Chapter 8 No.8

'Her body was opened,' writes Bossuet, 'among a large concourse of physicians and surgeons and all sorts of people, because, having begun to feel extreme pain when drinking three mouthfuls of chicory water, given her by the dearest and most intimate of her women, she said at once that she was poisoned.' It was with the same idea that the English ambassador attended the operation along with an English physician and surgeon.

After having shown that Madame could not have been poisoned, it remains to settle what disease it was of which she died. Our task is simplified by the marvellous study in which Littré proved that she succumbed to an acute peritonitis, the immediate and inevitable result of the perforation of the stomach by an ulcer. This study, Dr. Paul Le Gendre tells us, is the finest extant example of a retrospective medical demonstration. We have it now under our eyes; but we find it condensed by the pen of the most elegant writer of our time, M. Anatole France, who will allow us to borrow this quotation: 'Littré, an expert in medical observation, does not hesitate to diagnose a simple ulceration of the stomach, which Professor Cruveilhier was the first to describe, and which Madame's physicians could not recognise because they knew nothing about it. It is unquestionable that for some time Madame had been suffering from abdominal pains after her meals. The liquid she took on June 29 brought about the perforation of the ulcerated wall, and this caused the terrible pain in her side and the peritonitis which we have mentioned. The physicians who opened the body found, indeed, that the stomach was pierced with a little hole; but as they could not account for the pathological origin of this hole, they fancied after the event that it had been made inadvertently during the autopsy, "upon which," says the surgeon of the king of England, "I was the only one to insist." The incident is reported as follows by the Abbé Bourdelot: "It happened by misadventure during the dissection that the point of the scalpel made an opening at the top of the ventricle, and many of the gentlemen asked how it came about. The surgeon said that he had done it by accident, and Monsieur Vallot said that he had seen when the cut was made."'

Littré objects, with reason, that it is difficult to make inadvertently an incision with the point of a pair of scissors-there is no question of a scalpel-in a tough and distended membrane like the stomach during an autopsy. The illusion of the physicians present at the operation is the more easily explained because in that lesion, as it is now known, the edges of the opening are perfectly clean and sharp, very regular, so that the hole seems to have been made artificially. Jaccoud points out 'the very sharp delimitation of the ulcer, the absence of inflammation, and of peripheral suppuration.' 'The section of the tissues,' writes Monsieur Bouveret, 'is so clean that, to adopt a classical comparison, the ulcer appears as though cut out with a punch.' It varies in dimensions from the size of a lentil to that of a five-franc piece.

M. Anatole France admirably explains the state of mind of the physicians who drew up the report of the autopsy. 'The French physicians were afraid of finding in the viscera of the princess indications of a crime which might throw suspicion on the royal family. They dreaded even everything which lent itself to doubt, and thereby to malevolence. Knowing that the least uncertainty as to the cause of death or the condition of the corpse would be interpreted by the public in a sense that would ruin them, they had reasons of self-interest and the zeal of fear to urge them to explain everything. Now, in their inability to connect with a normal pathological type a lesion unknown to them all, and perhaps suspicious to some, it was much to their advantage to explain this enigmatical wound as an accident during the autopsy. And we can understand their believing what they wished to believe. The English surgeons, as ignorant as they, accepted their conclusion in default of a better.' 'The fact is,' says Littré in conclusion, 'that they were bound to find a hole, and they did find it. All dispute was silenced in the presence of three things: the sudden attack, the peritonitis, and the presence of oil ['and of bile,' adds Dr. Le Gendre] which the reports of the autopsy show to have been in the lower bowel.' In the lower bowel was found, indeed, a substance which the reports of the French physicians describe as 'fat like oil.'[13] It was, in fact, oil-the oil which Madame had drunk as an antidote, and which had been discharged from the stomach.

Further, even supposing, against all probability, that the hole had actually been made accidentally by young Félix, who was the operator, all the details of Madame's health known before death, and the details revealed by the autopsy, are so conclusive in favour of the diagnosis of a simple ulcer ending in perforation, that we should be led to the admission that there must have existed, in another part of the wall of the stomach, another small hole which escaped the notice of the physicians and surgeons present at the autopsy. There would have been nothing surprising in this, for their attention was not directed to this point. It might even be supposed that the scissors of Félix, if they had really cut the wall of the stomach by inadvertence, only increased the size of the natural perforation already existing. Allowance must indeed be made for the state of putrid softening in which the organs are bound to have been, the corpse having remained exposed all through a day of intense heat.

'To sum up, before June 29, there were gastric pains caused by ulceration; on the 29th, bursting of the ulcer and acute peritonitis.' Peritonitis is distinctly indicated by the reports. Such are the conclusions of Littré: Dr. Paul Le Gendre, a most competent authority, unhesitatingly confirms them, as also does Professor Brouardel, who writes as follows: 'Admitting ulceration of the stomach, all the phenomena supervene with classic exactitude.'

If we refer to the works of the celebrated Cruveilhier, who was the first to describe simple ulcers, we find by an interesting coincidence, in the very case he presents as a type, the closest correspondence with the illness of Madame, and a fresh proof of the soundness of Littré's opinion.

'Now since the complications following perforation of the stomach and rapidly causing death,' writes Cruveilhier, 'supervene suddenly, and sometimes directly after taking food or drink, the question of poison has been raised pretty often. I have never seen a more remarkable case in this respect than that of a coalman, aged twenty-three, and of an athletic vigour, who, carrying a sack of coal, stopped at an inn and drank a glass of wine. He went on his way; but a few minutes afterwards was seized with horrible pains, was attended first at his own house, then carried dying to the hospital of the Faubourg Saint-Denis; his case showed every indication of peritonitis through perforation, and he died three hours after his admission to the hospital, in full consciousness. I was able to get from his own lips the valuable information that he had been suffering from his stomach for several months, and that digesting his food was always painful. The Coal-dealers' Society, convinced that their comrade was the victim of poison, and that the agent of the poisoning was the glass of wine taken immediately before he was attacked by these symptoms, decided to bring an indictment against the wine-merchant, and with this end required the autopsy to be made in presence of a deputation from their body. It was a case of spontaneous perforation through a simple ulcer in the stomach.'

The 'estimate' of Littré (to use the phrase he himself uses to describe his work) is thus confirmed in every way. Loiseleur thought fit to object the rarity of the case. That is no argument: the case may be rare and yet have been that of Madame. And besides, Loiseleur makes too much of its rarity. Brinton estimates that perforation of the stomach in cases of simple ulcer occurs in thirteen per cent., and that it is most common in women under thirty. Madame was twenty-six.

Loiseleur admits peritonitis, but thinks it was inflammation supervening on a chill. 'Why,' he writes, 'does Littré pass by in absolute silence the last words in the statement of Madame de la Fayette, quite as grave and significant as the first?-"As it was extremely warm, she wished to bathe in the river. Monsieur Yvelin, her chief physician, did all he could to prevent her; but in spite of all he said, she bathed on Friday, and on Saturday was so ill that she did not bathe," and further on: "She walked in the moonlight until midnight."' There is only one drawback to Monsieur Loiseleur's theory, but that is a serious one: peritonitis as an original malady, and especially peritonitis through chill, which Loiseleur wishes to substitute for the disease diagnosed by Cruveilhier and Littré, is no longer recognised by modern science. 'The last cases which were thought to be of this kind,' says Dr. Paul Le Gendre, 'were perforations of the appendix.'

Let us come lastly to the work of Dr. Legué, Médecins et Empoisonneurs, the most important part of which is occupied with a minute study of the circumstances surrounding the death of Madame. Monsieur Legué's conclusion is, poisoning by sublimate poured into the famous chicory water. His study is interesting, like the whole book, but his conclusions crumble away under the following considerations:-

1. Professor Brouardel writes: 'If the chicory water had contained the smallest dose of sublimate, Madame would have pushed the glass from her after the first sip. Sublimate has a revolting taste. In the medicinal dose (one gramme to a litre) the taste is atrocious.'

Madame had been taking chicory water for several days in the evening, and this evening she drank it as usual.

2. 'To kill a person,' adds Professor Brouardel, 'at least ten or fifteen centigrammes are necessary. This dose corresponds to a quantity of solution representing about 200 grammes of liquid. It seems impossible for any one to imbibe that without being stopped by its horrid taste.'

Madame certainly did not drink 200 grammes of her chicory water; she took a few sips only.

3. 'Poisoning by sublimate,' writes the professor, 'produces lesions of the abdominal mucous membrane, which could not have escaped the notice of the physicians who made the autopsy.'

We have five accounts of the autopsy, which are unanimous in stating that the stomach, except for the little hole of which we have spoken, was in a good condition.

4. The facts on which Dr. Legué relies for his diagnosis of poison by sublimate, and which he borrows from the account of the Abbé Bourdelot, occurred, not after the drinking of the cup of chicory water, but before. In transcribing the account in question, Monsieur Legué has inadvertently omitted the passage: 'There is indication of the bile having been accumulating for a long time,' where it may be clearly seen from the following lines that the author is speaking of a state long before the fatal attack.

Thus Monsieur Legué's argument is in no way sustained.

The historian may remark, finally, that Madame's daughter, Marie Louise, the young Queen of Spain, died in 1689, almost at the same age as her mother, after drinking a glass of iced milk, and on this occasion also rumours of poison spread abroad. When Charles II, Madame's brother, died somewhat suddenly, there was more talk of poison; and when the granddaughter of Madame, the young and charming Duchess of Burgundy, was stricken with the disease which carried her off, people believed that she too had been poisoned. In earlier days, when Madame's mother, Henrietta Maria of France, widow of Charles I, died on September 10, 1669, at her country house of Colombes, her physician Vallot had been accused of accidentally poisoning her by giving her pills chiefly composed of opium.

Thanks to the assistance of eminent masters like Professor Brouardel and Dr. Paul Le Gendre, and armed historically with the learned investigations of M. Arthur de Boislisle, we have been fortunate in resuscitating the admirable study of Littré in all its striking accuracy. The great writer concludes with an eloquent page, a hymn of triumph in honour of modern science, 'which might perhaps have kept Madame in that great place she filled so well.' We will end with the same observation that we placed at the end of our study of the Iron Mask,[14] in which we showed how the solution was indicated at least a century ago, and remarked that, in these very problems which are regarded as insoluble, history, handled with rigour and precision, gives conclusions as certain as those of the exact sciences.

RACINE AND THE POISONS QUESTION

MONSIEUR LARROUMET'S book on Racine in the Grands Ecrivains Fran?ais series is a charming little work. In the first part he studies the poet's life, and shows very accurately the influence exercised on his art by the milieu in which he lived. In the second part he studies Racine's poetics with great ingenuity. The very style of M. Larroumet, eminently refined and sober-we might call it pearl-grey in tone-with little flaws here and there which, to our mind, enhance its piquancy, is perfectly adapted to the author he is analysing. We get a clear picture of what manner of man Racine was-sensitive and refined, all delicacy and decorum. M. Larroumet, it is well known, excels in bringing vividly before us the dwellings and the furniture of our great writers, according to inventories made after their decease. In the case of Racine he achieves another success, in the happiest manner. His picture of the famous poet's family life, after he had renounced the stage, is delightful:-

'In the midst of this family, which reproduced in charming variety the traits of his own sensitive and restless nature, Racine practised all the virtues of a good father. He became a child again with his Babet, Fanchon, Madelon, Nanette, and Lionval; the two eldest alone, boy and girl, did not bear these diminutives, out of respect for the rights of seniority. He preferred the happiness springing from their society to courting the great.

'One day he had returned from Versailles, where he had gone to pay his respects, when a squire of the Duke's brought him an invitation to dinner for the same evening. "I shall not have the honour of dining with him," he said; "I have not seen my wife and children for more than a week, and they are looking forward to a treat in eating a very fine carp with me to-day; I cannot give up my dinner with them." And he had the carp brought up, adding: "Decide yourself if I can help dining to-day with these poor children, who have made up their minds to regale me to-day, and would have no more pleasure if they ate this dish without me. I beg you to plead this reason forcibly with his Serene Highness."'

Racine, as we know, after giving up writing for the theatre, subsided into the most remarkable piety. But here again is a charming trait: 'I remember,' says Louis Racine, 'processions in which my sisters were the clergy, I was the rector, and the author of Athalie, singing with us, carried the cross.' And the inseparable figure of the excellent Boileau, who had then become as deaf as a post, appears close by: 'Monsieur Despréaux,'[15] writes Racine to his son Jean Baptiste, 'entertained us in the best of fashions; then he took Lionval and Madelon to the Bois de Boulogne, joking with them, and telling them that he meant to lose them. He did not hear a word of what the poor children said to him.'

But before becoming this model paterfamilias, this pattern of piety and virtue, Racine had spent an eminently brilliant and passionate youth. Everybody knows that Du Parc and Champmeslé[16] were not content with merely playing in his pieces.

The amours of Racine and Mademoiselle Du Parc had a terrible development in 1679, which was one of the reasons, if not the principal and the determining reason, of the resolution then taken by the poet to abandon the career of dramatic author. M. Larroumet recalls this page in his life in the following terms:-

'The mysterious poison affair was being unravelled before the Chambre Ardente. On November 21, 1679, one of the prisoners, La Voisin, brought Racine into the case. She declared that "Racine, having secretly espoused Du Parc, was jealous of everybody, and particularly of her, La Voisin, with whom he was much offended, and that he had made away with her by poison on account of his extreme jealousy; and that during Du Parc's illness, Racine never left her bedside, that he drew a valuable diamond from her finger, and had also stolen the jewels and principal effects of Du Parc, which were worth a great deal of money." This is assuredly nothing but the abominable invention of a ruined woman,' adds M. Larroumet, 'one of those calumnies which malice, corruption, and greed give rise to in the entourage of women of gallantry. Racine had been compelled to forbid his mistress to receive La Voisin. From this arose her furious wrath, and, eleven years afterwards, she tried to avenge herself by implicating the poet in a formidable accusation. Proofs she gave none, and the proceedings of the affair, published in the Archives de la Bastille, contain no trace of any. However, a letter written on January 11, 1680, by Louvois to Bazin de Bezons, ends thus: "The orders of the king necessary for the arrest of Racine will be sent to you whenever you ask for them." It is impossible to doubt that the Racine in question was the poet. But no arrest was made. Racine had been able to clear himself in the eyes of Louvois and the king.'

This episode in the life of the great poet is worthy of arresting our attention, so much the more because it was perhaps the cause of his abandonment, to be for ever regretted, of a career on which he had thrown the brightest lustre.

It was neither Louvois nor Louis XIV who suppressed the lettre de cachet with which the deposition of La Voisin had threatened Racine. Bazin de Bezons, a commissioner of the Chambre Ardente and member of the Academy, determined to spare his colleague the affront of an arrest in such circumstances, and thought he might well wait until the denunciations of La Voisin were confirmed from another source.

Racine, as a matter of fact, had been the lover of Du Parc, whose maiden name was Marguerite Thérèse de Gorla, daughter of a surgeon of Lyons. La Voisin knew her very intimately, and called her her 'gossip.'

Here follows, word for word, the part of the celebrated examination of La Voisin on November 21, 1679, so far as it relates to Racine:-

'Who made her acquainted with Du Parc, comedian?

'She had known her for fourteen years. They were very good friends together, and she knew all her affairs during that time. She had for some time had the intention of declaring to us that Du Parc must have been poisoned, and that Jean Racine was suspected. The rumour was strong. What more especially gave rise to the presumption was that Racine had always prevented her, who was the good friend of Du Parc, from seeing her during the whole course of the illness of which she died, although Du Parc constantly asked for her; but although she went to see her, they had never been willing to let her in, and this was by order of Racine, as she learnt from the stepmother of Du Parc, whose name was Mademoiselle de Gorla, and from Du Parc's daughters, who are at the H?tel de Soissons, and informed her that Racine was the cause of their misfortune.

'Asked if he had ever proposed to her to do away with Du Parc by poison.

'The proposal would have been well received.

'Asked if she was not aware that application had been made to Delagrange for the same purpose.

'She knew nothing about that.

'Asked if she did not know a lame actor.

'Yes, Béjart, whom she had only seen twice.

'Asked if Béjart had not some spite against Du Parc.

'No; and what she knew about Racine she obtained first from Mademoiselle de Gorla.

'Asked what De Gorla said to her, and strictly cross-examined.

'De Gorla told her that Racine, having secretly espoused Du Parc [here follows a repetition of the statement already made]; that she (Du Parc) had not even been allowed to speak to Manon, her maid, who is a midwife, though she asked for Manon and got some one to write asking her to come to Paris to see her, as well as La Voisin herself.

'Asked if De Gorla told her the manner in which the poisoning had been carried out, and who had been made use of in the matter.

'No.'

Such were the declarations of La Voisin before the commissioners of the Chambre Ardente. She repeated them exactly in her final examination before the judges: 'She had known Mademoiselle Du Parc, the actress; had been a friend of hers for fourteen years; her stepmother, named De Gorla, had told her that Racine had poisoned her, and she only knew of Du Parc's death when she saw the body at the door on the way to burial.'

Finally, in the anguish of torture, La Voisin maintained her declarations.

'Asked if she knew nothing more concerning what she had said at the trial about the poisoning of Du Parc.

'She had told the truth in all that she had said on the subject.'

M. Larroumet gaily and gracefully flings these declarations overboard as 'an abominable invention of a ruined woman.' We know La Voisin from what has already been said about her above. It is inconceivable that such a creature should have nursed a grievance against Racine for not having allowed her to reach his sick mistress, to such an extent as to fabricate against him, eleven years later, so monstrous an accusation. This hypothesis is so much the more unlikely in that, if La Voisin had wanted to ruin Racine by her charges, she would have formulated precise and direct complaints against him; while she, as a matter of fact, only repeated gossip she had heard. Then, too, Du Parc's daughters were still alive, and it would have been easy to confront them with the sorceress.

The examinations to which La Voisin was subjected were very numerous. They brought out innumerable details on a multitude of crimes, in which a very large number of people was implicated. There were many confrontations. The declarations of the terrible sorceress were submitted to careful investigation by examining magistrates like Nicolas de la Reynie. All her declarations were found to be accurate.

We have seen that, far from inventing imaginary charges for the purpose of implicating in her own case people of high position, and so saving herself (as some historians have insinuated), La Voisin endeavoured to keep silence about the crimes of her clients-a curious piece of professional discretion. And we venture to say that if she had declared before the judges that she had given Racine poison to get rid of Du Parc, we should have unhesitatingly believed her. But she did not say anything of the kind. She declared simply that, in Du Parc's immediate circle, it was the conviction that the actress had been poisoned by her lover, and that, throughout her illness, he had prevented La Voisin from approaching the bed, as well as Manon, her maid, 'who was a midwife.'

It is further important to note-and this observation has not been made by any historian-that the belief in Racine's having poisoned Du Parc was shared by more than one prisoner before the Chambre Ardente. La Voisin was not the only one to make the accusation before the judges, as the following question put by one of the magistrates clearly shows:

'Asked if she was not aware that application had been made to Delagrange (a sorceress and poisoner like herself) for the same purpose (the poisoning of Du Parc by Racine).'

A great part of the records of the Chambre Ardente having been destroyed, as we have shown, we have no trace of the examination to which the magistrate here alluded. Nevertheless it is testimony which cannot be gainsaid.

Such are the only documents in the great poison case in which Racine is mentioned. Is it possible to derive any positive conclusions from them?

The circumstances surrounding the death certainly appeared suspicious to the family of the actress, and Racine was pointed at. The poet had stationed himself at the bedside as a custodian rather than a nurse. He prevented La Voisin, the sorceress, midwife, and procurer of abortion, from approaching, and likewise Manon, also a midwife, and this in defiance of the desire formally expressed by Du Parc. Why did the poet, contrary to the wishes of the sick woman, prevent these women from attending her? Du Parc was his mistress. Dr. Legué quotes the testimony of Boileau, who was closely connected with Du Parc, stating that she died as a result of childbirth. The chronicler Robinet describes Racine as following 'more dead than alive' in the funeral procession. The opinion expressed by Dr. Legué that Du Parc died through an illegal operation is not unlikely. In such matters it is never possible to speak with assurance, and when so great a personality as Racine is concerned, one is bound to maintain the greatest reserve. This operation, if it took place, brought on peritonitis, which, as in the case of Henrietta of England, gave rise to suspicions of poison. We have seen that abortions were at that time of frequent occurrence in Paris.

Remorse for this crime would explain the amazing resolution to renounce the theatre taken by Racine at the age of thirty-eight, in the fulness of strength, at the height of his talent, in the heyday of success. It would explain also the austerity and excess of his devoutness after this singular conversion, and the horror he conceived for an art to which he owed his glory and his fortune.

Another question suggests itself, which we should like equally to be able to solve with more certainty. Racine had the most intimate relations with Du Parc, as the latter had with La Voisin. In 1679, the year in which the great poisoning matter came to light, Phèdre appeared. Is it rash to suppose that, through his conversations with Du Parc, La Voisin's confidante, the poet with his keen observation had seen the features of the passion-tost marchionesses, criminals for love, who had been the clients of the sorceresses, and that from these fleeting suggestions he had succeeded in reconstructing their whole characters?

'Imagine,' writes Monsieur Brunetière, 'Racine's agitation when this case became public. At Paris, in the heart of Paris-the Paris of Louis XIV-in the Rue Verdelet or the Rue Michel-Lecomte, Orestes was assassinating Pyrrhus, Roxane was selling herself to some witch to secure the love of Bajazet or the death of Attalide; the famous Locusta was not an invention of Tacitus, and every day some Phèdre was poisoning some Hippolyte. And all these horrors were what he, Racine, had been for ten years toiling to envelop and to disguise, as it were, with the charm of his verse-murder and lust! adultery and incest! the delirium of the senses! the madness of homicide! This was what for ten years he had been endeavouring to win plaudits for, and when a Hermione or a Nero issued from the H?tel de Bourgogne[17] intent on committing the crime they had seen glorified under their eyes-what, was it this that he called his glory! O shame and agony and remorse! And from the moment that such a question started up before the conscience of such a man, how think you he could have answered but by quitting the stage? The truth even of his own art rose up against him. What brought his pictures into condemnation was just their accent of truth!'

THE 'DEVINERESSE'

LA DEVINERESSE, a fairy comedy by Donneau de Visé and Thomas Corneille-the latter is usually called by his contemporaries Corneille de Lisle-was represented at Paris in 1679, the year of the great poison case.

In his reports to the king and the Secretaries of State Nicolas de la Reynie insisted on the necessity, not only of punishing the guilty, but of preventing the spread and, if possible, the recurrence of crimes like those which had been brought to light. We have shown how he had drawn up, in collaboration with Colbert, the decree registered in the Parlement on August 31, 1682, by which the magicians were expelled from France, and by which, more especially, the making and the sale of poisons necessary in medicine and in trade were placed under rigorous regulations. This was a masterly work: as we have mentioned, these regulations are in force to this day, after the lapse of two centuries.

La Reynie thought that it was advisable, apart from these preventive measures, to put the public on their guard against the dangerous infatuation which had thrown so many pretty and passionate women body and soul into the hands of the fortune-tellers. Let us recall the declarations of one of the latter: 'Persons who look into the hand are the ruin of all women, women of quality as well as others, because their weakness is soon found out, and when discovered is taken advantage of, and they are driven to whatever length the witches please.' As lieutenant of police La Reynie had a general control of the theatres; he revised and censored the manuscripts of the playwrights; he was in constant touch with them. He was the friend of more than one writer of talent, for the magistrate was doubled in him with the refined and delightful man of letters, who had both delicate taste and an excellent library. In this year 1679 he had particularly close relations with Donneau de Visé, founder and editor of the Mercure galant, and assuredly one of the most curious figures in our literary history. Boursault had just written his witty comedy, also entitled the Mercure galant, in which he directed lively and incisive satire upon the journalism then at its dawn, which had already taken, under the influence of Donneau de Visé, many of the characteristics of modern journalism.

The Mercure, said Boursault, is a delightful thing:-

'On y trouve de tout, fable, histoire, vers, prose,

Sièges, combats, procès, mort, mariage, amour,

Nouvelles de Province et nouvelles de Cour.'

Visé begged La Reynie not to authorise the representation of the piece under the same title as the journal; La Reynie acquiesced, and Boursault, putting a good face on the matter, called his piece La Comédie sans titre. Moreover, Visé was in high favour at Court. When Louis XIV saw the success of the Mercure, he hastened to award the editor-in-chief a pension of 500 crowns, gave him apartments in the Louvre, and appointed him his historiographer. Visé's pen became an accommodating tool.

Donneau de Visé was not only a journalist; he was a dramatic author, and as a dramatic author he was, as he was in journalism, very modern. He had found means of achieving a noisy notoriety by beginning with an extremely violent attack on Corneille and Molière. Against the latter he composed his comedy Zélinde, ou la véritable critique de l'Echole des Femmes et la critique de la critique, in which he has left a portrait of the poet that has become famous, and which is, in our eyes, not a criticism but a splendid eulogy. 'I came down,' says a lace merchant; 'Elomire [an anagram on Molière] did not say a single word. I found him leaning up against my shop in the attitude of a man in a dream. He had his eyes fixed on three or four persons of quality who were bargaining for lace; he appeared attentive to their words, and seemed by the movement of his eyes to be scanning the depths of their souls to see there what they did not say.'

La Reynie thought of utilising the talent and the notoriety of the dramatic author, and, not satisfied with granting him what he asked in regard to the title of Boursault's comedy, he gave him in addition the subject for a piece which was destined to obtain the greatest success. To prove to demonstration in Paris, by means of a play to which the public, excited by the great poison case, would flock in crowds, that the pretended skill of magicians and sorceresses was only deception and trickery, seemed assuredly the best way to dissuade the ingenuous mob from dealing with them. From this idea issued La Devineresse ou les Faux enchantements, a comedy represented for the first time in Paris by the king's company on November 19, 1679, and published in the following February. We have mentioned that Donneau de Visé was one of the pioneers of the modern literary life, and La Devineresse will be a fresh proof of the assertion. Let us note first that Visé was the father of a literary custom which is in these days highly popular, collaboration. One of the masters of dramatic criticism, Edouard Thierry, writes on this subject: 'Collaboration, an unfamiliar term which existed at most as a term in jurisprudence, was nevertheless not absolutely unknown at the theatre. There had been the Psyche at the Palais-Royal, completed by Pierre Corneille on the plan and under the direction of Molière; but this was considered only as work done to order; it belonged in the end to the person who hired the worker. There had been the Plaideurs of Racine, and some other successful parodies, composed by several hands, it was said; but this was only an amusement, a literary picnic of gay wits who stimulated each other to satire; nobody up to that time had thought of raising the game to the level of an industry.' From the very first, collaboration as a business gave results which exceeded the most sanguine hopes. Visé, who had made his peace with the elder Corneille, entered into partnership with his younger brother. This Thomas Corneille, who was a remarkable vaudeville-writer and also a remarkable scholar, a member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, has been unjustly thrown into the shade by the glory of his elder brother.

La Devineresse was not merely a modern piece in respect of this new trick of collaboration; it was the origin and doubtless the model of those spectacular pieces, with shifting scenery and mechanical effects, which give the Chatelet its success to-day. And we shall find, not only that the idea sprang from this, but that the comedy contains scenes and stage business which have come down to us in direct succession through a line of such pieces-such as the talking headless man, the dismembered man whose limbs rearrange themselves spontaneously, dropsy passing from one subject to another, the fairy, wizard or devil who comes into a room through the wall.

Finally, the Devineresse must occupy a select place in the annals of the modern stage from the manner in which the authors managed to float it. One of them, Donneau de Visé, was a journalist, and consequently a master of the advertising art. He had the idea, among others, of getting up for 1680 an almanac of the Devineresse, in which there was a large engraved plate representing the principal scenes in the piece, the features of the spectacle, grouped around a monstrous satanic figure; these of course were the principal tricks in false magic performed by the sorceress and her mate. These pictures are still in existence,[18] and present to our eyes a curious representation, not only of the theatrical scenes of the eighteenth century, but also of the interior of the houses in which the sorceresses received their clients. These circumstances, together with the striking actuality and the wit of the authors, secured to the Devineresse an unprecedented success, both financially and in arousing the curiosity of the public. All Paris ran to see it. Its representations extended over five months, and, what in those days appeared remarkable, it ran for forty-seven nights in succession; the first eighteen performances brought in double the usual receipts. Seconded by the skill and talent of the authors, the lieutenant of police had attained his end.

The fortune-teller who is the chief character in the piece was none other than La Voisin, whose name Corneille and Visé slightly disguised in calling their sorceress Madame Jobin. In the comedy are to be found echoes of the replies made by the sorceress before the commissioners of the Chambre Ardente, a fact which indicates the share of La Reynie. The principal ally of La Voisin was called Du Buisson, that of Madame Jobin is called Du Clos. Their practices are the same, but turned to ridicule by the authors, who make their Madame Jobin a mere schemer with no other idea than to snap up the crown-pieces of the public. In the essentials of the character we are thus very far from the terrible sorceress of Villeneuve-sur-Gravois.

In the course of the second scene of the second act, Madame Jobin explains to her brother what her art consists in.

'This is what the majority of men are. They swallow all the stupidities retailed to them, and when once they have let themselves go, nothing is capable of undeceiving them. See, my brother, Paris is the place in the world where there are most clever people and also most dupes. The sorceries I am accused of, and other things which would appear still more supernatural, want a lively imagination to invent them and skill to make use of them. It is through these that people have belief in us, and magic and devils have nothing to do with it. The fright people get into who are shown this sort of thing blinds them enough to prevent them from seeing they are deceived. As to my meddling with fortune-telling, as you will be told, that is an art in which the thousand folk who put themselves every day in our hands make our information easy to get at. Besides, chance accounts for the greater part of our success in this line. All you want is presence of mind, and boldness and intrigue, to know the world, to have people in your houses, to note carefully things that happen, to get information on their little love affairs, and especially to say a good many things when any one comes to consult you. There is always one of them true, and two or three, said quite haphazard, are enough to give you a vogue. After that it will be of no good to say that you know nothing; no one will believe you, and, good or evil, they make you talk.'

The comedy itself is far from being without merit. You will not see in it, to be sure, the breadth and the sureness of touch of that Molière whom Visé had so much ridiculed, and the pleasure one may find in reading it is spoilt by the feeling that Molière would have made so much more of such a subject, in which so many laughable and so many moving things are concentrated. Nevertheless, the majority of modern extravaganzas would have to yield in many respects to the Devineresse, as regards both construction and literary merit. In the course of the preface to the published edition of their piece, the authors are careful to speak of the famous rules ascribed to Aristotle without which no dramatic piece could be constructed in the time of Racine and Boileau. And in fact Visé and Corneille did observe them-these three famous unities of time, place, and action. In an extravaganza, mark! That, assuredly, is what an author of our day would consider the most extravagant feature of their work.

The preface states the subject of the comedy: 'A woman mad after the sorceresses, a lover interested in opening her eyes about them, and a rival who wishes to prevent their marriage, form a subject which opens the plot in the first act, a plot only unravelled in the last act by the unmasking of the false devil. The other actors, or at least a part of them, are envoys of one or other of the two interested persons, who, by the reports they give, augment the credulity of the countess or make the marquis believe still more firmly that the sorceress is a knave. Thus these characters cannot be regarded as unnecessary. It is true that there are some who, knowing neither the countess nor the marquis, only consult Madame Jobin on their own behalf; but, being as famous as she is here depicted, was it likely that during twenty-four hours there only came to her persons who knew one another or furthered the principal action?'

From the outset the comedy is well constructed, and the character of the persons comes out clearly. The seasoning of the dialogue is a little strong, indeed; but the wit springs always from an acute and delicate power of observation. We may mention the scene in which the sorceress, who easily dupes persons of cultivated mind and even those who never relax their vigilance, is utterly nonplussed by the primitive simple-mindedness of a village girl. The dénouement is brought about by the presence of mind of the marquis, who seeks to undeceive the countess whom he loves. The sorceress has foretold frightful misfortunes to the countess if she should marry the marquis, being paid for so doing by a Madame Noblet who has fallen deeply in love with the latter. The marquis, armed with a pistol, springs at the throat of a devil whom the sorceress has summoned through the wall. The devil falls on his knees: 'Mercy, sir; I am a good devil!'

It remains to inquire whether the lieutenant of police had as much success as the authors of the piece; that is, whether the practices he wished to extirpate in France disappeared under his efforts. La Reynie did succeed, as much as he could hope, in the struggle he had undertaken against the poisoners. Magic, however, was a hardy plant. 'You would never believe how desperately silly they are at Paris,' wrote Madame Palatine on October 8, 1701. 'Everybody is anxious to become an adept in the art of invoking spirits and other devilries.' Black masses were again said in the outskirts of Paris, in circumstances so horrible that 'a beggar girl aged thirteen years, who had been taken there, died of fright': she was buried in her clothes by sub-deacon Sebault, and Guignard, curé of Notre Dame de Bourges, who had said the monstrous office. And according to M. Huysmans, black masses are said to this very day.

When, two thousand years before our era, the Chaldean mages and the high priests of Egypt on clear nights pierced the starry sky with their patient gaze, did they read there that after thirty centuries a grave magistrate and chief of police would fight their descendants by means of a fairy extravaganza, with trap-doors and puns and transformation scenes?

INDEX

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, J, L, M, N, P, R, S, T, V, W

ALACOCQUE, Marguerite, 121.

BACHIMONT, Robert de, alchemist, 137.

Barbier, archer of the guard, 55, 56, 58.

Bazin de Bezons, 163.

Belot, Fran?ois, poisoner, 331.

Black Mass, 131, 132, 155 ff.

Bocager, law professor, 31, 32.

Bodin's Démonomanie des Sorciers, 122-126.

Boileau, 348.

Boscher, Alexander, physician, 319.

Bosse, Marie, sorceress, 119, 129, 172, 173, 179.

Bossuet, 126, 219, 220, 313, 329, 333.

Boucherat, Louis, 163.

Bouillon, Duchess de, 275-279.

Bourdelot, Abbé, physician, 318, 323, 334.

Boursault, journalist, 363.

Briancourt, lover of Madame de Brinvilliers, 19, 24-32, 35, 47, 68, 69.

Brinvilliers, Antoine Gobelin de, 4, 33, 34, 51.

Brinvilliers, Madame de, her career, 1-116.

Brissart, Marie, 152-154.

Brunet, Madame, 177-179.

Bussy-Rabutin, 173-176, 239.

CADELAN, Pierre, banker, 140, 141.

Castelmelhor, Count of, 137, 138.

Chamberlain, Hugh, physician, 319.

Chambre Ardente, the, 163-180, 275, 279, 291, 296, 302, 304.

Chasteuil, F. Galaup de, alchemist, 133-142.

Chevigny, Father de, 80, 93.

Cluet, Sergeant, 38, 40.

Colbert, 50, 257, 290.

Coligny, Madame de, 173, 174.

Corneille, Thomas, 361.

Creuillebois, Sergeant, 36, 38, 39, 41.

Croissy, Marquis de, ambassador in England, 50.

D'Aubray, Antoine, brother of Madame de Brinvilliers, 18, 19, 20.

D'Aubray, Antoine, father of Madame de Brinvilliers, 3, 13.

Delamarre, attorney for Madame de Brinvilliers, 40, 41.

Descarrières, political agent, 53.

Desgrez, captain of police, 9, 52, 53, 107, 111, 119.

Des[oe]illets, Mademoiselle, 221, 222, 252-254, 286.

Donneau de Visé, dramatist, 361-365.

Dreux, Madame de, 166-168.

Du Parc, Mademoiselle, 349-359.

EXILI, Italian poisoner, 9-11.

FILASTRE, Fran?oise, sorceress, 184, 249.

Fontanges, Duchess de, mistress of Louis XIV, 237, 240, 250.

France, Anatole, on 'Madame,' 334, 336.

GALET, Louis, poisoner, 234.

Glaser, Christophe, chemist, 10, 12.

Godin, alias Sainte-Croix, q.v.

Guibourg, Abbé, 155, 215-218, 227-231.

Guillaume, executioner, 114.

HARVILLIER, Jeanne, witch, 123, 124.

Henrietta Anne, Duchess of Orleans, 313-345.

Hocque, Pierre, sorcerer, 126-128.

Huysmans, J. K., on philosopher's stone, 138.

JOLY, sorceress, 167, 168.

LA Chaboissière, valet, 142, 143, 198, 304.

La Chaussée, valet, 17, 18, 19, 21, 45, 47-49.

La Fayette, Madame de, 314, 315, 320, 324-327.

Lamoignon, President of High Court, 65, 68, 69, 76.

La Reynie, Nicolas de, lieutenant of police, 12, 49, 52, 53, 121, 132,

144, 156, 176, 181, 182, 194, 202, 203-205, 231, 234, 245-247, 265-312,

361-374.

La Rivière, 173, 176.

Leféron, Marguerite, poisoner, 168-170.

Leroy, poisoner, 215, 216.

Lesage, magician, 130, 148, 149, 153, 159, 160-162, 184, 199-201, 203,

206, 221.

Littré on death of 'Madame,' 335, 336.

Louis XIV, 179, 181, 183-186, 208, 210, 212-214, 217, 219, 220, 255,

258, 264, 272, 283, 284, 296, 363.

Louvois, 52, 180, 205, 210, 255, 284, 285, 287, 292, 307.

Ludres, Madame de, mistress of Louis XIV, 226, 235.

MAINTENON, Madame de, 220, 226, 257.

Mariette, Abbé, 199, 200.

Mercure Galant, 362, 363.

Michelet, 1-3, 79.

Molière's Amphitryon, 209.

Montespan, Madame de, 187-265.

Montespan, Marquis de, 207-214.

Monvoisin, Catherine, poisoner and sorceress, 120, 130, 144-159, 169,

170, 182, 201-203, 242-244, 349-358.

Monvoisin, Marguerite, 193-195, 221, 227-231, 241.

NADAILLAC, Marquis de, 15.

Nivelle, advocate for Madame de Brinvilliers, 70-74.

PALATINE, Madame, 192, 373.

Palluau, Parlement counsellor, 57, 66.

Pennautier, receiver for clergy, 37, 43, 44, 60-64, 115.

Picard, commissary, 36, 38, 39, 41.

Pirot, Abbé, 5, 6, 75-115.

Poulaillon, Madame de, 170-176.

RABEL, alchemist, 140-142.

Racine, 346-360.

Rébillé, Philibert, royal flutist, 177-180.

Regnier, police officer, 46, 47.

Romani, poisoner, 246, 248.

SAINTE-Croix, lover of Madame de Brinvilliers, 6-12, 15, 17, 22, 25, 29,

30, 33, 35-38.

Saint-Simon on Pennautier, 44, 61;

on Madame de Montespan, 189, 192, 259, 261-263;

on La Reynie, 266.

Sévigné, Madame de, on Madame de Brinvilliers, 14, 34, 64, 111, 115;

on Madame de Dreux, 167;

on La Reynie, 180;

on Madame de Montespan, 188-190, 214, 223, 224, 225, 235, 236, 239;

on Madame de Maintenon, 226;

on poison cases, 273, 274;

on Duchess de Bouillon, 276-278.

Soubise, Madame de, mistress of Louis XIV, 224.

TRIANON, sorceress, 243, 245.

VALLIèRE, Louise de la, 188.

Vanens, Louis de, alchemist, 118, 135-137, 142, 143.

Vigoureux, Madame, 118.

Vivonne, Duchess de, 272.

Vosser, Marie (Madame de St. Laurent), 60, 63.

WIER's book on demonology 124, 125.

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Spectator.-'The State Trials are the best of good reading, and Howell's twenty volumes might be a sufficient library in themselves. To make a bad selection of the State Trials would be wellnigh impossible, but that does not lessen the value of Mr. H. L. Stephen's achievement. For not only has he chosen with the utmost discretion, but he has presented the trials of his choice in the best and easiest shape. Wherever you open Mr. Stephen's fascinating volumes you are sure of entertainment, and we cannot thank the editor for the pleasure he has given us more effectually (or more selfishly) than by asking him to increase our obligation.'

Literature.-'The old series of State Trials has long been known as containing some of the best reading in our historical literature. A selection of the more interesting trials, consisting mainly of a reprint, but with the longueurs judiciously abridged, was eminently desirable; and this is what Mr. H. L. Stephen has given us in two dainty little volumes offering the greatest possible contrast to the unattractive form in which the trials have hitherto been presented.'

Speaker.-'Mr. H. L. Stephen deserves the thanks of critics, and of the reading public, for the two neat volumes into which he has compressed all the essential points, and much of the text, of ten accounts of trials which are to be found in the "one-and-twenty stately volumes of Howell's." A creditable undertaking.'

Punch. (The Baron de B.-W.).-'A fascinating work in two handy volumes. More entrancing than the average novel. All the trials, whether of high State portent, or of flat burglary, are intensely interesting.'

Law Journal.-'A collection of State trials, selected with admirable judgment and edited with learning and care. We have read these two volumes with great interest. Well printed, daintily got up, and published at a modest price, they ought to meet with a favourable reception.'

Daily Mail.-'There is no reading in the world so good as the State Trials, which are at once stranger than truth, and truer than fiction. History will tell us of Raleigh's prowess and Russell's treachery, but in the pages of the State Trials we are confronted not with abstract vices or virtues, but with Raleigh and Russell themselves. In the two slim volumes we have more incident and character than a whole library of fiction can afford. There is not one trial in the book that has not an interest of its own. All the details are realised with a singular energy and precision. There is not a single trial that does not give a living picture of a past age, and we recommend Mr. Stephen's selection with all possible cordiality.'

DUCKWORTH and CO.

3 HENRIETTA STREET

COVENT GARDEN, W.C.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] As the king's eldest brother was called.

[2] At present 12 Rue Charles V. The house is now occupied by the nursing sisterhood of the Bon-Secours.

[3] [The then law courts of Paris.]

[4] [The supreme judicial tribunal of France.]

[5] [The criminal court.]

[6] [The assassin of Henry of Navarre.]

[7]

['into a sea profound

Where flowed earth's metals in a molten mass,

Would tinge and dye the whole in sunbright gold.']

[8] [In the original, a play on the double meaning of argent-'silver' and 'money.']

[9] [Second wife of 'Monsieur,' the king's brother.]

[10] ['To share with Jupiter is no whit dishonouring.']

[11] [Madame de Montespan.]

[12] Written in collaboration with Professor Paul Brouardel, Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Paris, and Doctor Paul le Gendre, physician to the Tenon infirmary.

[13] The report of Chamberlain, the English physician, says distinctly that it was oil. 'The lower bowel was full of a bilious humour, with oil floating upon it' (Mrs. Everett-Green's Lives of the Princesses of England, vi. 589). This observation is important because Littré's opinion has been disputed by Dr. Legué. 'Littré maintains that the physicians noticed the presence of oil; but that is because he strains an equivocal phrase in the report of the autopsy-"full to its utmost capacity of a sanious, putrid, yellowish, watery substance, fat like oil." Frankly, is this not giving to the text a signification which never entered into the mind of the physicians?' (Médecins et Empoisonneurs, pp. 255, 256.) Neither Dr. Legué nor Littré, however, knew the English reports published by Mrs. Everett-Green.

[14] Legends of the Bastille, p. 146.

[15] [Boileau.]

[16] [Two of the most famous actresses of the time.]

[17] [The theatre so called.]

[18] In a copy of the Devineresse in the Arsenal Library. There are others, a little different, in the large folio collection of almanacs in the print department of the National Library.

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

exceded that of Exili=> exceeded that of Exili {pg 10}

wedges in successsion=>wedges in succession {pg 49}

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