.
The statements of Marguerite Monvoisin were confirmed in detail by those
of the Abbé Guibourg, with whom she had no means of communicating after
her arrest. Thus, as La Reynie says, they were proved 'according to the
rules of justice.'
To-day, history furnishes still further proofs. We have just heard the
daughter of La Voisin: 'Every time anything fresh happened to Madame de
Montespan, or she feared some diminution in the favour of the king, she
told my mother.' Now, if we follow in the correspondence of Madame de
Sévigné and the court chronicles the checkered story of the relations
between Madame de Montespan and the king from 1667 to 1680, and compare
it further with the depositions made before the Chambre Ardente, we find
a precise confirmation of the declarations of Marguerite Monvoisin. It
was several times observed by La Reynie that 'the time mentioned by the
accused is of consequence to Madame de Montespan.'
How, and by whom, was the haughty favourite led to the haunts of the
witches? Historians have put forth many hypotheses on this subject. They
were not acquainted with the declaration of La Chaboissière, the valet
of Vanens, whom we have already mentioned: 'that the chevalier de Vanens
deserved to be drawn and quartered for the counsel he had given to
Madame de Montespan.' La Chaboissière had scarcely let this confession
escape him than he wished in great agitation to retract it, and begged
that the words might not be written down in the report of his
examination. La Reynie disentangled this confession from the chaos of
official documents, and sharply underlined it as the starting-point of
the drama.
The relations between the favourite and the sorceresses began, then, at
the very time when her dawning love for the king was noticed. In 1667 we
find her in Rue de la Tannerie, in the company of the magician Lesage
and the Abbé Mariette, priest of St. Séverin. The latter belonged to a
good Parisian family; he was tall and well made, with a very pale
complexion and black hair. At one end of a little room an altar was
erected: Mariette, in sacerdotal vestments, uttered incantations, Lesage
sang the _Veni Creator_, then Mariette read a gospel on the head of
Madame de Montespan, who knelt before him and recited exorcisms against
Louise de la Vallière. She added--the very words are found in one of
Lesage's declarations--'I ask for the affection of the king and of the
Dauphin, that it may be continued, that the queen may be barren, that
the king leave her bed and table for me, that I obtain from him all that
I ask for myself and my relatives; that my servants and domestics may be
pleasing to him; that, beloved and respected by great nobles, I may be
called to the councils of the king and know what passes there; and that,
this affection being redoubled on what has existed in the past, the king
may leave La Vallière and look no more upon her; and that, the queen
being repudiated, I may espouse the king.'
On another occasion, in the church of St. Severin, the Abbé Mariette, in
the presence of Madame de Montespan, recited charms over the hearts of
two pigeons which had been consecrated in the names of Louis XIV and
Louise de la Vallière during the sacrifice of the mass.
Early in the year 1668, Mariette and Lesage had the audacity to proceed
to Saint-Germain, the headquarters of the court, and in the very château
itself, in the portion occupied by Madame de Thianges, Madame de
Montespan's sister, they resumed their sorceries. Aromatic fumigations
filled the room with a bluish vapour, with which was mingled the pungent
scent of incense. Madame de Montespan formulated the incantation.
'This,' declared Lesage, 'was to obtain the favour of the king, and to
cause Mademoiselle de la Vallière's death.' Mariette said it was merely
to get her sent away. Now it happened that, not long after these
proceedings, in that very year 1668, Madame de Montespan realised her
dream and was taken to the king's heart. The star of La Vallière rapidly
paled. In 1669 Madame de Montespan was brought to bed of the first of
the seven children she gave to Louis. If she had ever doubted the
efficacy of these dealings with the devil, confidence would have dated
from that day.