The Stones of Paris in History and Letters, Volume 2 (of 2)

by Benjamin Ellis Martin; Charlotte M. Martin

A little farther along, at No. 32 in this street of Geoffroy-Lasnier, behind a commonplace house-front and a commonplace court, you shall find a staircase, with an iron rail below and a wooden rail above, that make a most uncommon and interesting picture.

Turning into Rue de Jouy, an altogether delightful old-time street, we pass through a monumental gateway at No. 7 into a symmetrical court. Facing us is the Hôtel d'Aumont, and it tells us more than is told by any structure hereabout of the merits of François Mansart. This front of two stories and of his own roof is faultless in proportion and dainty in adornment. He has given it the stamp of the stately days of the Grand Monarch by the four œils-de-bœuf above the perfect cornice of the second floor, two on either side of the central window. In the two corners of the court, at each angle of the building, are round-fronted stone perrons, broad and low and inviting. That on our left gives entrance to a small hall, the staircase in which carries an exquisite wrought-iron rail that lifts and lightens the stone steps. By them we mount to the chambers of the first floor, small as was the custom then, with one grand central reception-room, excellent in its proportions, its vaulted ceiling curiously carved in relief. All these rooms are, by the good taste and generous spirit of the owners of the property, kept in perfect condition, the furniture is of the period, and the painting—done by Lebrun a century later than the ceiling on which it is placed—is fresh and untarnished.

Mansart's commission for this construction came from that Duc d'Aumont who was Maréchal of France and Governor of Paris under Louis XIII. A descendant of the early fighters of old France, he seems to have been one of those favorites of fortune who, in the phrase of Beaumarchais, give themselves only the trouble to be born. At the age of ten he began his career as a colonel of cavalry, and continued it through a long line of lucky promotions in place and pay. Dying in 1704, he left this hôtel packed with furniture, paintings, bibelots, and curios, and its stables filled with the carriages he had invented; an amazing collection, requiring months for its sale by his heirs.

The hôtel is now occupied by the Pharmacie Centrale of France, to whose officials is due our gratitude for their rare and scrupulous respect for this delightful relic. Over its spacious gardens behind they have erected their immense laboratories and offices, which we may enter under the great vaulted porch at No. 21 Rue des Nonnains-d'Hyères. That once narrowest of the streets of old Paris, as quaint as its name, given it by the branch of the Hyères nunnery having its seat here, has become a broad and bustling thoroughfare. The plain rear elevation of the hôtel can be seen here from the little corner of the garden that is still kept, and kept green by the choice plants of the company. In it is a capital bust of Dorvault, physician, author, founder of the Pharmacie Centrale. This may be the very bit of garden noticed by Dr. Martin Lister, an English traveller in France at the close of the seventeenth century. He dined with the Duc d'Aumont, and records that, opening from the dining-room, was a greenhouse through which his noble host led him into the garden.

Along through the rocky ravine that bears the name of Charlemagne, and does him no honor, we pass, by way of Rue Saint-Paul, into the short street that started in life as Rue Neuve-Saint-Paul, and has now taken the name of Charles V. Here, among the ancient fronts, we are attracted by that which is numbered 12, low and wide, with two floors and dormers above. Through its entrance-door, capped by a well-carved mask that smiles stonily down on us, we may enter the court by the courtesy of the sister, who smiles sweetly. This building is occupied by the girls' school of a sisterhood, whose youthful communiantes happen to be forming in procession for a function to-day. They flutter about in innocent white, in unconscious contrast with the great lady and great criminal whom we have come to see. For this was the Hôtel d'Aubray, and its most distinguished tenant was the Marquise de Brinvilliers.

Let us look about the court and the little garden behind, both embraced by the two wings of the structure. That wing on our right, with round arches and a round tower at its end, is evidently of the original fabric and intended for stabling. This wing on our left, now extended by a new chapel, was, when built, meant to contain only this staircase, whose wide and broad stone steps and well-wrought iron balustrade mount gradually about a spacious central well. Here, resting on the bench at its foot, we may recall what is known about the strange and monstrous woman who once lived here.

She was Marie-Madeleine Dreux d'Aubray, and her father was an officer of Louis XIV., appointed Civil Lieutenant of the Châtelet Prison. He married her in 1651, when she was twenty-one, to the wealthy and dissolute Marquis de Brinvilliers, who was not a model husband. She was nothing loath, with her inborn instincts, to follow the example set by him. Among her lovers, a certain Gaudin de Sainte-Croix was much talked of; so much so that the lady's father, more powerful than her husband, and doubtless more outraged by the shameless publicity of the liaison, had Sainte-Croix taken from his daughter's carriage, as they rode together, and put into the Bastille. There his cell-mate was an Italian known only as Exili, a past-master in poisons, who boasted that he had brought to death at least one hundred and fifty men and women in Rome alone. He taught his trade to Sainte-Croix, who proved to be an apt pupil, and who continued his studies after his release. He took rooms with an apothecary in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, and fitted up a laboratory. There his Marquise visited him, and was taught in her turn the use of his potions, among which the "manna of Saint-Nicholas" became her favorite.

For she took pains and showed conscience in her experiments, mainly on the patients in the hospitals, wherein she was a constant charitable worker. Thus she soon learned to dispense her poisoned wafers with scientific slowness and precision. But she was anxious that her charity should begin at home. Her father failed gradually with some obscure and unaccountable malady, and died in torment; and she nursed him tenderly to the end. There were too many in her family for her comfort, and her relatives outside had been too solicitous about her; so some sickened and some died off, she caring for all and lamenting each death. She had a sister, a Carmelite nun, who was never blinded by the round, girlish face, appealing blue eyes, and beguiling ways that bewitched so many. This woman guarded her own life and watched over others of the family. The attempts made by the marchioness on her husband's life were caused to fail, it is believed, by the attenuation of the poisons mixed for her by Sainte-Croix, who doubtless feared that he must marry the widow if he allowed her to become a widow. He himself was found dead, in 1672, in his laboratory, poisoned by the fumes of his devilish brews, through the breaking of the glass mask worn at his work. The official search among his effects discovered a casket, addressed to the marchioness at this dwelling; being opened, its contents were found to be her own ardent love-letters to him, a document detailing the doses and periods for the proper administration of the poisons, and a choice assortment of preparations of opium, antimony, sulphur. There was also a water-like liquid, unknown to chemists, which was found to kill animals instantaneously, leaving no lesions of any organ that could be traced by science. Sainte-Croix's servant made a disclosure, and the marchioness, hearing of his arrest and the finding of her package, made "confession by avoidance" by a flight to England. She slipped down these stairs, out through that doorway, and took coach around the corner for a northern port.

Colbert's brother was then Ambassador at the court of Saint James, and between them her capture was planned; she got wind of it, and fled to Liège, where she felt sure of safety in a convent. To her appears, after a while, a handsome and susceptible young abbé, who allows himself to be corrupted, and arranges for an elopement to a more congenial refuge for lovers. She climbs gayly into his carriage, his men surround it, and she is driven across the frontier into France and to the Bastille. The abbé was Desgrais, an eager police officer detailed for this duty. He returned to her room in the convent, and found scattered sheets of paper containing notes that began a confession. This confession she was forced to complete and confirm by the torture by water—repugnant to her coquetry, because it would spoil her figure; "toute mignonne et toute gracieuse," had said an adorer of her early days. She showed courage at the last, Madame de Sévigné states, in the letters that were full of the trial and execution. She was burned, having first been beheaded. "Her poor little body was thrown, after her execution, into a good large fire, and her ashes blown about by the wind; so that we may be breathing her," Sévigné writes. This took place late in the afternoon of July 16, 1676—she was just over forty-five years of age—on Place de Grève, to which she was carted in a tumbril, having stopped on the way in front of Notre-Dame, and there, on her knees on the stones—her feet bare, a rope around her neck, a consecrated lighted taper in her uplifted hand—made to confess afresh.