‘For, look you, messieurs,’ the little chapelier would say, when he got out of Philippe’s ear-shot, and was traversing the Place Maubert, ‘Madame de Brinvilliers had as many accomplices as our good King Louis—whom Montespan preserve!—has sweethearts. Else, whence came the powerful armed force which unhorsed me on the road to Le Bourget?’
‘She had dealings with the sorcerers,’ observed a neighbour.
‘I believe it,’ replied M. Picard. ‘I heard of her with Exili, who is about to suffer at the gibbet of Montfaucon, the night M. de Sainte-Croix died. And the exempt’s guards, who returned to Paris, have affirmed that she flew past them on a whirlwind whilst they halted at Le Bourget. She will never be taken—no: the devil would save her from the centre of the Chambre Ardente itself, even if M. La Reynie had the care of her. Allons! buvons! it is a wicked world!’
And then the little bourgeois and his neighbours turned into the nearest tavern, and, whatever might be the time of day at their entrance, never appeared until after curfew had sounded, when Maître Picard was usually conducted home to the Rue de la Harpe by the Gascon, Jean Blacquart, whose unwillingness to engage in personal encounter was scarcely sufficient to keep the chapelier from pot-valiantly embroiling himself with everybody unarmed that he chanced to meet. Our business is not, however, so much with these personages just at present; but with those of whom we have not heard for some little time.
Night was closing round the gloomy precincts of the Cimetière des Innocents—mysterious, cold, cheerless. The snow lay upon the burial-ground, and clung to the decaying wreaths and garlands that rotted on the iron crosses which started up from the earth. The solemn and dreary place was doubly desolate in the wintry trance of nature. In the centre of the cemetery a tall obelisk arose, and on the summit of this, some fifteen feet from the ground, was a large lantern, from which a pale light gleamed over the abodes of the dead, throwing its rays sufficiently far to reveal a ghastly procession of corpses, of all ages and professions, painted on the walls and covered charnels in which the wealthier classes were interred who chose to carry their exclusiveness into the very grave. This danse macabre, or dance of death, was then rapidly becoming invisible at different stages of its march. At various parts of the enclosure small lamps struggled with the wind, as they hung before images of the Virgin placed in niches of the walls and tombs, and lights were visible in the higher windows of the crowded, and not unpicturesque, buildings that enclosed the cemetery; but elsewhere everything was dark, and the place was untenanted but by the dead.
One figure, however, might have been seen kneeling at a fresh grave for some time, in spite of the inclemency of the weather. And about this the snow had been cleared away; the chaplets on the small cross were fresh, and a few dark evergreens were planted at the head and foot. A scroll in the ironwork bore the inscription, ‘Cy giste Gaudin de Sainte-Croix, qui trépassa, la vingt-neuvième année de son âge.’ It was the tomb of the guilty lover of the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, and the solitary mourner was Louise Gauthier.
Of all with whom Sainte-Croix had been on terms of intimacy, not one had cared to make inquiry after him, when the report of his death was first promulgated, but the Languedocian. But Louise, assisted by Benoit (with whom she had returned to live, since the evening at the Hôtel de Cluny, when she again fell in with him), had seen the body taken from the dismal vault below the Palais des Thermes to his old abode in the Rue des Bernardins. She had been the solitary mourner when his body was rudely consigned to that part of the ground allotted to those for whom no consecrated rites were offered; and her own hands afterwards had adorned the grave—the only one thus distinguished in this division of the cemetery—with the humble tributes that were about it. All this she had done without one tear or expression of the wretchedness that was breaking her heart; but when it was accomplished, she gave full vent to her pent-up feelings, and was accustomed to seek the cemetery every evening, weeping and praying in the terrible solitude of the burial-place, over the grave whose narrow limits comprised her world.
It was past the time of curfew; but the city of Paris had not the air of quietude which it usually bore at this period of the night. The murmur of a distant multitude could be heard mingling with the occasional solemn tolling of some hoarse and deep-mouthed bell, and now and then the roll of drums calling troops together. Louise had been some hours in the cemetery, when she was surprised by the appearance of Benoit and his wife, who had come to seek her, alarmed at her unusual stay from home, although they were aware of the locality in which she was most likely to be found. The honest couple had started off together to bring her back; and now, assisting her to rise, had persuaded her to return with them.
As they got into the Rue des Lombards, on their way towards the river, a sudden rush of people in great numbers separated them from one another, and they were obliged to fall in with the stream, which, increasing at every corner of a fresh thoroughfare, almost carried them off their legs. Louise addressed a few questions to some that she came in contact with, but no answer was returned; all appeared too anxious to hurry onward. Soon the crowd became more dense in the narrow streets, and the confusion and jostling was increased by the mounted guard who pressed on through the people, almost riding them down, amidst the screams of the women and curses of the men, who only received a few blows in return. She was now entirely borne onward by the multitude, and in the dense mass of people could scarcely look up to see in what direction she was being impelled, until she found herself close to the Grand Châtelet.
The whole of the carrefour was lined with troops carrying cressets, so that it was light as day; and in the centre a scaffold was erected, on which one or two figures were standing. One of these was a priest, the others were masked, and held what appeared in the distance to be long staves in their hands. Louise’s heart sickened as she foresaw that she was about to be present at an execution, and one of the most terrible kind. There was no headsman’s block on the platform; but some apparatus could be seen upon the floor, but a few inches in height. A wretch was about to be broken on the wheel.