The Marchioness of Brinvilliers, the poisoner of the seventeenth century

by Albert Smith

‘You surely do not mean me to swallow all that water, monsieur?’ she said to the greffier; ‘small as I am, there is more than enough to drown me.’

The officer returned no answer, but looked significantly at the executioner. The man approached the Marchioness, and began to unfasten her attire, removing one of her clothes after another, until nothing was left her but an under-garment, in which she now stood before the greffier, her limbs as white as the linen that scarcely shrouded them, but exhibiting not the slightest signs of tremor. Again the interrogator questioned her respecting her accomplices; and again Marie firmly denied the existence of any. All his efforts were vain, as had been those of the magistrates. The sentence was ordered to be carried out.

The ‘water question,’ as it was termed, was one of the most revolting punishments which the barbarous usages of the period allowed in its criminal proceedings; the Marchioness of Brinvilliers was one of almost its last victims, as it was then practised in all its unmitigated severity. The sufferer was compelled to swallow a large quantity of water, forced into the mouth by a horn; the body being at the same time secured to a bench, in a most painful position, whilst the hands and feet were attached to rings of iron in the wall and floor of the chamber. For the ‘ordinary question,’ as it was termed, the bench was two feet high, and the quantity of water to be swallowed nearly twelve pints; for the ‘extraordinary’ ordeal a trestle three feet high was substituted for the other, the hands and feet still remaining fixed to the rings, and an additional quantity of water, equal to the first, was forced down the sufferer’s throat. In the event of the prisoner’s obstinacy, and a refusal to open the mouth, the executioner closed the nostrils with his thumb and finger, until the unfortunate person was obliged to part his lips to breathe, when advantage was immediately taken of this to force the end of the horn down his throat. The consequence of this barbarous practice was, the distension of the chest by the introduction of the water, causing such agonising pain that very few were able to resist it.

The executioner approached Marie again, and leading her to the bench rudely tied her feet to the rings in the floor. Then forcing her back with brutal violence, he fastened her wrists to the links in the wall, pulling the cords as tightly as they would come. Finally, he fastened the edge of her garment round her knees with one of the bands of her dress, and then announced that all was in readiness for the torture.

The greffier gave the word, and the terrible operation commenced in silence, broken only by an occasional ejaculation of Marie, as measure after measure of the fluid disappeared. But beyond this she spoke not a word: a low wail was her only reply to the questions of the examiner, whilst she shook her head, as much as the hold of her tormentor permitted her to do, in answer to all his energetic and impressive requests that she would disclose all she knew. And in these he was influenced as much by compassion as by the wish that the ends of justice should be answered.

The limits of the ordinary torture had been reached without any admission on her part, and the executioner stopped until he received fresh directions from the greffier to proceed to the second stage of the question. The bench upon which Marie was tied down was removed, and one more than a foot higher was substituted for it—wedged under her by the power of the torturer, without releasing her hands and feet, now so tightly wrung by the cords that the blood started from the parts where they cut into the flesh. Still no cry escaped her lips; with superhuman endurance she went through the continuation of the dreadful ordeal, betraying scarcely any signs of life except the quivering of her limbs and an occasional violent contraction of the muscles as she turned herself round upon the trestle as far as the cords would allow of her doing. At last she cried out, with a violence that for the instant startled the officials in attendance, ‘Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! they have killed me!’ And this was followed by a piercing cry of agony; after which all was still.

The greffier rose from his seat, and once more asked her respecting her accomplices. But she returned no answer, nor indeed gave the least sign of consciousness: upon which, fearing that the punishment had been carried too far, he gave orders that she should be unbound. The executioner obeyed; and then, calling in his fellows to his assistance, they untied the cords from the rings and staples and bore the unhappy woman into an adjoining chamber, placing her on a mattress before a large fire that was burning in the huge open chimney-place.

It was some time before her senses returned. When she came to herself she found the good Pirot supporting her head, whilst the greffier was communing with the magistrates respecting the proceedings of the ordeal. They quitted the chamber soon after she recovered, and then she was left alone with the doctor, who had thrown his cloak around her thinly clad and shivering form, and was now only waiting until she should be sufficiently brought round to join him in assisting at the last offices of religion.

At last he half-led, half-carried her to a prie-dieu, and there prayed with her until the cold and dismal light of morning, overcoming the red glare of the fire, stole cheerlessly through the small and heavy-barred loopholes of the chamber. And with it came something of terrible import—the low murmur of the vast crowd already assembled without the gates, and in the Cour des Miracles^[24]—the audible passing and repassing of the Royal Guard, as bodies of them paraded the streets in the immediate line from the Palais de Justice to Notre Dame, and thence to the Place de Grêve—and an unwonted stir in the Conciergerie, as those friends of the officers and other functionaries who had procured the entree to the prison arrived. Not a sound escaped Marie’s ear, although Pirot strove in some measure to drown the distant hum by his voice. Every nerve appeared intensely sensitive, and the reaction of a terrible excitement had brought the blood back to the surface of her flesh. Her eyes were again blazing with fevered brilliancy; her cheek was flushed, and a rapid shuddering movement kept every muscle in convulsive action.

Her prayers were only interrupted by the arrival of the same magistrates who had before left her, followed by the executioner and his assistants; and the Marchioness directly knew that the terrible hour had arrived. Without a word she held out her wrists, now discoloured and swollen by the question, to the headsman; and not an expression of pain escaped her lips as he roughly bound them together. The cloak which Pirot had lent her was then thrown on one side; when, as she found her bosom exposed, she requested the man to fasten the lappets of her garment together with a pin. He, however, threw a large scarf over her shoulders, and part of this formed a cowl, which she pulled down over her face as well as her imprisoned hands enabled her to do. And when this had been arranged she left the chapel, preceded and followed by the officers of the prison.