“And again mind that loose tongue of yours! Remember, Fanchon, I will cut it out as sure as you live if you betray me.”
“Yes, my Lady!” Fanchon's tongue felt somewhat paralyzed under the threat of Angélique, and she bit it painfully as if to remind it of its duty.
“You may go now,” said Angélique. “Here is money for you. Give this piece of gold to La Corriveau as an earnest that I want her. The canotiers of the St. Lawrence will also require double fare for bringing La Corriveau over the ferry.”
“No, they rarely venture to charge her anything at all, my Lady,” replied Fanchon; “to be sure it is not for love, but they are afraid of her. And yet Antoine La Chance, the boatman, says she is equal to a Bishop for stirring up piety; and more Ave Marias are repeated when she is in his boat, than are said by the whole parish on Sunday.”
“I ought to say my Ave Marias, too!” replied Angélique, as Fanchon left the apartment, “but my mouth is parched and burns up the words of prayer like a furnace; but that is nothing to the fire in my heart! That girl, Fanchon Dodier, is not to be trusted, but I have no other messenger to send for La Corriveau. I must be wary with her, too, and make her suggest the thing I would have done. My Lady of Beaumanoir!” she apostrophized in a hard monotone, “your fate does not depend on the Intendant, as you fondly imagine. Better had he issued the lettre de cachet than for you to fall into the hands of La Corriveau!”
Daylight now shot into the windows, and the bright rays of the rising sun streamed full in the face of Angélique. She saw herself reflected in the large Venetian mirror. Her countenance looked pale, stern, and fixed as marble. The fire in her eyes startled her with its unearthly glow. She trembled and turned away from her mirror, and crept to her couch like a guilty thing, with a feeling as if she was old, haggard, and doomed to shame for the sake of this Intendant, who cared not for her, or he would not have driven her to such desperate and wicked courses as never fell to the lot of a woman before.
“C'est sa faute! C'est sa faute!” exclaimed she, clasping her hands passionately together. “If she dies, it is his fault, not mine! I prayed him to banish her, and he would not! C'est sa faute! C'est sa faute!” Repeating these words Angélique fell into a feverish slumber, broken by frightful dreams which lasted far on into the day.
The long reign of Louis XIV., full of glories and misfortunes for France, was marked towards its close by a portentous sign indicative of corrupt manners and a falling state. Among these, the crimes of secret poisoning suddenly attained a magnitude which filled the whole nation with terror and alarm.
Antonio Exili, an Italian, like many other alchemists of that period, had spent years in search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. His vain experiments to transmute the baser metals into gold reduced him to poverty and want. His quest after these secrets had led him to study deeply the nature and composition of poisons and their antidotes. He had visited the great universities and other schools of the continent, finishing his scientific studies under a famous German chemist named Glaser. But the terrible secret of the agua tofana and of the poudre de succession, Exili learned from Beatrice Spara, a Sicilian, with whom he had a liaison, one of those inscrutable beings of the gentle sex whose lust for pleasure or power is only equalled by the atrocities they are willing to perpetrate upon all who stand in the way of their desires or their ambition.
To Beatrice Spara, the secret of this subtle preparation had come down like an evil inheritance from the ancient Candidas and Saganas of imperial Rome. In the proud palaces of the Borgias, of the Orsinis, the Scaligers, the Borroméos, the art of poisoning was preserved among the last resorts of Machiavellian statecraft; and not only in palaces, but in streets of Italian cities, in solitary towers and dark recesses of the Apennines, were still to be found the lost children of science, skilful compounders of poisons, at once fatal and subtle in their operation,—poisons which left not the least trace of their presence in the bodies of their victims, but put on the appearance of other and more natural causes of death.