Princes and Poisoners: Studies of the Court of Louis XIV

by Frantz Funck-Brentano

‘Did you know it would be a great crime to make the slightest addition to the facts which you have declared?’

‘Yes, and those of whom I have spoken can tell you a good deal; I think I have diminished rather than increased; I had no other idea but to state the truth, having nothing more to fear in regard to my mother; if I remember any other circumstance, or if any is recalled to my memory, I will confess the truth.’

Several writers have thought that the sorceresses compromised the greatest names in France before the judges in the hope of saving their lives, by connecting themselves with personages so high in station that no one would dare to lift a hand against them. Quite the contrary. We see La Voisin concealing, up to the very moment of her execution, her relations with the king’s mistress, for her greatest fear was that the horrible punishment meted out to regicides might be applied to her. In an expansive moment, she said to her guards at Vincennes: ‘I fear, more than anything else that I am asked about, a certain journey to court.’ We shall have much to do presently with this journey the sorceress made to court on behalf of Madame de Montespan. It was at the last moment, after hearing her death-sentence, against which there was no appeal, that Françoise Filastre made her startling depositions of September 30 and October 1, 1680, as the result of which Louis XIV, in terror, caused the sittings of the Chambre Ardente to be suspended.

The statements of Marguerite Monvoisin were confirmed in detail by those of the Abbé Guibourg, with whom she had no means of communicating after her arrest. Thus, as La Reynie says, they were proved ‘according to the rules of justice.’

To-day, history furnishes still further proofs. We have just heard the daughter of La Voisin: ‘Every time anything fresh happened to Madame de Montespan, or she feared some diminution in the favour of the king, she told my mother.’ Now, if we follow in the correspondence of Madame de Sévigné and the court chronicles the checkered story of the relations between Madame de Montespan and the king from 1667 to 1680, and compare it further with the depositions made before the Chambre Ardente, we find a precise confirmation of the declarations of Marguerite Monvoisin. It was several times observed by La Reynie that ‘the time mentioned by the accused is of consequence to Madame de Montespan.’

How, and by whom, was the haughty favourite led to the haunts of the witches? Historians have put forth many hypotheses on this subject. They were not acquainted with the declaration of La Chaboissière, the valet of Vanens, whom we have already mentioned: ‘that the chevalier de Vanens deserved to be drawn and quartered for the counsel he had given to Madame de Montespan.’ La Chaboissière had scarcely let this confession escape him than he wished in great agitation to retract it, and begged that the words might not be written down in the report of his examination. La Reynie disentangled this confession from the chaos of official documents, and sharply underlined it as the starting-point of the drama.

The relations between the favourite and the sorceresses began, then, at the very time when her dawning love for the king was noticed. In 1667 we find her in Rue de la Tannerie, in the company of the magician Lesage and the Abbé Mariette, priest of St. Séverin. The latter belonged to a good Parisian family; he was tall and well made, with a very pale complexion and black hair. At one end of a little room an altar was erected: Mariette, in sacerdotal vestments, uttered incantations, Lesage sang the Veni Creator, then Mariette read a gospel on the head of Madame de Montespan, who knelt before him and recited exorcisms against Louise de la Vallière. She added—the very words are found in one of Lesage’s declarations—'I ask for the affection of the king and of the Dauphin, that it may be continued, that the queen may be barren, that the king leave her bed and table for me, that I obtain from him all that I ask for myself and my relatives; that my servants and domestics may be pleasing to him; that, beloved and respected by great nobles, I may be called to the councils of the king and know what passes there; and that, this affection being redoubled on what has existed in the past, the king may leave La Vallière and look no more upon her; and that, the queen being repudiated, I may espouse the king.’

On another occasion, in the church of St. Severin, the Abbé Mariette, in the presence of Madame de Montespan, recited charms over the hearts of two pigeons which had been consecrated in the names of Louis XIV and Louise de la Vallière during the sacrifice of the mass.

Early in the year 1668, Mariette and Lesage had the audacity to proceed to Saint-Germain, the headquarters of the court, and in the very château itself, in the portion occupied by Madame de Thianges, Madame de Montespan’s sister, they resumed their sorceries. Aromatic fumigations filled the room with a bluish vapour, with which was mingled the pungent scent of incense. Madame de Montespan formulated the incantation. ‘This,’ declared Lesage, ‘was to obtain the favour of the king, and to cause Mademoiselle de la Vallière’s death.’ Mariette said it was merely to get her sent away. Now it happened that, not long after these proceedings, in that very year 1668, Madame de Montespan realised her dream and was taken to the king’s heart. The star of La Vallière rapidly paled. In 1669 Madame de Montespan was brought to bed of the first of the seven children she gave to Louis. If she had ever doubted the efficacy of these dealings with the devil, confidence would have dated from that day.

An incident, which might have had terrible consequences, ruffled this happiness so long desired. Mariette and Lesage owed to La Voisin the lucrative connection with Madame de Montespan. But they showed base ingratitude, and proceeded to perform incantations for the marquise, no longer with the assistance of La Voisin, but with that of a rival sorceress, La Duverger. La Voisin was indignant, and as La Reynie says, ‘made a to-do about it. The matter became known, and the king, having learnt that these people were accustomed to perform impious and sacrilegious rites, ordered the arrest of Mariette and Dubuisson (the name taken by Lesage at this period), and they were sent to the Bastille in March 1668.’ From the Bastille they were brought before the Châtelet on the charge of sorcery. The court chroniclers, though ignorant of her reasons for so doing, note that Madame de Montespan at this time suddenly left Paris. But Mariette and Lesage had too much interest in holding their tongues to inform against her. ‘Besides,’ writes La Reynie, ‘the first judge who heard the case being a cousin-german of Mariette through his wife, La Voisin being at large on the credit of interested persons with whom she had dealings, and these wretched practices being then unknown, investigation was not carried very far. It was solely a question of seeing how the matter could be dealt with in such a way as to save Mariette on account of his family.’ The little that could not be concealed brought Lesage condemnation to the galleys and Mariette banishment. The king increased the sentence of the latter to imprisonment; but the prisoner escaped from St. Lazare, where he had been confined. As to Lesage, La Voisin, thanks to her connections, was not long in getting him set at liberty. In a memorandum addressed to Louvois, La Reynie exhibits the conclusions to be drawn from the trial of 1668. After very appositely calling attention to the fact that the statements of the accused were the less suspicious because, dating from a period when as yet there could be no question of the scarcely dawning relations between Louis and Madame de Montespan, the lieutenant of police says that Mariette and Lesage could only have known of those relations through Madame de Montespan herself, and adds: ‘It appears from the trial of Lesage and Mariette in 1668, that Madame de Montespan had been dealing with La Voisin at any rate since 1667, and that about that time she was by her introduced to Lesage and Mariette; that Mariette, in his room and in the presence of Lesage, used to read the Gospels over the head of Madame de Montespan.