“He darted through a doorway at the end of the room as he spoke, and disappeared. The guard pressed forward; but, as Exili passed out at the arch, a mass of timber descended like a portcullis and opposed their further progress. A loud and fiendish laugh sounded in the souterrain, which grew fainter and fainter, till they heard it no more.”
The poisoner escaped—for a time. He was captured afterwards, tried, and, of course, condemned to death—a merciful death compared with that which befell him on his way to execution at the hands of the infuriated people, by whom his guards were overpowered, and after being almost torn to pieces, he was thrown into the Seine.
The toils were now closing round the miserable Marchioness de Brinvilliers. The wretched woman had reached the inconceivable condition of degradation said to be common to successful murderers when impunity has followed their first crimes—that of killing for killing’s sake. She put on the clothes of a religeuse, attended the hospitals, and poisoned the patients. Their dying cries were music to her, their agonies afforded her the keenest pleasure. To the student of French criminal history this is no news. I note it here so that the historian of the woman’s crimes should not be thought to have invented incidents that existed only in his imagination. Mr. Smith had the best authority for all the murders with which he charges Madame de Brinvilliers.
The death of Sainte-Croix was followed by the usual police regulation where foul play is suspected. Seals were affixed to his effects, amongst which poisons were discovered that were proved to be the property of the Marchioness of Brinvilliers. The murderess, terror-stricken, fled from Paris; and, though hotly pursued, she escaped into Belgium, and sought refuge in a religious house, where she took “sanctuary.” The pursuers were so near that, as she jumped from her carriage at the convent-door, she left her cloak in the hands of the exempt. She turned upon him, says the author, “with a smile of triumph that threw an expression of demoniac beauty over her features, and cried:
“‘You dare not touch me, or you are lost body and soul!’”
I must again refer my reader to Mr. Albert Smith’s book if he wishes to learn how the exempt, disguised as an abbé, beguiled the Marchioness from her sanctuary, and content myself with showing—or rather in letting Leech show—how she looked when the police-officer dropped his disguise and she found herself seized by his men.
The details given by Mr. Albert Smith of the last hours of Madame de Brinvilliers are, though painful reading, very remarkable. The Docteur Pirot, who passed nearly the whole of his time at the Conciergerie, has left records of which the author has availed himself, as well as from the letters of Madame de Sévigné. Those who wish to “sup full of horrors” can satisfy themselves by reading the account of the torture by water which was inflicted upon the miserable woman to induce her to betray her accomplices. But there were none to betray. Her only accomplice was dead. Her sufferings on the rack very nearly cheated the headsman, for, as they culminated “in a piercing cry of agony, after which all was still, the graffier, fearing that the punishment had been carried too far, gave orders that she should be unbound.” On her way to execution, she was attended by the constant Pirot. The tumbrel stopped before the door of Nôtre Dame, and a paper was put into her hands, from which she read, in a firm voice, a confession of her crimes. The tumbrel again advanced with difficulty through the dense crowds, portions of which, “slipping between the horses of the troops who surrounded it, launched some brutal remark at Marie with terrible distinctness and meaning; but she never gave the least sign of having heard them, only keeping her eyes intently fixed upon the crucifix which Pirot held up before her.”
In this drawing Leech’s power over individual character may be noted in the diversity of type amongst the hooting crowd round the tumbrel. The shrinking form of the prisoner is very beautiful.
When the Place de Grève was reached the execrations of the mob had ceased, and “a deep and awful silence” prevailed, “so perfect that the voices of the executioner and Pirot could be plainly heard,” says the chroniclers. I pass over harrowing details. The beautiful head of the poisoner was struck off by a single sword-stroke, and the executioner, turning to Pirot, said: