Just as she was walking up the steps Madame de Brinvilliers found herself next to Desgrez. She then asked his forgiveness for the trouble she had given him, and begged him to say a few masses and to pray for her. She ended her ‘compliment’ by saying that ‘she was his servant, and so she would die on the scaffold.’ Then she added, ‘Adieu, sir.’
The throng was immense. Madame de Sévigné, who had come to witness the execution from the window of one of the houses on the bridge Notre Dame, writes: ‘Never was such a crowd seen, nor Paris so moved or so eager.’
The marchioness knelt down on the scaffold, her face turned towards the river. ‘It was at that moment,’ says Pirot, ‘that I saw her so intent upon herself, so wholly occupied with what I had said we would do on the scaffold, telling me with such wonderful composure all that was necessary, and making me pass from one thing to another in due order without any prompting from me, wholly absorbed in what I said to her to prepare her for death, without the appearance of any wandering in her thoughts.
‘She was absolutely without fear. She was gentle, courteous, steadfast, and self-forgetful. She had very great patience to endure with extraordinary docility all the executioner’s preparations. He undid her hair while she was on her knees; he cut it behind and at both sides; to do so he made her turn her head several times in different ways, and he even turned it himself sometimes with no great gentleness: that lasted quite half an hour. She felt keenly the shame of the proceeding in the sight of so great a company; but she overcame her grief and submitted to everything even with joy. I fancy that she had never allowed her hair to be done so quietly as she then let it be cut and shaved; the executioner’s hand felt no rougher to her than that of a maid doing her hair; she punctually obeyed his instructions as to turning, lowering, and raising her head when he pleased. He tore off the top of the shirt which he had put over her cloak when she left the Conciergerie, so as to uncover her shoulders. She let him bind her hands as though he were putting on golden bracelets, and knot the rope about her neck as if it had been a necklace of pearls.
‘“I should like to be burned alive,” she said, “to render my sacrifice more meritorious, if I could have sufficient confidence in my courage to bear that kind of death without falling into despair.”’
The Abbé Pirot chanted the Salve, and the people crowding round the scaffold continued the chant that he began. Then he told the lady that he was about to give her absolution. Thereupon she said, her soul at peace, ‘Sir, you promised me just now to give me a second penitence on the scaffold, when I pleaded that what you gave me was too easy, and now you say nothing about it.’ ‘I asked her to say an Ave and a Sancta est Maria mater gratiae. At the end of which, saying to her, “Madam, renew your contrition,” I gave her absolution, saying only the sacramental words because time was pressing.’
The expression of her face was transformed. It was an expression of hope and joy, of serene faith and love, mingled with the exaltation of the penitent. ‘Never have I seen anything more touching,’ says Pirot, ‘than her eyes appeared to me, and if I had to paint a countenance full of contrition and sorrow of heart and hope of pardon, I could wish for no other features than those I remember still, and shall remember all my life long.’
Guillaume the executioner bandaged the eyes of the condemned woman. She repeated the last prayers along with her confessor. Guillaume with the back of his sleeve wiped away the beads of sweat which covered his brow. Suddenly Pirot heard a dull blow, and ceased to speak. ‘Madame de Brinvilliers held her head very straight. The executioner severed it at a single stroke, which cut so clean that it remained for a moment on the trunk before falling. I was indeed in agony for an instant, fearing that he had missed his aim and that he would have to strike a second time.’