Chapter 4 MADAME DE MONTESPAN

The Marquise Fran?oise Athénais de Montespan was born in 1641 at the castle of Tonnay-Charente, the daughter of Gabriel de Rochechouart, Duke de Mortmart, lord of Vivonne, and of Diane de Granseigne, daughter of Jean de Marsillac. She was called Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente until her marriage. 'Her mother,' says Madame de Caylus, 'was anxious to imbue her with principles of sound piety.' The piety of Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente was violent and inflammatory.

Appointed in 1660 maid of honour to the queen, 'she gave her an extraordinary opinion of her virtue by taking communion every day.' In 1679, when she had been for several years the king's mistress, she much astonished the Princess d'Harcourt by sending her on January 1, as a new year's gift, a hair-shirt, a scourge, and a prayer-book adorned with diamonds.

Mademoiselle de Tonnay-Charente married, on January 28, 1663, a noble of her own province, L. H. de Pardaillan, Marquis de Montespan, who was a year younger than herself. If she ever loved him, it was not for long. As a lady-in-waiting to the queen, she was fascinated by the magnificence surrounding Louise de la Vallière, the favourite of Louis, who had become, in spite of her reserve and her timid and gentle bearing, the object of intense and widespread jealousy, hatred, and wrath. Madame de Montespan especially displayed her spiteful envy in malicious gibes and insulting irony. Everybody knows it was not long before she replaced her.

Louise de la Vallière had kept in the shade, shunning publicity and honours; Madame de Montespan in her pride wished to dazzle all eyes. 'Thunderous and triumphant' is Madame de Sévigné's description of her in her radiant glory at Versailles. She draws elsewhere a picture of the court in which the king's favourite shone: 'At three o'clock the king and queen, with Monsieur, Madame, Mademoiselle, all the princes and princesses, Madame de Montespan, all her suite, all the courtiers and ladies, in a word, all that is known as the court of France, were found in these handsome apartments of the king. They are divinely furnished, everything is magnificent. Madame de Montespan was dressed in point de France, her hair done in a thousand curls, two hanging from her temples very low upon her cheeks; black ribbons on her head, with her pearls as maréchale of the Hospital, and embellished with earrings and pendants; in a word, a triumph of beauty that threw the ambassadors into admiring wonder. She knew that people were complaining how she prevented all France from seeing the king; she has restored him to us, as you see, and you would not believe what joy it has given everybody, and what beauty it has given the court.'

'Her beauty is marvellous,' writes Madame de Sévigné on another day, 'and her get-up is as wonderful as her beauty, and her gaiety as her get-up.' Greater still was the renown of her wit. 'She was always the best of company,' says Saint-Simon, 'with graces which palliated her high and mighty airs, and were indeed suited to them. It was impossible to have more wit, more fine polish, more striking expressions, eloquence, natural propriety, which gave her, as it were, an individual style of talk, but delicious, and which by force of habit was so communicable that her nieces and the persons constantly about her, her women, and those who, without being her servants, had been brought up along with her, all caught the style, which is recognisable to-day among the few survivors.'

She surrounded herself with a brilliant luxury. Here is one of her dresses as described by Madame de Sévigné: 'Gold upon gold, gold embroideries, gold edgings, and, over all, gold crimpings, sewed with one sort of gold blended with another sort, which makes up the divinest stuff imaginable: it was the fairies who made this masterpiece in secret.'

In her estates at Clagny, with their immense park, a second Versailles was to be seen alongside Versailles itself. The king had first had built there for his mistress a bijou residence-a country villa. 'She said that that might do for an opera girl.' The house was pulled down and the chateau erected, after the plans of Mansard. At Versailles the favourite had twenty rooms on the first floor; the queen occupied eleven rooms on the second. Dangeau notes that Madame de Montespan's train was borne by the Maréchale de Noailles; the queen's was carried by a simple page.

The influence of the young favourite spelled fortune, hope, and honour to ministers, courtiers, and generals. Her father became governor of Paris, her brother a marshal of France. In her drawing-room, frequented by all the most distinguished persons in rank and literature, a quite unique style of wit came into existence, which her contemporaries often refer to-a wit at once choice and subtle, natural and pleasant. It must be added that, by a wonderful coincidence, her reign, which lasted thirteen years, exactly corresponded with the zenith of the age of Louis XIV.

Madame de Montespan used to go about escorted by royal bodyguards. As she journeyed throughout the whole length and breadth of France, governors and lord-lieutenants offered her their homage in great ceremony, and cities sent deputations to her. She passed through the provinces in a six-horse coach, followed by another coach also drawn by six horses, in which sat six ladies of her suite, and then came the baggage-wagons and six mules and a dozen cavaliers. It is like a fairy tale from Perrault.

She had by Louis XIV seven children, whom the Parlement was to legitimatise and declare royal children of France. The oldest, the Duke de Maine, received the principality of Dombes and the county of Eu; in 1675, when five years old, he was appointed to the infantry regiment of Marshal Turenne; in 1682, the king gave him the governorship of Languedoc; on September 15, 1688, the office of general of the galleys and the lieutenant-generalship of the Levant. The elder of the daughters, Mademoiselle de Nantes, married the Duke de Bourbon; the second, Mademoiselle de Blois, made a still more brilliant match. 'The king,' says Saint-Simon, 'determined to marry Mademoiselle de Blois to the Duke de Chartres; this was the king's only nephew, and far higher than the princes of the blood.'

Madame Palatine[9] said of the Marquise de Montespan: 'She is more ambitious than dissipated.' There is justice in the saying. She had an immeasurable pride. Mademoiselle de la Vallière loved the king as a mistress, Madame de Maintenon as a governess, Madame de Montespan as a tyrant.

It was in 1666 that historians note the first signs of Madame de Montespan's ambition. She was then aspiring to the king's love, and it is precisely at this time that La Reynie, in commenting on the proceedings of the Chambre Ardente, places her first visits to the sorceresses.

Marguerite Monvoisin, La Voisin's daughter, spoke thus before the judges: 'Every time that anything fresh happened to Madame de Montespan, or she feared any diminution in the favour of the king, she told my mother, so that she might provide a remedy; and my mother at once had recourse to priests whom she got to say masses, and gave my mother powders to be given to the king.' La Voisin's daughter explained that these powders were for love, composed now in one way, now in another, according to the various formulae of witchcraft. Among the ingredients were cantharides, the dust of dried moles, blood of bats, and other vile substances. Of these a paste was made, which was placed under the chalice during the sacrifice of the mass, and blessed by the priest at the moment of the offertory. Louis XIV swallowed this compound mixed with his food.

'My mother,' said the girl, 'several times took to Madame de Montespan at Saint-Germain, Versailles, and Clagny, these love-powders to give to the king-some which had passed under the chalice and others which had not; my mother sent some to Madame de Montespan by the hand of the demoiselle Des?illets (one of her waiting-maids), and I myself gave her some in the church of the Petits Pères, and another time on the road to St. Cloud.'

The depositions of Marguerite Monvoisin are important. She had never been mixed up with her mother's sorceries, but she had known about them. La Reynie observes that her declarations exhibit 'a certain air of ingenuousness, or else, if they are false, every one is mightily deceived.' He adds that 'she mentions so many circumstances and so many different transactions which are not self-contradictory, that it is morally impossible for them to have been invented, in addition to which she is not clever enough to invent and to follow up what she has invented. Several of these facts are proved genuine; she mentions living people.' The examining judge says further, that the very denials of the sorceresses accused by Marguerite of complicity with Madame de Montespan, their embarrassment, their contradictions, their refusal to answer when they were conscious of being hard pressed, confirm her testimony.

When Marguerite Monvoisin made her depositions, her mother had been dead for several months. In the examination of July 12, 1680, we read:-

'Why did you not sooner give information of these evil designs against the person of the king?'

'I could not tell what I had heard without ruining my mother; I did not believe myself obliged to tell; I asked advice of no one, and have declared all I know on the matter.'

'Did you not know you were bound to tell, and that it would be a great crime to hide anything concerning this matter?'

'I knew well enough the importance of the things I have stated; I knew it before I told them, and was sure of it after I had done so; and I knew there was nothing but was of great importance.'

'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 Fran?oise 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 chateau 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 Chatelet 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.

'So early as that, then, a scheme was on foot.

'When I questioned the two surviving accomplices on the matter, they said, separately, that this scheme was to secure the favour of the king; that for that purpose La Voisin then gave some powders which were placed under the chalice given to Madame de Montespan, and that she recited an incantation in which her own name and the king's occurred; that she performed other ceremonies at Saint-Germain; that she had masses said on the hearts of pigeons at St. Séverin, and other impious and sacrilegious rites performed in Mariette's room, for this purpose, and as the one says, to slay, the other merely to get rid of, Madame de la Vallière.' (These enchantments to procure the death of Mademoiselle de la Vallière were made upon human bones.)

'Lesage and Mariette said nothing about it until the former, urged by explicit commands to tell the truth, and Mariette, impelled by the facts themselves to reveal them, both, separately, established these facts.'

La Reynie observes further that Lesage and Mariette mentioned certain details, afterwards proved to be accurate, of which they could have got information from Madame de Montespan alone.

We have already mentioned the reasons why the declarations of Marguerite Monvoisin inspired confidence; the corresponding depositions of Lesage deserve equal attention. On October 8, 1679, Louvois wrote to Louis XIV: 'Monsieur de la Reynie showed me his conviction that, if I spoke to Lesage, he would in the end make up his mind to tell me all he knew, and he believed this to be the more important because this man has not up to the present been convicted himself of poisoning any one, but has a perfect knowledge of all the poisonings effected in Paris for the last seven or eight years. I went yesterday to Vincennes, and spoke to him in the way Monsieur de la Reynie desired, giving him to hope that your Majesty would pardon him provided he made the declarations necessary for bringing to the knowledge of justice all that has happened in regard to the poisons. He promised to do so, and told me that he was much surprised at my urging him to tell all he knew.' In a letter of October 11, 1679, Louvois renewed his pressure on Lesage to induce him to speak fully and in entire frankness. The magician hesitated, tried to dissimulate, repeating to all who urged him how vastly he was astonished at their persistence; but this reluctance only stimulated the ardour of La Reynie. He returned to the charge; like Louvois, he gave hints of a royal pardon. At last Lesage spoke. His principal declarations were written among the papers which Louis had burnt in the fireplace of his study, as we have said; hence we no longer possess them in their entirety; but from the notes left by La Reynie, as well as from the fragments of the magisterial examination which were preserved and will be found in part reproduced below, we know that the revelations of Lesage entirely confirmed those of Marguerite Monvoisin.

The scandal of the amours of Louis XIV was only the more intense because the young Marquis de Montespan was by no means a complaisant husband, a singular fact at that period and in that society. 'He was an extravagant and extraordinary man,' says Mademoiselle de Montpensier, 'who complained to everybody of the friendship of the king for his wife.' There were scenes between the spouses, and he struck her. He provoked scenes with the king. 'When Montespan went to Saint-Germain sermonising thus, Madame de Montespan was in despair. He used to come to see me very often,' says Mademoiselle de Montpensier; 'he is a relative of mine, and I scolded him. He came one evening and repeated to me an harangue he had delivered to the king, in which he quoted innumerable passages of Scripture, about David, for instance, and finally used strong terms to induce him to give back his wife and fear the judgment of God. I said to him, "You are mad!" I was at Saint-Germain next day and said to Madame de Montespan: "I have seen your husband in Paris, and he is madder than ever; I sharply scolded him and told him that if he didn't hold his tongue he would deserve to be locked up." She said to me: "He is here telling his tales at court; I am ashamed to see that my parrot and he are amusing the mob."'

Louis XIV was naturally irritated by the attitude of this surprising husband. Almighty as he was, he resorted to the tricks and subterfuges of a vulgar lover. His anxiety was redoubled when his mistress became a mother. The king was very fond of his children, particularly those he had by Madame de Montespan. In the eyes of the law these children belonged to the husband; and Louis trembled with fear lest Montespan, out of vengeance or irony, should come and take from him his son and daughter.

Montespan found a supporter in his uncle the Archbishop of Sens. 'When the king's passion was known,' says the Abbé Boileau, brother of the poet, 'the archbishop sentenced to public penance a woman of the town who lived as the marchioness, his niece, was living, in open concubinage, and he caused the publication in his diocese of the old canons against the violation of the religious law.' The diocese of Sens included Fontainebleau, where the court was then held. Madame de Montespan was compelled to take her departure in confusion. She felt that it was she who was being pointed at. She dared not return into the jurisdiction of the archbishop until after the prelate's death in 1674.

When the Marquis understood that his efforts were vain, and that from the height of his throne Louis would reply only with lettres de cachet, he put on mourning, clothed all his household in black, and drove to the court in a coach draped in black, to take leave in great ceremony of his relatives, friends, and acquaintances. On that day the husband in his costume of black was not the butt of ridicule; jests were silenced, and the king on the throne was scorned and despised. A man of genius lent the monarch his aid. Molière wrote his Amphitryon. The play was represented in this year 1668, and the mockers resumed their places in the royal camp.

'Un partage avec Jupiter

N'a rien du tout qui déshonore.'[10]

Viscounts and marquises on gilded benches applauded the taunt and punctuated the cruel railleries with bursts of laughter. Yet the king was injured, especially in the opinion of the Parisian middle class. He was conscious of it; and one day said himself to his mistress that if she had left house, children, and husband to follow him, he had neglected the care of his reputation, which was much blighted through his having loved a woman whom he had such good reasons for not regarding as he had done.

Montespan set out for his country seat. Some men of the company he commanded fell a-quarrelling with the under-bailiff of Perpignan; the fact was of no importance, but it came to the knowledge of the ministers, and Louvois wrote at once to the Lord Lieutenant: 'September 21, 1669. I cannot express my surprise that a thing of the nature of that which Monsieur de Montespan has done should have passed without my learning of it. I send you a despatch from the king for the supreme council of Roussillon, in which His Majesty commands the council to hold an inquiry. In whatever manner you may employ it, it must not be forgotten, whether in the informations of the sub-bailiff of Perpignan or in that about the disorders that occurred at Illes, to implicate the commander of the company (Montespan) and the largest possible number of cavaliers, so that they may take fright and the majority desert, especially the commander; after which it would not be a difficult matter to bring about the ruin of the company. If you have the names of the cavaliers who insulted the sub-bailiff, they must be arrested at once, to make an example of them, and so that you may have, from their depositions at the time of their execution, more proof against the captain-to try in some way or other to implicate him in the informations, so that he may be cashiered with an appearance of justice. If you could manage that he is accused sufficiently for the supreme council to have grounds for pronouncing some condemnation on him, it would be a very good thing; you will guess the reasons well enough, however little you may be informed of what is going on in this part of the world.' The cynicism of Louis and his minister passes all bounds. Montespan had to flee for refuge to Spain; but from that day Louis' position in regard to the injured husband, so far from improving, became sensibly worse. Abroad, Montespan could more boldly and independently press his claims on the children of the king, and provoke a scandal in the eyes of all Europe.

Louis got a demand for separation a mensa et thoro, formulated by Madame de Montespan, brought before the Chatelet. Notwithstanding the pressure exerted by king and ministers, who bullied the judges, the matter remained in suspense. The judges could not bring themselves to commit the iniquity demanded of them. They gave way at last, partly under pressure from the First President de Novion, who had been won by a promise of the Great Seal. The separation was declared on July 7, 1674, by Procureur-Général Achille de Harlay, assisted by six judges. The judgment adduced the wasting of the property of the commonalty by the Marquis de Montespan, the domestic discord between the marquis and his wife, and the ill-treatment of which the marchioness complained on the part of her husband. This decree pronounced against Montespan was a monstrous proceeding. After having dishonoured his crown, Louis dishonoured justice; but there was a higher justice which, as we shall see, he was not to escape.

The decree of July 7, 1674, did not assure the king peace of mind. In 1678 Montespan had to return for a short time to Paris on account of a lawsuit. Louis XIV wrote to Colbert (June 15): 'I understand that Montespan is indulging in indiscreet talk; he is a madman whom you will do me the pleasure to have closely watched; and so that he may have no pretext for remaining in Paris, see Novion so that the Parlement may hurry. I know that Montespan has threatened to see his wife, and that he is capable of it, and that the consequences might be formidable (the question of the children again); I rely on you to prevent him speaking. Do not forget the details of this matter, and especially see to it that he leaves Paris at the earliest moment.' Such were the jobs to which the Colberts and the Louvois had to stoop; but such also were the annoyances and troubles beneath which Louis bent his brow-a brow already reddened with shame, and soon to be furrowed with grief.

Louis XIV loved his mistresses, not for their own sakes, but for his. The new passion lasted three years. Perhaps some one will say that that is a good while. In 1672, jealousy, which perpetually ravaged the proud soul of Madame de Montespan, burst out in storms of which Madame de Sévigné speaks thus: 'She is in inexpressible rages; she has seen no one for a fortnight; she writes from morning till night, and when she goes to bed tears it all up. Her state makes me quite sorry. No one pities her, though she has done good turns to many people.' Madame de Montespan returned to La Voisin; and it is not without emotion that we see this wonderful woman, with her matchless grace and her superior intelligence, after having stepped into crime, sinking into it lower and lower. From the hands of the Abbé Mariette, who recited the Gospels over her head and made incantations on the hearts of pigeons, she comes into those of the Abbé Guibourg, who said the black mass.

Guibourg claimed to be an illegitimate member of the family of Montmorency. He was seventy years old; his complexion was that of a confirmed toper. He had a horrible squint. In these monstrous ceremonies he cut the throats of his own children by his mistress, a fat ruddy wench named Chanfrain.

To obtain the desired result from the black mass, it was necessary that it should be celebrated three times in succession. The three masses were said in 1673, at intervals of a fortnight or three weeks-the first in the chapel of the Chateau of Villebousin, in the village of Mesnil, near Montlhéry. Mademoiselle Des?illets, the maid of Madame de Montespan, was intimately connected with Leroy, governor of the pages of the Petite Ecurie, who owned a house at Mesnil. Guibourg had lived in the chateau as almoner of the Montgommerys. It has been described by M. J. Lair: 'A building of the fourteenth century, and well chosen for sinister incantations, the chateau, situated half a league from the road from Paris to Orleans, was surrounded by deep moats, filled with running water.' Leroy betook himself to St. Denis, where he saw the Abbé Guibourg. He promised fifty pistoles, that is, about ￡20, and a living worth 2000 livres. At the day fixed there met at Villebousin Madame de Montespan, the Abbé Guibourg, Leroy, 'a tall person' who was certainly Mademoiselle Des?illets, and a person of name unknown who is said to have been a retainer of the Archbishop of Sens. In the chapel of the chateau the priest said mass on the bare body of the favourite as she lay across the altar. At the consecration, he recited his incantation, the words of which he gave later to the commissaries of the Chambre Ardente: 'Ashtaroth, Asmodeus, Princes of Affection, I conjure you to accept the sacrifice I present to you of this child for the things I ask of you, which are that the affection of the king and my lord the dauphin for me may be continued; and that, honoured by the princes and princesses of the court, nothing be denied me of all that I shall ask the king, as well for my relatives as my servitors.' 'Guibourg had bought for a crown (12s. 6d. to-day) the child who was sacrificed at this mass,' writes La Reynie, 'and who was offered to him by a fine girl; and having drawn blood from the child, whom he stabbed in the throat with a penknife, he poured it into the chalice, after which the child was taken away and carried to another place.'

The details of the mass at Mesnil were revealed by Guibourg, and further confirmed by the deposition of La Chanfrain, his mistress.

The second mass on the body of Madame de Montespan took place a fortnight or three weeks after the first, at St. Denis, in a tumbledown hut. The third took place in a house at Paris, whither Guibourg was conducted blindfold, and from which he was brought back in the same way as far as the arcade of the H?tel de Ville.

At this time the journal of the health of the king, drawn up by D'Aquin, the chief physician, states that Louis suffered from violent headaches. Towards the end of this year, 1673, he was attacked by dizziness of such a kind that at times his sight became clouded and he felt on the point of collapse. 'Is it rash,' observes Monsieur Loiseleur very justly, 'to see in these headaches and faintnesses the effect of powders provided by La Voisin?' The hypothesis of Monsieur Loiseleur will be sustained in detail by a declaration of the magician Lesage which will be found below.

It remains to inquire how Madame de Montespan contrived to get the powders prepared by the sorceress into the food of the king, surrounded as he was by officers of the buttery. Two revelations, both of November 8, 1680, made, the first by Lemaire, locked up at Vincennes with the Abbé Guibourg, the second by Lesage, will give the indication we desire.

We read in the notes La Reynie took for his personal guidance by way of memoranda: 'November 8, 1680, Lemaire asked to speak to me; told me that being in the same room with Guibourg and another man, Guibourg told them such strange things, especially in regard to Madame de Montespan, that he does not know what to make of it, and that if there was any officer who ought to be suspected, it would be Duchesne, the butler; that Duchesne was a footman in the house of Madame d'Aubray, that he has since served Monsieur Bontemps, and then Madame de Montespan, who was very kind to him, and made him officer of the buttery, and that he is always at Madame de Montespan's service.' Further: 'From the last examinations of Lesage, and that of November 8 particularly, it appears that Gilot, also an officer of the buttery, was involved in the impious trade in 1668, and that he sought Lesage's assistance for the designs of Madame de Montespan.'

The crisis of the year 1675 was more serious. Louis XIV suddenly had great fits of devotion. People with their eyes open saw that he was tiring of his mistress. Madame de Montespan, on the Thursday in Holy Week, had been refused absolution by a priest of her parish. Much put out, she hastened to the curé of Versailles, and spoke to him hotly, but the curé approved of his subordinate's action. And the great voice of Bossuet, which had consistently been upraised against the double adultery, resounded with a new force. 'When we were at Versailles, one fast day, about Easter, Madame de Montespan went away,' writes Mademoiselle de Montpensier. 'Every one was vastly astonished at this retreat. I went to Paris, and saw her in the house where her children were. Madame de Maintenon was with her. She saw nobody. As everybody was on the alert about her return, although nobody seemed to pay any attention to it, it was known that M. Bossuet, then tutor to the dauphin, and at present bishop of Meaux, went there every day muffled in a grey cloak.' We have other information from Bossuet's private secretary, the Abbé Le Dieu. Louis XIV ordered his mistress to retire. When Bossuet went to see the exiled lady, she 'loaded him with reproaches; she told him that his pride had urged him to get her driven away, that he wanted to make himself sole master of the king's mind.' Then, when she understood that her wrath smote in vain against the serene firmness of the prelate, 'she sought to win him by flatteries and promises; she dangled before his eyes the chief dignities in Church and State.'

This exile lasted from April 14 to May 11. On the other hand, the magician Lesage, in an examination held on November 16, 1680, declared that 'if he were in the last torments, he could tell nothing except that in 1675, at the beginning of summer (the exact date), when Madame de Montespan was trying to maintain her position, La Voisin and La Des?illets worked or pretended to work for her; but in reality, powerless to keep for her the love of the king, they merely gave her powders which, taken in certain doses, would have acted as poison.' So Lesage said; and the declarations of the girl Monvoisin, summed up by La Reynie, are identical: 'The powders her mother sent to Madame de Montespan were love powders to be given to the king. Once when her mother took some powders to Clagny she was accompanied by the magician Latour, her eldest brother, a servant named Marie, since dead, and Fernand, a good friend of Latour, and La Vautier; but these did not enter Clagny. She could not say if Latour went in with her mother, but they all came back together, and had lunch at the sign of the Heaume, near the Bois de Boulogne, with violins; they made some noise among them. Her brother, who told her about it, told her that her mother brought back fifty louis-d'or. Her mother, besides the powders she gave to Madame de Montespan, did not send any except by Mademoiselle Des?illets, who was the go-between for that purpose. As to the powders which had passed beneath the chalice, they came from a priest called the Prior (the Abbé Guibourg). As to the others which had not been under the chalice, her mother kept them in the drawer of a cabinet of which she had the key. There were black ones, white, and grey, which she mixed in the presence of Des?illets. Her father once wanted to break the cabinet where the powders were kept, saying that some harm would come of it.' And the result of these practices was, once more, of such a nature as to give confidence in the power of sorcery: Madame de Montespan regained her position with the king. It is true that Madame de Richelieu said, 'I am always there as a third party.' In spite of this 'third party,' Madame de Montespan became the mother of the Comte de Toulouse and Mademoiselle de Blois. Madame de Sévigné writes to her daughter on June 28, 1675: 'Your idea about Quantova (Madame de Montespan) is very good; if she cannot recover the old ground, she will push her authority and her greatness beyond the clouds; but she must make sure of being loved all the year round without scruple. Meanwhile her house is filled with the whole court, and her consideration is unbounded.' On July 31, Madame de Sévigné writes again: 'The attachment for Quantova is always extreme: it's pretty much in order to vex the curé and everybody else.'

In 1675 Madame de Montespan had been dismissed, from religious scruples; in 1676 she was to be sent away for reasons which furnished her with quite another ground for irritation. The king was then suddenly seized with a terrible hunger for a multiplicity of amours, soon over, sudden, and varied. Madame de Sévigné characterises this strange condition in a picturesque phrase: 'There's a scent of new game in the land of Quanto.'[11] At short intervals the Princess de Soubise, Madame de Louvigny, Mademoiselle de Rochefort-Théobon, Madame de Ludres, and no doubt others, succeeded one another in the affections and the bed of the king.

Madame de Soubise makes an amusing appearance in the gallery of royal mistresses. She loved Louis out of love for her husband. After collecting for him all the honours and dignities, the offices and the hard cash that he desired, Madame de Soubise struck her tents and retired in good order. She had made the least possible stir and went back to her husband, who was enchanted with the adventure. The Prince of Soubise thought, with the poet, that a share with Jupiter had no dishonour so long as Jupiter could pay a good price.

These intrigues find a double echo, in the writings of Madame de Sévigné and in the records of the Chambre Ardente. On September 2, 1676, Madame de Sévigné writes: 'The vision of Madame de Soubise has passed quicker than a lightning-flash: they have made it up again. Quanto the other day at cards had her head resting familiarly on her friend's shoulder, and we fancied that piece of affectation meant "I am better than ever."' But on September 11 the position has changed. 'Everybody believes that the star of Madame de Montespan is paling. There are tears, unfeigned disappointments, affected cheerfulness, sulks; at last, my dear, it is all over. Some tremble, others rejoice, some wish for immutability, the majority for a dramatic change; in a word, we are all eyes and ears for what the most clear-sighted say.' 'Every one thinks that the king loves her no longer,' we read in a letter of September 30, 'and that Madame de Montespan is embarrassed between the consequences which would follow the return of his favours and the danger of no longer enjoying them-the fear that they are being sought elsewhere. Apart from that, she has not very nicely accepted the position of friend: so much beauty as she still has, and so much pride, find it difficult to come down to second place. Jealousies are keen. Have they ever stopped anything?' Again, on October 15, 1676: 'If Quanto had packed up her traps at Easter the year she returned to Paris, she would not have been in her present distress; it would have been sensible to adopt that course, but human weakness is great; one wishes to make the most of the remains of one's beauty, and this economy brings ruin rather than riches.' Madame de Ludres had just succeeded Madame de Soubise.

The anxieties of Madame de Montespan were further enhanced by the brilliance, increasing every day, of a new star in the sky of Versailles. At its rising it had shed a pale, discreet, modest light, but a light which twinkled with little mocking scintillations. The widow Scarron, now become Madame de Maintenon, had been chosen as governess of the children of the king and Madame de Montespan. What strides the governess's fortune had taken in a few years! 'But let us speak of the friend' (Madame de Maintenon), writes Madame de Sévigné on May 6, 1676: 'she is still more triumphant than the Montespan. Everything is submitted to her dominion. All the chamber-women of her neighbour are hers: one hands her the rouge-pot on her knees; another brings her her gloves; a third puts her to sleep; she salutes no one, and I fancy that really she laughs in her sleeve at this servitude.'

Madame de Sévigné thus tells us what was passing at court; Marguerite Monvoisin will tell us what was going on among the sorceresses. 'The daughter of La Voisin,' writes La Reynie, 'says that she has seen this sort of mass celebrated over the body by Guibourg in her mother's house. She helped her mother to get things ready: a mattress on seats, two stools at the sides, on which were candlesticks with candles; after which Guibourg came out of the little side-chamber clothed in his chasuble-white, spotted with black fir-cones-and after that La Voisin brought in the woman on whose body the mass was to be said. Madame de Montespan had this sort of mass said three years ago (i.e. in 1676) at her mother's house, where she came about ten o'clock and only left at midnight. And when La Voisin told her that it was necessary for her to fix a time when the other two masses might be said, which were necessary if her affair was to be successful, Madame de Montespan said that she could not find time, that La Voisin would have to do what was necessary to assure success, which she promised her and did, and the masses were said on La Voisin herself by Guibourg.' (This again shows the sincerity of the sorceress in the carrying out of these practices.) 'The girl Voisin having notified all the circumstances of the proceeding, the arrangement of the place, that of the person-she knew Madame de Montespan-the preparations of the priest clothed in his sacerdotal vestments, the terms of the incantation, in which the documents show that the names of Louis de Bourbon and Madame de Montespan were mentioned-the girl Voisin adds that a child had its throat cut at the mass said for Madame de Montespan at her mother's.'

'When I was grown up,' said Marguerite Monvoisin, 'my mother was no longer reluctant to trust me, and I was present at this sort of mass, and saw that the lady was stark naked on the mattress, with her head hanging down, supported by a pillow on an overturned chair, the legs too hanging over, a napkin on the belly, a cross on the napkin, and the chalice on the belly.' She adds that this lady was Madame de Montespan. 'At the mass of Madame de Montespan,' said Marguerite in the course of another examination, 'a child was presented which apparently had been prematurely born, and it was put into a basin. Guibourg cut its throat, poured the blood into a chalice, and consecrated it with the wafer, finished his mass, then proceeded to take the child's entrails. My mother next day carried the blood and wafer to Dumesnil to be distilled, in a glass vessel which Madame de Montespan took away.' These facts were confirmed on October 23, 1680, by the confrontation of Marguerite Monvoisin with Guibourg-with this variation, that Guibourg tried to shuffle on to La Voisin the butchery of the child.

'Guibourg said that it was not true that he had opened the child, because it would have stained his alb: he found the child already opened.

'The girl Voisin, on the contrary, declared that he cut open the heart himself, took out some clotted blood, and put it into the vessel into which the other blood and the rest had been put, which Madame de Montespan took away; and that to make the clotted blood go in, a common glass was broken, which, with its foot knocked off, was made to act as a funnel.

'Guibourg said that he did not open the child's stomach, but that having found it open, he did in fact draw out the entrails and open the heart to get out the blood that was in it, and that he put it into a crystal vase with some portions of the consecrated wafer: the whole was carried off by the lady on whose body he had said mass; and that he always believed the lady was Madame de Montespan.'

This picture is fraught with so much horror that we could not bring ourselves to admit its authenticity if the evidence of Marguerite Monvoisin and the Abbé Guibourg were not corroborated by confessions extorted from other accomplices of these crimes, who were arrested at different dates and examined separately-Lesage, Lacoudraye, Delaporte, Vertemart, Fran?oise Filastre, the Abbé Cotton-confirmed by the declarations of several witnesses who had picked up, before the trial, fragments of talk which escaped the accused. La Reynie emphasises the fact that the declarations of Lesage and the girl Monvoisin were made at an interval of sixteen months, and without their having had any opportunity during those months of communicating with each other.

On October 11, 1680, La Reynie writes to Louvois, who wished to save Madame de Montespan while prosecuting the charges against the other persons, and proposed, with that end, to withdraw from the case the declarations made under torture by Filastre and the Abbé Cotton, which contained the gravest charges against the favourite: 'It is certain, even if we found a legitimate expedient for concealing from the judges for the present the facts which it would be well to keep secret, even for the sake of justice itself, that these very facts would crop up again from the woman Chappelain, from Guibourg, Galet, Pelletier, Delaporte, and perhaps from several more when under trial.'

On the subject of the deposition made by Guibourg, La Reynie writes: 'It is morally impossible that Guibourg has deceived us in his declaration, and that he invented what he tells about the incantations said in course of the masses on the women's bodies. His mind is not active or consistent enough for such continuous thought as would have been necessary to invent what he had said on this subject, because, even supposing he were capable of such application, he has not enough acquaintance with what goes on in the world, and could not have devised so consistent a story in regard to Madame de Montespan.' Elsewhere he writes: 'Guibourg and the girl Monvoisin have corroborated one another about circumstances so particular and so horrible that it is difficult to conceive two persons being able to imagine and fabricate them unknown to each other. It seems that these things must have occurred, or they could not have been described.'

The illustrious magistrate adds the following reflections:-

'1. The time of the relations of La Voisin with Latour, the journeys to Saint-Germain, and the powders which she made him work at, was the year 1676.

'2. The time of the abominations described by Guibourg and the girl Monvoisin fits the same period.

'3. Two years ago Lesage spoke of Latour, the poisons, Des?illets, and the journeys of La Voisin in 1676.

'4. It was established at the trial that two or three years before Lesage was taken, he testified that he feared the business would ruin him. They said at that time that the king had the vapours. He declared that he wished to leave La Voisin on that account, and because of the dealings she had with Des?illets.

'From the beginning of these inquiries, these same facts have been spoken of; La Bosse, the first to be tried, gave the first inkling of them; she spoke of them under torture; but, because the king had not yet allowed this sort of facts to be collected in regard to persons of consideration, and because there was nothing to make us pay the least attention to them, no mention was made in the report of the torture of La Bosse of what she had said about Madame de Montespan.'

In this year 1676, Madame de Montespan not only had recourse to the incantations of the black mass; at her instigation, the sorceresses sent La Boissière and Fran?oise Filastre to Normandy to a certain Louis Galet, who had 'fine secrets' in regard to poison and love. Galet gave them powders. As soon as his name was uttered by the prisoner before the Chambre Ardente, an order was given for his arrest. He was flung into prison at Caen on February 23, 1680. While still far away from the other prisoners, detained at Vincennes or the Bastille, he was put through interrogations, and the depositions made by him and the others coincided with remarkable accuracy. And La Reynie's conclusion is: 'Guibourg and Galet having confessed after the torture of La Filastre, they gave between them a complete proof of these facts.'

It must be confessed that Madame de Montespan would have been of a singularly incredulous nature if she had not retained a blind confidence in the influence of the devil as invoked by the magicians and sorceresses. Madame de Ludres was discarded, and Louis fell at Madame de Montespan's feet again. On June 11, 1677, Madame de Sévigné wrote to Madame de Grignan: 'Oh, my daughter, what a triumph at Versailles! what redoubled pride! what a re-entry into possession! I was in the room for an hour. She was in bed, decked out, with her hair done: she was resting for the medianoche (supper about midnight). She launched shafts of contempt at poor Io (Madame de Ludres), and laughed at her having the audacity to complain of her. Imagine all that an ungenerous pride could make her say in triumph, and you will get near the truth. It is said that the little woman (Madame de Ludres) will resume her ordinary duties about Madame. She went off to walk in perfect solitude with La Moreuil in the garden of the Marshal Du Plessis.' On June 18, Madame de Sévigné wrote to Bussy-Rabutin: 'Madame de Montespan wanted to strangle her (Madame de Ludres), and makes her life terrible.' On July 7, to Madame de Grignan: 'Poor Isis (Madame de Ludres) has not been to Versailles. She has remained in her solitude. When a certain person (Madame de Montespan) speaks of her, she says, "that rag." The event makes everything permissible.'

'Quanto and her friend Louis XIV are together longer and more eagerly than ever they were. The ardour of the first years has returned, and all fears are banished, all restraint removed, which persuades us that never was empire seen more firmly established.' And a little later: 'Madame de Montespan was the other day covered with diamonds; the brilliance of so blazing a divinity was more than one could bear. The attachment seems greater than ever: they are all eyes for one another: never has love been seen to resume its sway like this.'

Yet, courted and victorious as she was, the favourite appeared a prey to torment; she was agitated, in a terrible fever. On January 13, 1678, the Comte de Rébenac wrote to the Marquis de Feuquières: 'Madame de Montespan's gambling has reached such a pitch that losses of 100,000 crowns (￡60,000 to-day) are common. On Christmas Day she lost 700,000 crowns; she staked 150,000 pistoles (￡280,000 at the present day) on three cards, and won.' She lost her head in her triumph-her last triumph, dazzling but ephemeral, and about to be followed by days of cruel anguish.

In March 1679, Madame de Maintenon asked the Abbé Gobelin 'to pray and to have prayers said for the king, who is on the brink of a deep precipice.' This 'precipice' was the heart of Marie Angélique de Scoraille, demoiselle de Fontanges. She was eighteen years old, fair, with glossy flaxen hair; her large eyes, with their look of childish wonderment, were a light grey, deep and limpid; her skin was white as milk, her cheeks a lovely rose-pink; and in disposition, said her contemporaries, she was a genuine heroine of romance. She lived at Court in the capacity of maid of honour to Madame, as Madame de Ludres and Mademoiselle de la Vallière had done before her. 'Mademoiselle de Fontanges,' says Madame Palatine, 'is lovely as an angel, from head to foot.' If we may trust Bussy-Rabutin, 'her relatives, seeing her beauty and grace, and having more love for their fortune than for their honour, clubbed together to fit her out for Court, and to provide her with means corresponding to the position she was entering.'

This was a thunderbolt for Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan. We read in the Précis historique de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, by Lorot and Sivry: 'Madame de Montespan left Saint-Germain suddenly because of the jealousy she has conceived for Mademoiselle de Fontanges.' But the royal lover did not allow his mistresses to leave him at their own whim. He had imposed on Louise de la Vallière the bitter martyrdom of following as an expiatory victim the triumph of Madame de Montespan; he now compelled Madame de Montespan to witness the triumph of Mademoiselle de Fontanges. The proud marquise resigned herself to it, at least in appearance. On March 30, 1679, she wrote to the Duke de Noailles: 'All is very quiet here; the king only comes into my room after mass and after supper. It is much better to see each other seldom but pleasantly, than often with embarrassment,' Soon even this apparent satisfaction was withdrawn from her. The desertion was public and complete.

According to Madame de Sévigné, 'there was a ball at Villers-Cotterets, at Monsieur's place. There were masques. Mademoiselle de Fontanges appeared there in great brilliance, and adorned by the hands of Madame de Montespan.' Bussy rejoiced at the disgrace. 'Madame de Montespan has fallen, the king regards her no more, and you may be sure the courtiers follow his example.'

On April 6, Madame de Sévigné wrote: 'Madame de Montespan is enraged; she cried a good deal yesterday, and you may guess the martyrdom her pride is suffering.' On June 15, she replies to her daughter: 'It is an infernal position, as you say, that of her who goes four paces ahead' (alluding to Madame de Montespan).

She launched out into epigrams against her fortunate rival, just as she had satirised Louise de la Vallière. 'Madame de Montespan,' writes Bussy-Rabutin, 'seeing that the great Alcandre (Louis XIV) was drifting away from her more and more every day, became so choleric that she began publicly to abuse Mademoiselle de Fontanges. She told every one that the great Alcandre was surely not very fastidious to love a creature who had had her little love affairs in the country; that she had neither wit nor education; and that, properly speaking, she was only a beautiful painting. She said a thousand other things about her equally irritating. Indeed, she always displayed the same proud spirit which nothing had been able to quell.'

Mademoiselle de Fontanges responded by loading her predecessor and all her children with costly presents. She had just been proclaimed a duchess with an annuity of 20,000 crowns. The fury of Madame de Montespan broke out. She had a violent scene with Louis, and when the king reproached her with her pride, her domineering spirit, and other defects, she replied with haughty scorn, concentrating all the violence of her wrath in one of those hard and bitter words which had made her so much feared in the time of her reign; she answered, 'that if she had the imperfections of which he accused her, at any rate she did not smell worse than he.'

'My mother,' said the girl Monvoisin, 'told me that Madame de Montespan wanted at that time to go to extremities, and tried to induce her to do things for which she had much repugnance. My mother gave me to understand that it was against the king, and after hearing what had passed at the house of Trianon (a sorceress, partner of La Voisin), I could not doubt it.' The deserted mistress resolved to put an end to Louis and Mademoiselle de Fontanges. She applied to the sorceress of Villeneuve-sur-Gravois, and had no difficulty in getting together four accomplices in the terrible room in the Rue Beauregard: these four were La Voisin and La Trianon, who undertook to put Louis out of the way, and Romani and Bertrand, 'artists in poisons,' who promised to kill Mademoiselle de Fontanges. Madame de Montespan gave them money.

The king was to be poisoned first. La Voisin and her associates intended at first to put magic powders, prepared according to the formulae of the conjuring books, on the clothes of the king, or in some place where he was to pass, 'which Mademoiselle Des?illets, the companion of Madame de Montespan, said could be done easily.' The king would die of decline. But after reflection, La Voisin decided on means, the execution of which struck her as more certain. In conformity with the ancient custom of the kings of France, Louis XIV used to receive in person on certain days the petitions presented by his subjects. Everybody was introduced to his presence without distinction of rank or condition. It was resolved to prepare a petition and steep it in powders that had gone under the chalice; the king would take it in his hands and get his death-blow. La Trianon undertook the preparation of the paper, and La Voisin to place it in the hands of the king.

The petition was drawn up. The king's intervention was asked in favour of a certain Blessis, an alchemist whom the Marquis de Termes was keeping confined in his chateau. La Voisin betook herself to her friend Léger, a valet de chambre of Montausier, and asked of him a letter of recommendation to one of his friends at Saint-Germain, who would get her passed in among the first to an audience with the king, so that she might herself hand him her petition. Léger replied that it was unnecessary for her to go to Saint-Germain, as he would undertake to forward the petition by a sure route; but the sorceress insisted on presenting it herself.

The boldness of La Voisin terrified the most courageous of her companions. The majority of them feared, not death, but the horrible tortures reserved by the law for regicides. In order to frighten her, La Trianon cast her horoscope. This document was found among the papers seized on the sorceress by the Chambre Ardente. La Trianon foretold that La Voisin would be implicated in a trial for a crime against the state. 'Bah!' she replied, 'there are 100,000 crowns to be gained.' That was the price agreed upon by La Voisin and Madame de Montespan for the poisoning of Louis XIV.

La Voisin set out for Saint-Germain on Sunday, March 5, 1679, accompanied by Romani and Bertrand. She returned on Thursday, March 9, very much put out: she had not been able to approach the king so as to give him the petition. She could have put it on the table placed near the king for that purpose, but the paper was useless unless it were placed in the king's own hands. She said that she would return to Saint-Germain, and when her husband asked her what the urgency was, she replied: 'I must accomplish my design or perish in the attempt!' 'What! perish!' exclaimed Monvoisin, 'that's a good deal for a piece of paper.'

On Friday, March 10, the 'missionaries'-priests of a community founded by St. Vincent de Paul, which has already been mentioned-paid a visit to the sorceress. La Voisin took fright, and gave the petition to her daughter to burn, which Marguerite did at dawn on Saturday morning. It is needless to say that the paper had always been kept in an envelope, for to touch it, said the sorceresses, would be certain death. On Sunday, March 12, La Voisin was arrested; it was on Monday the 13th that she had meant to return to Saint-Germain. News of the arrest got abroad, and on Wednesday, March 15, Madame de Montespan fled from Court.

In a succession of hasty notes-the sentences are not even completed, and we have filled them out for greater clearness-La Reynie builds up a proof of the attempt on the life of Louis XIV, planned by La Voisin as the instrument of Madame de Montespan:-

'By the depositions of the girl Voisin, Romani, and Bertrand, it is proved that the journey of La Voisin to Saint-Germain was to present the petition: Bertrand wrote it out, went to learn from La Voisin what she had done, learnt that she had been there since Sunday without being able to present it, had brought it back, and was going to return. From this it is evident that the ultimate object of the journey of La Voisin to Saint-Germain was to present the petition.

'La Trianon and La Vautier agree as to the journey. La Trianon noted in her horoscope the state affair, the crime of high treason; when questioned she gave bad answers; among the facts confessed to, denies the petition; if it were an unimportant matter, would have no interest in denying it: must have had an object, which can be nothing else than what the girl Voisin says.

'The journey to Saint-Germain is the more suspicious in that La Voisin, questioned as to her various journeys, has never mentioned that one, and would have made no ado about mentioning it if there were nothing in it.

'To which must be added the confession made by Voisin to her guards in prison, about the fear she had that she would be asked to explain her journey. She said, "God has protected the king!"'

La Reynie adds: 'La Trianon agrees that she told the girl Voisin that the journey to Saint-Germain was the cause of her mother's arrest, that this journey would do her harm, that she would be involved in some affair of state. At the same time, La Voisin did not appear to be pleased with Blessis (and consequently had no reason to make any efforts to secure his liberty). What is still more considerable, La Trianon and the girl Monvoisin agree that the state crime mentioned in the horoscope was the journey to Saint-Germain.' 'Finally,' observes La Reynie, 'this petition has been mentioned at the trial, long before the girl Monvoisin was arrested.' On September 27, 1679, Louvois wrote to Louis XIV: 'Your Majesty will find in this packet what Lesage has said about the journey of La Voisin to Saint-Germain; he cites so many people as witnesses to his allegations that it is difficult to believe he invented them.' And La Reynie gives confirmation: 'Before making her declaration, the girl Monvoisin said something about it to two prisoners who are with her. Finally, she tried to do away with herself by strangling before making these same declarations.'

The assassination of the Duchess de Fontanges was intended to crown the vengeance of Madame de Montespan. La Voisin exclaimed, in regard to this, when dining with La Trianon: 'Oh! what a fine thing is a lover's spite!' Romani and Bertrand were engaged to poison the young lady at the same time that La Voisin was killing Louis XIV; but the poisons employed against her were to be less rapid, so that 'she might die a lingering death,' said the accomplices, 'and that it might be said that she had died of grief at the death of the king.'

Romani had planned to disguise himself as a cloth merchant. Bertrand was to follow him as a valet. They were to present their wares to the duchess, and even if she did not take any cloth, 'she would not refrain from taking gloves,' said Romani, 'because those he would bring from Grenoble would be very well made, and ladies never failed to take some of them when they were well made, and the gloves would have the same effect as the piece of cloth.' They actually sent to Rome and Grenoble for gloves of the finest quality, and Romani 'prepared' them according to the recipes of the magicians.

We find among La Reynie's papers a series of little notes which clearly prove the plot against the life of Madame de Fontanges.

A last feature in the case is not the least surprising.

We have just seen that Madame de Montespan fled from Court when she learnt of the arrest of the sorceress and her accomplices. Her terror, and, above all, her fury were extreme. At the moment when her fortune was for ever ruined, when she felt that she herself was lost, she wished at least to have the terrible joy of seeing the Duchess de Fontanges perish at her hands. The sorceress who had been the chief instrument of her passions was about to be interrogated, and would undoubtedly disclose to the attentive eyes of the judges the horrible practices in which the king's mistress had been concerned. It was at this very moment that Madame de Montespan, burning to realise her designs, entered into relations with Fran?oise Filastre, the friend of La Voisin, and after her the most terrible sorceress in Paris. Filastre was one of those who had devoted their children to the devil, and murdered them immediately after birth. She went to Normandy to find Galet, who has already been mentioned, then went to Auvergne to obtain secrets for 'poisoning without any sign appearing.' Returning to Paris, she took steps to win an entrance to the house of Madame de Fontanges; but her arrest prevented her from carrying her scheme into execution.

Nature gave to Madame de Montespan the terrible satisfaction she had sought to obtain from magic and poison. On June 28, 1681, the Duchess de Fontanges died at the age of twenty-two, in the abbey of Port Royal. She was carried off by pleuro-pneumonia, tubercular in origin, the action of which was hastened by loss of blood following an accouchement. The young woman died convinced that she had been poisoned, and suspecting her rival. Louis XIV, who had the same idea, feared that the autopsy might reveal the crime, and sought to prevent it; but the relatives insisted on it. The physicians concluded that it was a natural death. But the opinion was still held that Madame de Fontanges had succumbed to poison administered by Madame de Montespan, an opinion echoed by Madame de Caylus, Madame de Maintenon, Madame Palatine, and Bussy-Rabutin.

Before the commissioners of the Chambre Ardente the magician Lesage had allowed the following remark to escape him: 'If Filastre were captured, they would learn some strange things.' She was taken: she denied everything before the commissioners; but on October 1, 1680, while under torture, she confirmed in the most precise manner the revelations made by the prisoners at the Bastille and Vincennes; and on that very day Louis XIV in terror ordered the sittings of the Chambre Ardente to be suspended. On October 17, 1680, Louvois wrote to La Reynie: 'I have received the letters you have done me the honour to write to me, and the king heard them read with pain.' Louis, then, ordered the closing of the Chambre Ardente, and when on May 19, 1681, the sittings were resumed at the entreaty of La Reynie, the judges were forbidden 'to take any steps in regard to the declarations contained in the reports of the torture and execution of La Filastre.' From that day Louis had no further doubts as to the guilt of his mistress. One more proof was to be furnished him.

The name of Mademoiselle Des?illets, Madame de Montespan's maid, recurs on every page of the proceedings. She was continually going backwards and forwards between her mistress and the sorceresses. The prisoners almost all knew her: they spoke of her in the most positive manner. The girl Monvoisin pointed out her house, where she had been several times. Mademoiselle Des?illets had a friend named Madame de Villedieu, who frequently visited the sorceresses, but for her own private ends. When La Voisin was arrested, the two friends talked about the incident.

'How can you be easy in mind when you have been so often to the sorceress?' asked Madame de Villedieu.

'The king will not allow me to be arrested.'

The remark was voluntarily reported by Madame de Villedieu to the detective Desgrez. And, in fact, when La Reynie on October 22, 1680, wrote to Louvois: 'What has been said in regard to Mademoiselle Des?illets at the beginning and repeated at the end is so strong that it is impossible to prevent her from being confronted with the people who have spoken about her,' his words fell on deaf ears at Versailles. When Madame de Villedieu was taken to Vincennes, she said: 'It is astonishing that I am being imprisoned when I went only once to La Voisin, while you leave Mademoiselle Des?illets at liberty, who has been there more than fifty times.'

Louvois at last decided to order Mademoiselle Des?illets to appear, not before the judges, but before himself in his private room. On November 18, 1680, he wrote to La Reynie:-

'Mademoiselle Des?illets declares with marvellous assurance that not one of those who have named her know her, and, to assure me of her innocence, she charged me to urge the king to allow her to be taken to the place where those who have deposed against her are confined. She stakes her life that no one will be able to tell who she is. His Majesty has therefore been pleased to decide that I shall take her to Vincennes next Friday, and bring down Lesage, the girl Voisin, Guibourg, and the other persons who, as you inform me, have spoken of her. The person of whom I have just spoken will enter and show herself to them, and I will ask them if they know her, without naming her to them.'

The result did not justify Louvois' hopes. La Reynie showed at that time that, unknown to him and in spite of his vigilance, some one was holding communication with the prisoners in Vincennes, who were receiving information from without. This 'some one' was Madame de Montespan. No doubt the lieutenant of police took greater precautions on this occasion. The prisoners were not able to receive preliminary coaching, with the result that one and all immediately recognised the favourite's maid.

Mademoiselle Des?illets, moreover, was under great illusions as to the impunity that would be assured to her. Louis XIV did not allow her to appear before the judges, nor even to be confronted with the prisoners, but he had her shut up for the rest of her days in close confinement. The wretched woman died on September 8, 1686, in the general hospital of Tours. And poor Madame de Villedieu, whose only crime was that she was for a moment in the confidence of Mademoiselle Des?illets, was visited with the same fate, because of the necessity of keeping the great secret.

When he learned suddenly of all the crimes with which the woman he had most loved was stained-the woman whom, in the eyes of Europe, he had made queen of the French Court, who was the mother of his favourite children-what were the sentiments and the attitude of King Louis? What passed in his soul, immured, for posterity as for his contemporaries, in that 'terrible majesty' of which Saint-Simon speaks?

About the middle of August 1680, Louvois, who in this dreadful business devoted all his intelligence and all his influence to protect Madame de Montespan, arranged a tête-à-tête with the king. Madame de Maintenon anxiously observed them from a distance. 'Madame de Montespan at first wept,' she says, 'threw reproaches upon him, and at last spoke with pride.' At the first moment, under the shock of the king's declarations, Madame de Montespan had been utterly crushed, had burst into tears of confusion and humiliation; then, regaining command of herself, the masterful woman had risen to the height of her pride, with all the force of her passion and her hatred for her rivals. If it was true, she declared, that she had been driven to great crimes, it was because her love for the king was great, and great also were the harshness, cruelty, and infidelity of him to whom she had sacrificed everything. And the king might strike at her, but he could not forget that he would, with the same stroke, injure in the eyes of France and Europe the mother of his children-children who had been made legitimate children of France. Madame de Montespan left this interview irrevocably ruined, but at the same time definitively saved.

We must remember the rank to which Louis had raised his mistress. It was of the utmost importance to him to avoid a scandal. Even by exiling the fallen favourite, thus absolutely disgracing her, he would run the risk of unloosing storms. La Reynie, who, thanks to his genius for reading the hearts of men, knew Madame de Montespan's character thoroughly, warned Louvois: 'We cannot but fear extraordinary scandals, the consequence of which cannot be foreseen.' Louvois, Colbert, and Madame de Maintenon herself united their efforts to soften too violent a fall. Colbert had just betrothed his younger daughter to Madame de Montespan's nephew. We know, moreover, how much the famous statesman had at heart the national greatness to which he had so arduously contributed, and which in his view could not be dissevered from the greatness of the king. Madame de Maintenon had tenderly trained the children of Madame de Montespan, and retained a real affection for them all her life long. Let us add that Louis, with all his faults-his selfishness, his coarseness, his lack of feeling, his mediocre intellect-had at least a high sentiment of the royal dignity, and that in this awful crisis he did not for a moment depart from that calm and tranquil majesty at which all who approached him never ceased to wonder. Madame de Montespan was not driven from Court. She left her splendid apartments on the first floor for apartments remoter from the centre of the king's life. Louis continued to receive her in public, and publicly paid her visits which deceived careless observers; but practised eyes perceived the profound change which had taken place beneath these external appearances. Madame de Sévigné wrote to her daughter that Louis treated Madame de Montespan with harshness; Bussy-Rabutin wrote that he treated her with scorn. Thus began the expiatory martyrdom which lasted for twenty-seven years.

On March 15, 1691, Madame de Montespan retired to Paris, going into the community of St. Joseph which she had founded. Louis granted her a right royal pension, 10,000 pistoles-￡20,000 of to-day-a month; but when, in 1692, the double marriage of Madame de Montespan's children, Mademoiselle de Blois and the Duke de Maine, was celebrated with the Duke de Chartres and Mademoiselle de Charolais, Louis did not allow their mother to appear at the ceremony or to sign the contract.

In the early days of her retirement Madame de Montespan had the greatest difficulty in accommodating herself to the calm monotony of her retreat at St. Joseph's. 'She aired her leisure and anxieties,' says Saint-Simon, 'at Bourbon, at Fontevrault, at her estate at Antin, and for years was quite unable to regain repose of mind.' What were these anxieties? Saint-Simon could not explain them; but we are acquainted with them to-day.

Madame de Montespan was much distressed at abandoning the glory of the world; but from the day when the renunciation was made, she threw herself with as much passion into penitence as she had displayed in ambition and love. 'From the moment of her retirement to St. Joseph's,' says Saint-Simon, 'till her death, her conversion never belied itself, and her penitence continually augmented.' She might have been seen then, in the Carmelite convent in the Rue du Faubourg St. Jacques, imploring from her old rival, whom she had so harshly persecuted-the gentle and saintly Louise de la Vallière, Sister Louise de la Miséricorde-the words which give ease of mind and forgetfulness of the past. Though she tenderly loved those of her children whom she had borne to Louis XIV, it was towards the Duke d'Antin, the son she had by the Marquis de Montespan, that she diverted her solicitude, from a sense of duty, and, as Saint-Simon tells us, 'she occupied herself with enriching him.' 'The king had no manner of dealings with her,' writes the great chronicler, 'even through their children. Their attentions were discouraged, they thenceforth saw her only rarely and after having asked permission. The Père de la Tour wrung from her a terrible act of penitence, namely, to beg her husband's pardon and place herself again in his hands. She wrote herself in the most submissive terms, offering to return to him if he would deign to receive her, or to repair to whatever place he pleased to command. To any one who knew Madame de Montespan, this was a sacrifice of the most heroic kind. She had all the merit of it without undergoing the experience. Monsieur de Montespan sent word that he would neither receive her nor lay any commands upon her, and that he never wished to hear her name mentioned for the rest of his life.'

She had no further relations with the Court, the ministers, intendants, or judges; she asked nothing of any man, either for her or hers, and employed the vast income she owed to the king in doing good all around her, bestowing alms with ceaseless and unparalleled generosity, and endowing religious foundations. 'Beautiful as the day,' says Saint-Simon, 'till the last hour of her life; though she was not ill, she always fancied that she was, and that she was going to die.' This anxiety encouraged a taste for travelling, and in her travels she always took with her seven or eight persons as a suite. Between her outbursts of piety and the blossoming forth of her charity, incessant remorse thus made its appearance, as well as the continual need she felt of deadening her thoughts. Only Louis XIV, Louvois, and La Reynie could have explained the following page borrowed from Saint-Simon:-

'Little by little she proceeded to give all that she had to the poor. She worked for them several hours a day at humble and rough tasks, to wit, making shirts and other such-like things, and she made those about her work at them too. Her table, which she had loved to excess, became particularly frugal; her fasts were multiplied, her piety interrupted her entertaining and the harmless little card-play at which she amused herself, and at all hours of the day she would leave everything to go and pray in her closet. Her mortification of the flesh was constant: her chemises and sheets were of the roughest and coarsest unbleached linen, but they were concealed under ordinary sheets and underwear. She continually wore steel bracelets and garters, and a girdle of steel which often wounded her; and her tongue, formerly so terrible a member, had its penance also. She was further so tortured by horror of death that she paid several women whose sole employment was to watch her. She lay at night with all the bed-curtains thrown back, with many candles in her room, her watchers around her, and whenever she woke up she wished to find them chatting, playing cards, or eating, to make sure that they did not fall a-nodding.'

The hour so much dreaded at last struck. She had a singular presentiment of it a year beforehand. At the first attack of illness she saw that her end was near. It came on May 27, 1707, at Bourbon.

'She profited by a brief respite from pain to confess and receive the sacraments. Previously she had all her servants, even the humblest, brought in, made public confession of her public sins, and besought pardon for the scandal she had so long given, and even for her fits of temper, with a humility so real and deep and penitent that nothing could have been more edifying. She then received the last sacraments with ardent piety. The dread of death which all her life had so continually troubled her suddenly vanished and troubled her no more. She thanked God in the presence of them all for permitting her to die in a place where she was far away from the children of her sin, and during her illness spoke of them only this once. She was engrossed in the thought of eternity, in some hope of a cure with which they tried to flatter her, and in her condition as a sinner whose fear was tempered by a steady confidence in the mercy of God, with no regrets, solely intent on rendering to Him the sacrifice most pleasing to Him, with a gentleness and peacefulness which accompanied all her actions.'

The courtiers were surprised at the indifference Louis displayed on learning of the death of his sometime mistress. To the Duchess of Burgundy, who remarked on it, he replied that, since he had dismissed her, he had counted on never seeing her again, and that she was from that time dead to him. He openly reproved the grief manifested by Madame de Montespan's children; and, to the stupefaction of the Court, he forbade them to wear mourning, a circumstance the more incomprehensible because at that same date the Princess de Conti, daughter of Louis XIV and Louise de la Vallière, was wearing mourning for Madame de la Vallière her aunt.

It would be unjust to judge Madame de Montespan solely by what has been here said. We have spoken only of the crimes to which she was driven by the violence of her passions. We have not recalled the wealth she distributed with as much liberality as discretion, or the brilliance given to the Court by her grace and wit, or the enlightened protection which the greatest writers and artists found in her, the radiant kindliness with which she sweetened the declining years of the great Corneille-in a word, the innumerable deeds of kindness she performed with as much intelligence as affection, the fruits of some of which remain to this day. It would require a Racine, with his penetrating mind, his ability to reconcile opposite extremes in one and the same character, and the harmonious majesty of his language, to speak of Madame de Montespan. Bright and radiantly beautiful, of queenly elegance, charming by the distinction of her manners and the delicate wit of her conversation, light-hearted and joyous, she dominated the whole Court of France-this horrible client of the Abbé Guibourg, of La Filastre and La Voisin.