Lesage was arrested for the second time on March 17, 1679, and we shall see the importance of the statements he made to the magistrates.
The ‘Chambre Ardente'
The consternation of Louis XIV, his ministers, and the lieutenant of police at the discovery of such crimes may be imagined. The terror was all the intenser because chemists and able physicians were then powerless to discover traces of poison in a corpse. The matter was intrusted to a special commission, in the hope that by a more expeditious and energetic procedure than that of the ordinary courts, it would succeed in cutting the evil at the root. This was the famous Chambre Ardente.
The president was Louis Boucherat, Count de Compans—an amiable man, says Madame de Sévigné, and of much good sense. Later, he became Chancellor of France. Louis Bazin, Lord of Bezons, nominated to act as judge-advocate along with La Reynie, was a member of the Academy. The office of clerk was filled by Sagot, La Reynie’s confidential secretary and ordinary clerk of the Châtelet. ‘The Commission,’ writes Ravaisson, ‘was composed of the élite of the councillors of state, and all these magistrates have left a high reputation.’ The court was called the Chambre Ardente, because in former days tribunals specially constituted to deal with great crimes sat in a chamber hung with black and lit by torches and candles.
The court met for the first time on April 10, 1679, and decided to keep its proceedings secret, so as to withhold details of these practices from the knowledge of the public. The magistrates themselves had no doubt of the efficacy of these dealings with the devil, nor of the formidable composition of the poisons.
The method of procedure was as follows:—
The individuals regarded as suspicious by La Reynie, the examining magistrate, were arrested by royal warrant, that is, by a lettre de cachet, which took the place of the modern magistrate’s warrant. The first depositions were submitted to the attorney-general, and it was only on his requisition that the officials proceeded to the confrontation of the prisoners, after which the commissaries submitted a detailed report to the court. The attorney presented to them his general conclusions, and the court decided whether the accused person should be ‘recommended,’ that is, remain a prisoner in virtue of a warrant issued by them. In that case the investigation followed its course. When this was ended, all the documents concerning the accused were read to the judges, the king’s attorney delivered his address in favour of acquittal or condemnation, the accused was heard for the last time, and the court pronounced judgment, which was without appeal.
The Chambre Ardente sat in the hall of the Arsenal. From April 10, 1679, the day of its first meeting, to July 21, 1682, when it closed its doors, it held 210 sittings, after having been suspended, for reasons that will be explained later, from October 1, 1680, to May 19, 1681.
The Chambre Ardente deliberated on the fate of 442 accused persons, and ordered the arrest of 367 of these. Of these arrests, 218 were sustained. Thirty-six prisoners were condemned to the extreme penalty, torture ordinary and extraordinary and execution; two of them died a natural death in jail; five were condemned to the galleys; twenty-three were exiled; but the most guilty had accomplices in such high places that their cases were never carried to an end. We must add the prisoners who committed suicide in prison, such as La Dodée, a sorceress aged thirty-five, still very pretty, who was arrested with La Trianon, and cut her throat at Vincennes after her first examination; ‘she covered the wound with her chemise, in which the greater part of her blood flowed, and was found dead when her room was opened in the morning to take her her breakfast.’
Among the many cases which came before this court one or two will serve as types.