and in the records of the Chambre Ardente. On September 2, 1676, Madame
de Sévigné writes: 'The vision of Madame de Soubise has passed quicker
than a lightning-flash: they have made it up again. _Quanto_ the other
day at cards had her head resting familiarly on her friend's shoulder,
and we fancied that piece of affectation meant "I am better than ever."'
But on September 11 the position has changed. 'Everybody believes that
the star of Madame de Montespan is paling. There are tears, unfeigned
disappointments, affected cheerfulness, sulks; at last, my dear, it is
all over. Some tremble, others rejoice, some wish for immutability, the
majority for a dramatic change; in a word, we are all eyes and ears for
what the most clear-sighted say.' 'Every one thinks that the king loves
her no longer,' we read in a letter of September 30, 'and that Madame de
Montespan is embarrassed between the consequences which would follow the
return of his favours and the danger of no longer enjoying them--the
fear that they are being sought elsewhere. Apart from that, she has not
very nicely accepted the position of friend: so much beauty as she still
has, and so much pride, find it difficult to come down to second place.
Jealousies are keen. Have they ever stopped anything?' Again, on October
15, 1676: 'If _Quanto_ had packed up her traps at Easter the year she
returned to Paris, she would not have been in her present distress; it
would have been sensible to adopt that course, but human weakness is
great; one wishes to make the most of the remains of one's beauty, and
this economy brings ruin rather than riches.' Madame de Ludres had just
succeeded Madame de Soubise.
The anxieties of Madame de Montespan were further enhanced by the
brilliance, increasing every day, of a new star in the sky of
Versailles. At its rising it had shed a pale, discreet, modest light,
but a light which twinkled with little mocking scintillations. The widow
Scarron, now become Madame de Maintenon, had been chosen as governess of
the children of the king and Madame de Montespan. What strides the
governess's fortune had taken in a few years! 'But let us speak of the
friend' (Madame de Maintenon), writes Madame de Sévigné on May 6, 1676:
'she is still more triumphant than the Montespan. Everything is
submitted to her dominion. All the chamber-women of her neighbour are
hers: one hands her the rouge-pot on her knees; another brings her her
gloves; a third puts her to sleep; she salutes no one, and I fancy that
really she laughs in her sleeve at this servitude.'
Madame de Sévigné thus tells us what was passing at court; Marguerite
Monvoisin will tell us what was going on among the sorceresses. 'The
daughter of La Voisin,' writes La Reynie, 'says that she has seen this
sort of mass celebrated over the body by Guibourg in her mother's house.
She helped her mother to get things ready: a mattress on seats, two
stools at the sides, on which were candlesticks with candles; after
which Guibourg came out of the little side-chamber clothed in his
chasuble--white, spotted with black fir-cones--and after that La Voisin
brought in the woman on whose body the mass was to be said. Madame de
Montespan had this sort of mass said three years ago (_i.e._ in 1676) at
her mother's house, where she came about ten o'clock and only left at
midnight. And when La Voisin told her that it was necessary for her to
fix a time when the other two masses might be said, which were necessary
if her affair was to be successful, Madame de Montespan said that she
could not find time, that La Voisin would have to do what was necessary
to assure success, which she promised her and did, and the masses were
said on La Voisin herself by Guibourg.' (This again shows the sincerity
of the sorceress in the carrying out of these practices.) 'The girl
Voisin having notified all the circumstances of the proceeding, the
arrangement of the place, that of the person--she knew Madame de
Montespan--the preparations of the priest clothed in his sacerdotal
vestments, the terms of the incantation, in which the documents show
that the names of Louis de Bourbon and Madame de Montespan were
mentioned--the girl Voisin adds that a child had its throat cut at the
mass said for Madame de Montespan at her mother's.'
'When I was grown up,' said Marguerite Monvoisin, 'my mother was no
longer reluctant to trust me, and I was present at this sort of mass,
and saw that the lady was stark naked on the mattress, with her head
hanging down, supported by a pillow on an overturned chair, the legs too
hanging over, a napkin on the belly, a cross on the napkin, and the
chalice on the belly.' She adds that this lady was Madame de Montespan.
'At the mass of Madame de Montespan,' said Marguerite in the course of
another examination, 'a child was presented which apparently had been
prematurely born, and it was put into a basin. Guibourg cut its throat,
poured the blood into a chalice, and consecrated it with the wafer,
finished his mass, then proceeded to take the child's entrails. My
mother next day carried the blood and wafer to Dumesnil to be distilled,
in a glass vessel which Madame de Montespan took away.' These facts were
confirmed on October 23, 1680, by the confrontation of Marguerite
Monvoisin with Guibourg--with this variation, that Guibourg tried to
shuffle on to La Voisin the butchery of the child.
'Guibourg said that it was not true that he had opened the child,
because it would have stained his alb: he found the child already
opened.
'The girl Voisin, on the contrary, declared that he cut open the heart
himself, took out some clotted blood, and put it into the vessel into
which the other blood and the rest had been put, which Madame de
Montespan took away; and that to make the clotted blood go in, a common
glass was broken, which, with its foot knocked off, was made to act as a
funnel.
'Guibourg said that he did not open the child's stomach, but that having
found it open, he did in fact draw out the entrails and open the heart
to get out the blood that was in it, and that he put it into a crystal
vase with some portions of the consecrated wafer: the whole was carried
off by the lady on whose body he had said mass; and that he always
believed the lady was Madame de Montespan.'
This picture is fraught with so much horror that we could not bring
ourselves to admit its authenticity if the evidence of Marguerite
Monvoisin and the Abbé Guibourg were not corroborated by confessions
extorted from other accomplices of these crimes, who were arrested at
different dates and examined separately--Lesage, Lacoudraye, Delaporte,
Vertemart, Françoise Filastre, the Abbé Cotton--confirmed by the
declarations of several witnesses who had picked up, before the trial,
fragments of talk which escaped the accused. La Reynie emphasises the
fact that the declarations of Lesage and the girl Monvoisin were made at
an interval of sixteen months, and without their having had any
opportunity during those months of communicating with each other.
On October 11, 1680, La Reynie writes to Louvois, who wished to save
Madame de Montespan while prosecuting the charges against the other
persons, and proposed, with that end, to withdraw from the case the
declarations made under torture by Filastre and the Abbé Cotton, which
contained the gravest charges against the favourite: 'It is certain,
even if we found a legitimate expedient for concealing from the judges
for the present the facts which it would be well to keep secret, even
for the sake of justice itself, that these very facts would crop up
again from the woman Chappelain, from Guibourg, Galet, Pelletier,
Delaporte, and perhaps from several more when under trial.'
On the subject of the deposition made by Guibourg, La Reynie writes: 'It
is morally impossible that Guibourg has deceived us in his declaration,
and that he invented what he tells about the incantations said in course
of the masses on the women's bodies. His mind is not active or
consistent enough for such continuous thought as would have been
necessary to invent what he had said on this subject, because, even
supposing he were capable of such application, he has not enough
acquaintance with what goes on in the world, and could not have devised
so consistent a story in regard to Madame de Montespan.' Elsewhere he
writes: 'Guibourg and the girl Monvoisin have corroborated one another
about circumstances so particular and so horrible that it is difficult
to conceive two persons being able to imagine and fabricate them unknown
to each other. It seems that these things must have occurred, or they
could not have been described.'
The illustrious magistrate adds the following reflections:--
'1. The time of the relations of La Voisin with Latour, the journeys to
Saint-Germain, and the powders which she made him work at, was the year
1676.
'2. The time of the abominations described by Guibourg and the girl
Monvoisin fits the same period.
'3. Two years ago Lesage spoke of Latour, the poisons, Desoeillets,
and the journeys of La Voisin in 1676.
'4. It was established at the trial that two or three years before
Lesage was taken, he testified that he feared the business would ruin
him. They said at that time that the king had the vapours. He declared
that he wished to leave La Voisin on that account, and because of the
dealings she had with Desoeillets.
'From the beginning of these inquiries, these same facts have been
spoken of; La Bosse, the first to be tried, gave the first inkling of
them; she spoke of them under torture; but, because the king had not yet
allowed this sort of facts to be collected in regard to persons of
consideration, and because there was nothing to make us pay the least
attention to them, no mention was made in the report of the torture of
La Bosse of what she had said about Madame de Montespan.'
In this year 1676, Madame de Montespan not only had recourse to the
incantations of the black mass; at her instigation, the sorceresses sent
La Boissière and Françoise Filastre to Normandy to a certain Louis
Galet, who had 'fine secrets' in regard to poison and love. Galet gave
them powders. As soon as his name was uttered by the prisoner before the
Chambre Ardente, an order was given for his arrest. He was flung into
prison at Caen on February 23, 1680. While still far away from the other
prisoners, detained at Vincennes or the Bastille, he was put through
interrogations, and the depositions made by him and the others coincided
with remarkable accuracy. And La Reynie's conclusion is: 'Guibourg and
Galet having confessed after the torture of La Filastre, they gave
between them a complete proof of these facts.'
* * * * *
It must be confessed that Madame de Montespan would have been of a
singularly incredulous nature if she had not retained a blind
confidence in the influence of the devil as invoked by the magicians
and sorceresses. Madame de Ludres was discarded, and Louis fell at
Madame de Montespan's feet again. On June 11, 1677, Madame de Sévigné
wrote to Madame de Grignan: 'Oh, my daughter, what a triumph at
Versailles! what redoubled pride! what a re-entry into possession! I was
in the room for an hour. She was in bed, decked out, with her hair done:
she was resting for the _medianoche_ (supper about midnight). She
launched shafts of contempt at poor _Io_ (Madame de Ludres), and laughed
at her having the audacity to complain of her. Imagine all that an
ungenerous pride could make her say in triumph, and you will get near
the truth. It is said that the little woman (Madame de Ludres) will
resume her ordinary duties about Madame. She went off to walk in perfect
solitude with La Moreuil in the garden of the Marshal Du Plessis.' On
June 18, Madame de Sévigné wrote to Bussy-Rabutin: 'Madame de Montespan
wanted to strangle her (Madame de Ludres), and makes her life terrible.'
On July 7, to Madame de Grignan: 'Poor _Isis_ (Madame de Ludres) has
not been to Versailles. She has remained in her solitude. When a certain
person (Madame de Montespan) speaks of her, she says, "that rag." The
event makes everything permissible.'
'_Quanto_ and her friend Louis XIV are together longer and more eagerly
than ever they were. The ardour of the first years has returned, and all
fears are banished, all restraint removed, which persuades us that never
was empire seen more firmly established.' And a little later: 'Madame de
Montespan was the other day covered with diamonds; the brilliance of so
blazing a divinity was more than one could bear. The attachment seems
greater than ever: they are all eyes for one another: never has love
been seen to resume its sway like this.'
Yet, courted and victorious as she was, the favourite appeared a prey to
torment; she was agitated, in a terrible fever. On January 13, 1678, the
Comte de Rébenac wrote to the Marquis de Feuquières: 'Madame de
Montespan's gambling has reached such a pitch that losses of 100,000
crowns (£60,000 to-day) are common. On Christmas Day she lost 700,000
crowns; she staked 150,000 pistoles (£280,000 at the present day) on
three cards, and won.' She lost her head in her triumph--her last
triumph, dazzling but ephemeral, and about to be followed by days of
cruel anguish.
In March 1679, Madame de Maintenon asked the Abbé Gobelin 'to pray and
to have prayers said for the king, who is on the brink of a deep
precipice.' This 'precipice' was the heart of Marie Angélique de
Scoraille, demoiselle de Fontanges. She was eighteen years old, fair,
with glossy flaxen hair; her large eyes, with their look of childish
wonderment, were a light grey, deep and limpid; her skin was white as
milk, her cheeks a lovely rose-pink; and in disposition, said her
contemporaries, she was a genuine heroine of romance. She lived at Court
in the capacity of maid of honour to Madame, as Madame de Ludres and
Mademoiselle de la Vallière had done before her. 'Mademoiselle de
Fontanges,' says Madame Palatine, 'is lovely as an angel, from head to
foot.' If we may trust Bussy-Rabutin, 'her relatives, seeing her beauty
and grace, and having more love for their fortune than for their
honour, clubbed together to fit her out for Court, and to provide her
with means corresponding to the position she was entering.'
This was a thunderbolt for Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan. We read in
the _Précis historique de Saint-Germain-en-Laye_, by Lorot and Sivry:
'Madame de Montespan left Saint-Germain suddenly because of the jealousy
she has conceived for Mademoiselle de Fontanges.' But the royal lover
did not allow his mistresses to leave him at their own whim. He had
imposed on Louise de la Vallière the bitter martyrdom of following as an
expiatory victim the triumph of Madame de Montespan; he now compelled
Madame de Montespan to witness the triumph of Mademoiselle de Fontanges.
The proud marquise resigned herself to it, at least in appearance. On
March 30, 1679, she wrote to the Duke de Noailles: 'All is very quiet
here; the king only comes into my room after mass and after supper. It
is much better to see each other seldom but pleasantly, than often with
embarrassment,' Soon even this apparent satisfaction was withdrawn from
her. The desertion was public and complete.
According to Madame de Sévigné, 'there was a ball at Villers-Cotterets,
at Monsieur's place. There were masques. Mademoiselle de Fontanges
appeared there in great brilliance, and adorned by the hands of Madame
de Montespan.' Bussy rejoiced at the disgrace. 'Madame de Montespan has
fallen, the king regards her no more, and you may be sure the courtiers
follow his example.'
On April 6, Madame de Sévigné wrote: 'Madame de Montespan is enraged;
she cried a good deal yesterday, and you may guess the martyrdom her
pride is suffering.' On June 15, she replies to her daughter: 'It is an
infernal position, as you say, that of her who goes four paces ahead'
(alluding to Madame de Montespan).
She launched out into epigrams against her fortunate rival, just as she
had satirised Louise de la Vallière. 'Madame de Montespan,' writes
Bussy-Rabutin, 'seeing that the great Alcandre (Louis XIV) was drifting
away from her more and more every day, became so choleric that she began
publicly to abuse Mademoiselle de Fontanges. She told every one that
the great Alcandre was surely not very fastidious to love a creature who
had had her little love affairs in the country; that she had neither wit
nor education; and that, properly speaking, she was only a beautiful
painting. She said a thousand other things about her equally irritating.
Indeed, she always displayed the same proud spirit which nothing had
been able to quell.'
Mademoiselle de Fontanges responded by loading her predecessor and all
her children with costly presents. She had just been proclaimed a
duchess with an annuity of 20,000 crowns. The fury of Madame de
Montespan broke out. She had a violent scene with Louis, and when the
king reproached her with her pride, her domineering spirit, and other
defects, she replied with haughty scorn, concentrating all the violence
of her wrath in one of those hard and bitter words which had made her so
much feared in the time of her reign; she answered, 'that if she had the
imperfections of which he accused her, at any rate she did not smell
worse than he.'
'My mother,' said the girl Monvoisin, 'told me that Madame de Montespan
wanted at that time to go to extremities, and tried to induce her to do
things for which she had much repugnance. My mother gave me to
understand that it was against the king, and after hearing what had
passed at the house of Trianon (a sorceress, partner of La Voisin), I
could not doubt it.' The deserted mistress resolved to put an end to
Louis and Mademoiselle de Fontanges. She applied to the sorceress of
Villeneuve-sur-Gravois, and had no difficulty in getting together four
accomplices in the terrible room in the Rue Beauregard: these four were
La Voisin and La Trianon, who undertook to put Louis out of the way, and
Romani and Bertrand, 'artists in poisons,' who promised to kill
Mademoiselle de Fontanges. Madame de Montespan gave them money.
The king was to be poisoned first. La Voisin and her associates intended
at first to put magic powders, prepared according to the formulae of the
conjuring books, on the clothes of the king, or in some place where he
was to pass, 'which Mademoiselle Desoeillets, the companion of Madame
de Montespan, said could be done easily.' The king would die of decline.
But after reflection, La Voisin decided on means, the execution of which
struck her as more certain. In conformity with the ancient custom of the
kings of France, Louis XIV used to receive in person on certain days the
petitions presented by his subjects. Everybody was introduced to his
presence without distinction of rank or condition. It was resolved to
prepare a petition and steep it in powders that had gone under the
chalice; the king would take it in his hands and get his death-blow. La
Trianon undertook the preparation of the paper, and La Voisin to place
it in the hands of the king.
The petition was drawn up. The king's intervention was asked in favour
of a certain Blessis, an alchemist whom the Marquis de Termes was
keeping confined in his château. La Voisin betook herself to her friend
Léger, a _valet de chambre_ of Montausier, and asked of him a letter of
recommendation to one of his friends at Saint-Germain, who would get
her passed in among the first to an audience with the king, so that she
might herself hand him her petition. Léger replied that it was
unnecessary for her to go to Saint-Germain, as he would undertake to
forward the petition by a sure route; but the sorceress insisted on
presenting it herself.
The boldness of La Voisin terrified the most courageous of her
companions. The majority of them feared, not death, but the horrible
tortures reserved by the law for regicides. In order to frighten her, La
Trianon cast her horoscope. This document was found among the papers
seized on the sorceress by the Chambre Ardente. La Trianon foretold that
La Voisin would be implicated in a trial for a crime against the state.
'Bah!' she replied, 'there are 100,000 crowns to be gained.' That was
the price agreed upon by La Voisin and Madame de Montespan for the
poisoning of Louis XIV.
La Voisin set out for Saint-Germain on Sunday, March 5, 1679,
accompanied by Romani and Bertrand. She returned on Thursday, March 9,
very much put out: she had not been able to approach the king so as to
give him the petition. She could have put it on the table placed near
the king for that purpose, but the paper was useless unless it were
placed in the king's own hands. She said that she would return to
Saint-Germain, and when her husband asked her what the urgency was, she
replied: 'I must accomplish my design or perish in the attempt!' 'What!
perish!' exclaimed Monvoisin, 'that's a good deal for a piece of paper.'
On Friday, March 10, the 'missionaries'--priests of a community founded
by St. Vincent de Paul, which has already been mentioned--paid a visit
to the sorceress. La Voisin took fright, and gave the petition to her
daughter to burn, which Marguerite did at dawn on Saturday morning. It
is needless to say that the paper had always been kept in an envelope,
for to touch it, said the sorceresses, would be certain death. On
Sunday, March 12, La Voisin was arrested; it was on Monday the 13th that
she had meant to return to Saint-Germain. News of the arrest got
abroad, and on Wednesday, March 15, Madame de Montespan fled from Court.
In a succession of hasty notes--the sentences are not even completed,
and we have filled them out for greater clearness--La Reynie builds up a
proof of the attempt on the life of Louis XIV, planned by La Voisin as
the instrument of Madame de Montespan:--
'By the depositions of the girl Voisin, Romani, and Bertrand, it is
proved that the journey of La Voisin to Saint-Germain was to present the
petition: Bertrand wrote it out, went to learn from La Voisin what she
had done, learnt that she had been there since Sunday without being able
to present it, had brought it back, and was going to return. From this
it is evident that the ultimate object of the journey of La Voisin to
Saint-Germain was to present the petition.
'La Trianon and La Vautier agree as to the journey. La Trianon noted in
her horoscope the state affair, the crime of high treason; when
questioned she gave bad answers; among the facts confessed to, denies
the petition; if it were an unimportant matter, would have no interest
in denying it: must have had an object, which can be nothing else than
what the girl Voisin says.
'The journey to Saint-Germain is the more suspicious in that La Voisin,
questioned as to her various journeys, has never mentioned that one, and
would have made no ado about mentioning it if there were nothing in it.
'To which must be added the confession made by Voisin to her guards in
prison, about the fear she had that she would be asked to explain her
journey. She said, "God has protected the king!"'
La Reynie adds: 'La Trianon agrees that she told the girl Voisin that
the journey to Saint-Germain was the cause of her mother's arrest, that
this journey would do her harm, that she would be involved in some
affair of state. At the same time, La Voisin did not appear to be
pleased with Blessis (and consequently had no reason to make any efforts
to secure his liberty). What is still more considerable, La Trianon and
the girl Monvoisin agree that the state crime mentioned in the
horoscope was the journey to Saint-Germain.' 'Finally,' observes La
Reynie, 'this petition has been mentioned at the trial, long before the
girl Monvoisin was arrested.' On September 27, 1679, Louvois wrote to
Louis XIV: 'Your Majesty will find in this packet what Lesage has said
about the journey of La Voisin to Saint-Germain; he cites so many people
as witnesses to his allegations that it is difficult to believe he
invented them.' And La Reynie gives confirmation: 'Before making her
declaration, the girl Monvoisin said something about it to two prisoners
who are with her. Finally, she tried to do away with herself by
strangling before making these same declarations.'
The assassination of the Duchess de Fontanges was intended to crown the
vengeance of Madame de Montespan. La Voisin exclaimed, in regard to
this, when dining with La Trianon: 'Oh! what a fine thing is a lover's
spite!' Romani and Bertrand were engaged to poison the young lady at the
same time that La Voisin was killing Louis _XIV_; but the poisons
employed against her were to be less rapid, so that 'she might die a
lingering death,' said the accomplices, 'and that it might be said that
she had died of grief at the death of the king.'