‘Sir,’ said the headsman, ‘isn’t it a fine stroke?’
He added: ‘On these occasions I always commend myself to God, and hitherto he has been with me; five or six days ago this lady was troubling me and I couldn’t get her out of my head: I will have six masses said.’ And, uncorking a bottle, he drank a good draught of wine.
The body was borne to the stake; the flames consumed it, and then the ashes were scattered; but the mob struggled to collect some fragments of the charred bones: all who had been able to get near the scaffold had seen the face of the criminal illumined with a halo, and they departed saying that the dead woman was a saint. Madame de Sévigné writes that Pirot repeated the saying to every one he met.
The children of the Marquis de Brinvilliers took the name of Offémont.
Pennautier was acquitted and left the prison on July 27. He recovered his high position and the repute in which he had been held.
In declaring that she had had no other accomplices than Sainte-Croix and her lackeys Madame de Brinvilliers was speaking the truth. But at that period crimes as great as hers were being committed in Paris, and it was not long before the judges discovered them. There was for instance the celebrated case heard by the ‘Chambre Ardente,’ to which that of Madame de Brinvilliers serves as introduction.
THE POISON DRAMA AT THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV
I. THE SORCERESSES
The Dinner of La Vigoureux.
THE trial of Madame de Brinvilliers had just caused an immense sensation. The penitentiaries of Notre Dame, without naming any person, declared that ‘the majority of those who had confessed to them for some time accused themselves of poisoning somebody.’ The court and the city were still disturbed by the catastrophe which had at St. Cloud suddenly carried off the charming Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, by the sudden death of Hugues de Lionne, the great statesman, and by the startling fate which had just befallen the Duke of Savoy. A note found on September 21, 1677, in the confessional of the Jesuits in Rue Saint-Antoine denounced a plot to poison the king and the dauphin. On December 5 following, La Reynie, lieutenant of police, caused the arrest of Louis de Vanens, who said he had been an officer. The papers seized on him and on Finette, his mistress, brought to light an association of alchemists, coiners, and magicians, in which priests, officers, important bankers like Cadelan were associated with light women, lackeys, and vagabonds. The Parlement was investigating the matter, when La Reynie put his hand on a second association, like the first to all appearance, but soon to reveal itself to the eyes of the magistrates as an affair of much greater importance still.