Chapter III: A Magistrate (1)

Lieutenant of police Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie was the mainspring of the proceedings against the poisoners. He alone carried through the vast operations, bristling with difficulties. And it would be impossible to find any point of his administration in which his genius and his character appear in a more striking or complete manner. It is thanks to him, and to the careful notes he took daily on the cases of the prisoners, that we have been able to discover the facts of which Louis XIV believed he had destroyed every trace when he ordered the burning of the various documents in his private room.

Saint-Simon, who has utterly shattered reputations which seemed firm as rock, pauses with respect before Nicolas de la Reynie, though the functions with which he was endowed were a subject of genuine abhorrence to him. 'La Reynie, councillor of state,' he writes, 'so well known for having been the first to lift the office of lieutenant of police from its natural low estate, and for making it a sort of ministerial office; a man of great importance too, because of the king's direct confidence in him, his constant relations with the Court, and the number of things in which he is concerned, and in which he has infinite powers of serving or harming in innumerable ways people of the greatest importance, obtained at length in 1697, at the age of eighty, permission to resign so arduous an employment, which he had for the first time ennobled by the equity, moderation, and disinterestedness with which he had fulfilled it, without swerving from the greatest scrupulousness, and doing the least possible injury as seldom as possible; he was, moreover, a man of great virtue and capacity, who in an office which he had, so to speak, created, and in which he was bound to draw upon him the hatred of the public, nevertheless won universal esteem.'

We have a portrait of La Reynie by his friend Mignard, and an admirable etching of the painting by Van Schuppen. Engraving has never reproduced human features with more clearness, colour, and lifelikeness. The face bespeaks a clear, powerful, and well-balanced intelligence; the eyes express a firm and thoughtful kindliness. Such was the La Reynie who investigated the great poison cases.

Though Bazin de Bezons of the French Academy had been associated with him in the Chambre Ardente as examining commissioner, it was the lieutenant of police who did all the work. The number of depositions, interrogatories, confrontations, pleadings, and other documents which he collected is enormous; and we see the magistrate with sure hand cutting a way through this tangled forest, guided by his experience, his knowledge of the human soul, and his clear intellect.

The memorials he has left on questions of the greatest difficulty are useful and interesting to study, because of the method of work they reveal. It is exactly the method which our old professors of rhetoric used to teach for the orderly arrangement of a French dissertation or an historical essay. The principal and fundamental fact is noted down about the middle of the left-hand page, with a large bracket embracing sub-divisions; each of these sub-divisions is in turn accompanied by a bracket embracing sub-divisions of these sub-divisions; and so on to the end of the right-hand page, which is filled from top to bottom with minute and close writing: there you have a multitude of slight facts following one another in methodical order, all focussing on the principal fact, found, as we have said, in the middle of the left-hand page. There is no college student but has built up his schemes for French essays on this model. But there is no question, in La Reynie's portfolios, of rhetorical dissertations or Latin compositions; he deals there with irrevocable sentences about to be pronounced 'on the flesh and blood of men,' to use his own phrase. And if we go from these bracketed plans to the memoirs and reports to which they guided the magistrate's thought, we find ourselves in possession of marvels of clear thinking and judging.

During the long poison case, La Reynie showed himself indefatigable in work. He had no other concern than right and the triumph of justice. And in proportion as the number of criminals increased, and the greatest names in the French nobility and Parlement were found to be compromised by his inquiries--in proportion as relatives, friends, all who feared for themselves, and nobility and Parlement fearing for their honour and their privileges, were up in arms against him, his courage grew, his activity redoubled; he pushed on his inquiries, urging the king, urging the ministers, demanding new warrants, fresh arrests, seeking permission to extend his formidable investigations over an ever-widening circle.

Sorceresses and magicians thronged about the royal Court like swarms of wasps about a hive of honey. In this monstrous hive were concentrated the wealth and honours which awoke and stimulated the ambitions and passions in which the sorceresses found their booty.

The sorceresses had little lodgings at Saint-Germain, Fontainebleau, Versailles, around the palaces. They won admission to the Court as fruit-sellers or dealers in perfumes distilled by the magicians; they offered pastes for softening the skin and waters for improving the complexion. They allied themselves with the domestics of great houses, and domiciled themselves with the laundresses connected with them. They were intimates of those persons who hung about the Court with the curious profession of presenters of petitions. They sometimes even entered the service of a duke or a marchioness. La Chéron was with Monsieur de Noailles and Monsieur de Rabaton in succession. La Vigoureux was actively engaged in finding places for serving-maids and lackeys. We have seen the relations between the fortune-tellers and Leroy, governor of the pages of the Petite Ecurie. Girardin, governor of the dauphin's pages, was connected with the magician Belot. Blessis, a crony of La Voisin, was presented to the queen by Madame de Béthune, by the queen to the dauphin, and by the dauphin to the king.

Among the _bourgeoises_ of Paris who were struck at by the depositions of the fortune-tellers we have indicated the principal ones, and then, coming to the Court ladies, the most illustrious of all, Madame de Montespan. But how many others La Reynie had to deal with! The beautiful Duchess of Orleans, Henrietta of England, was accused, not without the greatest probability, of having had a mass said against her husband, with the incantations of sorcery, in the Palais-Royal itself. Madame de Polignac and Madame de Gramont tried to get Louise de la Vallière poisoned. The Countess de Soissons, Olympe Mancini, who had inspired Louis XIV with his first passion, was compromised so deeply that, warned by the king, she fled into the Netherlands. Louis XIV said to the Princess de Carignan, Madame de Soissons' mother: 'I was determined that the countess should escape; perhaps some day I shall render an account therefor to God and my people.'

When Madame de Montespan was at the height of her power, rivals, jealous of her good fortune, applied to the sorceresses for formulae and powders to 'send her packing,' just as she had done with the idea of getting rid of La Vallière. These were the Duchess of Angoulême, Madame de Vitry, and her own sister-in-law, Antoinette de Mesmes, Duchess de Vivonne. The practices to which this last had recourse were precisely the same as those with which the secret life of Madame de Montespan has acquainted us. She applied to La Filastre and La Chappelain, who were also employed by the dazzling mistress of the king. The sorceresses did not hesitate between the two sisters-in-law, thinking to come off well either way: if the one wished to retain the affection of the king, the other sought to possess herself of it, and in either case money would fall into their purses. Louis did not allow the Duchess de Vivonne to be proceeded against, related so closely as she was to Madame de Montespan. It is probable also that he was dissuaded from it by Colbert, who had married one of his daughters to the Duke de Mortemart, son of the duchess.

We may imagine the emotion, agitation, and anxieties aroused at Court and in Paris by the prosecutions directed by the Chambre Ardente against so large a number of persons belonging to the most distinguished families: the arrests of Mesdames de Dreux and Leféron, of Poulaillon and the Abbé Mariette, relatives of the chief magistrates; the warrants issued against the Duchess de Bouillon, the Princess de Tingry, the wife of Marshal la Ferté, the Countess de Roure; the hasty flight out of the kingdom of the Marchioness d'Alluye, the Viscountess de Polignac, the Count Clermont-Lodève, the Marquis de Cessac, the Countess de Soissons; the imprisonment in the Bastille of the famous Marshal de Luxembourg, who had employed magicians to beg the devil to remove his wife. 'Every one is agitated,' wrote Madame de Sévigné, on January 26, 1680, 'every one is sending for news and going into houses to pick them up.'

Further, the public imagination was impressed; crimes were the stock topic of conversation. The most trifling accidents were attributed to poison. Every husband was accused of poisoning his mother-in-law. Terror reigned in Paris.

Then there was a reaction. Nobles and lawyers displayed equal irritation at the Chamber's daring to push its investigations the length of them. Were rank and name no longer a rampart high enough against the inquisitions of a lieutenant of police? There was an end to society. The result was, that ere long the only person in the whole matter who appeared really criminal in the eyes of people of importance was La Reynie himself. 'To-day,' says Madame de Sévigné, 'the cry is, the innocence of the accused and the horrid scandal! You know this sort of parrot cry. Nothing else is talked about in any company. There is scarcely another example of such a scandal in any Christian court.' And some days later, playing sedulous echo to the general gossip, the charming marchioness said it was a shame to haul up people of position for such a pack of nonsense. 'The reputation of Monsieur de la Reynie is abominable,' she wrote to her daughter on May 31, 1680; 'what you say is exactly to the point; his being alive proves that there are no poisoners in France.' La Reynie had just discovered, indeed, a plot to murder him.

The reader will remember the demonstration organised against the lieutenant of police at the time of the liberation of Madame de Dreux, who was carried off in triumph between her husband, the _maître des requêtes_, and her lover, Monsieur de Richelieu. The nobility got up a similar demonstration when Marie Anne Mancini, Duchess de Bouillon, appeared before the Chambre Ardente. She had done her best to find means of quickly ridding herself of her husband, so that she might marry the Duke de Vendôme. The Duke de Bouillon was informed of it by Louis himself. Yet the duke accompanied his wife on January 29, 1680, to the Arsenal, giving her his right hand, while the Duke de Vendôme gave her his left: an exact repetition of the scene when Madame de Dreux left the Chambre Ardente between her husband and Monsieur de Richelieu.

Madame de Sévigné has noted down the details of this merry frolic. Madame de Bouillon arrived in a coach drawn by six horses, seated between her husband and her lover, followed by twenty other coaches, packed full of the smartest noblemen and daintiest ladies of the Court. The Marquis de la Fare confirms this account: 'The Duchess de Bouillon made a proud and confident appearance before the judges, accompanied by all her friends, who were in large numbers, and a most distinguished crowd.' 'Madame de Bouillon entered the Chambre like a little queen,' says Madame de Sévigné; 'she sat down on a chair prepared for her, and instead of replying to the first question, she asked that what she wanted to say might be written down: which was, that she only came there out of respect for the king; she had none at all for the Chambre, which she did not recognise; and that she did not mean to allow any derogation to the ducal privilege.' (This privilege consisted in the right of not being tried except by all the courts united in Parlement.) 'She would not say a word till that was written down, and then she took off her glove and showed a very beautiful hand. She replied honestly enough until her age was asked.

'"Do you know La Vigoureux?"

'"No."

'"Do you know La Voisin?"

'"Yes."

'"Why do you wish to do away with your husband?"

'"I do away with him? Why, you have only to ask him if he thinks so; he gave me his hand to this very door."

'"But why did you go so often to La Voisin's house?"

'"I wanted to see the Sibyls she promised to show me; that company would be well worth all my journeys."

'She was asked if she had not shown the woman a bag of money. She said "No," and for more than one reason, and this she said with a very mocking and disdainful air.

'"Well, gentlemen, is that all you have to say to me?"

'"Yes, madam."

'She rose and said aloud as she went out, "Really, I should never have believed that clever men could ask so many silly questions."

'She was received by all her friends and relatives with adoration, she was so pretty, naïve, natural, bold, so pleasant in appearance and so quiet in mind.' One of the replies she made to La Reynie, who asked her if she had really seen the devil at the sorceress's, was: 'I see him now: he is ugly, old, and disguised as a councillor of state.' This soon got abroad outside the Chambre, and set all Paris and the Court in good humour.

The charges against the Duchess de Bouillon were, nevertheless, very serious. It was proved to the commissioners that she had asked the sorceresses to poison the Duke de Bouillon or to procure his death by witchcraft. Madame de Sévigné thought the matter of little importance. 'The Duchess de Bouillon,' she wrote to her daughter, 'went and asked La Voisin for a little poison to get rid of an old husband who was boring her to death, and an invention to marry a young man who wanted her, without any one knowing it. This young fellow was Monsieur de Vendôme, who took her to the Arsenal holding one hand, Monsieur de Bouillon holding the other. When a Mancini only commits a folly like that, it is winked at; these sorceresses do the thing seriously, and horrify all Europe about a trifle.' Louis XIV took a more severe view of it, and decided that Madame de Bouillon should be confronted with La Voisin. The pretty face of the young duchess became graver when she heard this, and she begged to be spared this indignity. The king complied, but exiled her to Nérac, whence he would not allow her to return, in spite of the entreaties of her many friends.

* * * * *

The revelations which ensued before the Chambre struck a more cruel blow at La Reynie's soul than the anger of the world. Wrapped in his consciousness of rectitude, he heard cries and threats only as the faint murmurs of a distant mob.

Three sentiments dominated him and guided his whole life: the religious sentiment, which declared itself in a strong, sane, simple piety, the piety of a man possessing a quiet conviction of the truth of his faith; love for his king, a love composed of respect and admiration, with shades of affection like that of a son for a father, and allied also to a religious veneration; finally, a high sentiment of his judicial office with an immovable respect for justice. His worship of the king extended to all that concerned and surrounded him, to all that he loved and honoured. The greatness of Louis XIV is easily explained, in spite of his personal mediocrity, when we see with what passion and by what men he was served. The revelations about Madame de Montespan, the mother of the king's children, the woman who had almost won a seat on the throne of France, were anguish to La Reynie. It is touching to see his grief becoming more keen, more poignant, as evidence accumulated and conviction forced itself upon his mind. 'Private facts,' he writes at the head of a memorandum in which the charges against Madame de Montespan are summed up, 'which were painful to listen to, the idea of which is so grievous to recall and which are still more difficult to relate.' In the light of these revelations his judgment, usually so clear, precise, and sure, became confused, and being unable to believe what he saw, he fancied that his own vision was becoming imperfect. 'I recognise my weakness. In spite of myself, the nature of these private circumstances (those concerning Madame de Montespan) impresses my mind with more fear than is reasonable. These crimes scare me.' Then he recurs to the documents with judicial composure. 'These are the very deeds we must look upon and draw our inferences from.' But it was just the inferences deduced from these actions that his mind could not admit. 'I recognise that I cannot pierce the thick darkness with which I am surrounded. I ask for time to think more about it; and perhaps it will happen that, after much thinking, I shall see even less than I see now. After well considering everything, I have found no other course to suggest than to seek for further enlightenment, and to await the aid of Providence, which has drawn from the feeblest imaginable beginnings the knowledge of this infinite number of strange things it was so necessary to know. All that has happened hitherto leads us to hope (and I do hope with great confidence) that God will at length reveal this abyss of crime, that He will at the same time show the means to escape from it, and inspire the king with all that he ought to do in a matter of such importance.'

In studying these reports of La Reynie to Louvois, we discover a circumstance as impressive as curious. In the course of his memoranda, the magistrate clearly and logically unfolds the reality of the charges against the favourite, but when in closing it falls upon him to draw practical conclusions, his mind shrinks from the task, his thought takes fright like a horse shying before an unexpected obstacle. 'I have done what I could, when I examined the proofs and the presumptions, to assure myself and remain convinced that the facts are genuine, and I could not succeed. I have sought, on the other hand, everything that might persuade me that they were false, and that too has been impossible.'

His distress was augmented by the conflict which arose in his conscience between the duties he owed to justice and those he owed his king. 'At that time when my mind was so cast down,' he wrote, 'I besought God in His mercy to permit me to preserve the fidelity I owed to my office, and to enable me to walk sincerely in all that it pleased the king to command me.' Louis XIV ordered that a portion of the case should be withdrawn from the cognisance of the judges. The blow was so hard to La Reynie that his strength of mind wellnigh failed under it. 'I hope,' he wrote to Louvois on October 17, 1681, 'that his Majesty in his favour and goodness will have compassion on my weakness when he considers that, with the fear and respect I could not fail to be in, occupied moreover and filled with the idea of a judge who, in giving a decision contrary to the truth, should judge and be a party to a judgment involving the life of men, I could not at the moment recognise the false position in which I was, nor represent to his Majesty that the affair in question was in the nature of the case not susceptible of the proposed expedient.'

For a moment his resolution seems to have been taken: he would put himself blindly and unreservedly in the hands of the king who had received from God, he writes, higher lights than those of other men; but the next instant the judge reappears in him and determines him, alone, unaided, subordinate official as he was, to enter into a struggle against the powerful ministers supported by the will and favour of the king.

At this moment his character reveals itself in all its greatness.

He went straight to Louis XIV and laid before him the charges against his mistress; then he wrote energetically to Louvois: 'In spite of all the care that has been taken, all these facts (against Madame de Montespan) have cropped up so often, in so many different quarters, and with so many details, that the king has been obliged to allow the interrogation of the prisoners about the favourite, but in private.'

Louvois, one of the most intimate and well-liked friends of Madame de Montespan, did everything he could to save her. Madame de Maintenon, indeed, was hostile to her, and he feared her growing favour. Besides, as the Venetian ambassador observes, Louvois 'worshipped the French monarchy, to which everything seemed to him subordinate.' He felt bound to protect the prestige of the crown against the injury which the condemnation of the favourite would do it. Finally, in defending her, he thought he would ingratiate himself with Louis.

Louvois endeavoured to bring La Reynie over to his views, to persuade him, at first gently, that it was important that the examining judge should find Madame de Montespan innocent. Louvois spoke, urged, demonstrated: La Reynie listened, but did not heed. The minister then changed his tone. He sought to prove to the magistrate that Madame de Montespan must really be innocent. He went to Paris on February 15, 1681, to explain the matter to him. Had not Mademoiselle Desoeillets, the favourite's maid, written that 'she was not guilty, and that what he (La Reynie) had been told about her dealings with La Voisin could not be true; that there were twenty women about Madame de Montespan, of whom eighteen hated her, and that they might be asked for information about her, but she thought that the Countess de Soissons had two maids, one of whom was almost her own height, and that the countess might well have taken her name (the name of Mademoiselle Desoeillets), to injure both her and Madame de Montespan, whom she hated.'

La Reynie replied that all that was wanted was to confront the young lady with the prisoners at Vincennes. We have already shown that the confrontation took place and that Mademoiselle Desoeillets was recognised. Louvois had perforce to devise another defence, to which the inflexible La Reynie made answer: 'After reflecting on what Mademoiselle Desoeillets said to Monsieur de Louvois at Vincennes, about her having a niece who was very often with the sorceresses, and who might easily have been mistaken for her, I think it doubtful, because she only said so after having been recognised by the prisoners, and because Madame de Villedieu her good friend, who is at Vincennes, and had had warnings, tried to mislead us in the same way; it appears a concerted plan; and when I asked her what Mademoiselle Desoeillets was like, she told me that she was small, short, and well-developed, which is a false description and exactly fits the niece.'

When it was pointed out to La Reynie that La Voisin had denied all knowledge of Mademoiselle Desoeillets, he replied: 'The denial of La Voisin, persisted in till her death, must be the more suspicious in that it was so obstinately kept up, because it is now proved that they had dealings together. If Mademoiselle Desoeillets herself denies these dealings, that itself can only increase the suspicion.'

Louvois dwelt also on a retractation made by La Filastre after her conversation with her confessor at the moment of going to execution; but the lieutenant of police replied: 'The declaration made by La Filastre exonerating Madame de Montespan applies solely to the poisoning of Mademoiselle de Fontanges. There are two other facts: that of the mass said over her by Guibourg, and further, the agreement between them in regard to the powders prepared by Galet for the king, in which Madame de Montespan was named; and the charges founded on these two facts do not depend wholly on what was said under torture, but were confirmed afresh by the same declaration in which La Filastre retracted the first charge.'

La Reynie thus defended himself and justice, and soon, strong in the rights of the law, he went on from defence to attack. He revealed to the minister the relations which several of the Vincennes prisoners who were mixed up in Madame de Montespan's affair had had with persons of the Court.

These had given instruction and counsel. La Reynie condemned these manoeuvres before the very minister who, at the instigation of the king, had been their author.

'And several of these prisoners of rank,' he added courageously, 'have found means of having some of the charges brought against them withdrawn.'

La Reynie was not satisfied with denying the innocence of Mademoiselle Desoeillets; he told Louvois: 'It is difficult for her to be left at liberty after such charges. Apprised of all that has been said against her, she is busy taking measures to render her conviction impossible, and she will take these measures along with other ill-disposed persons.'

In case he should not be authorised to arrest her, La Reynie asks that he may at least be permitted to proceed to her examination; and he sketches for Louvois a very skilful plan, showing the ingenious and subtle means by which, without violence or scandal, the confidante might be induced to reveal the truth.

It is hardly necessary to say that these propositions were rejected by Louis and his minister. The magistrate, nevertheless, persevered in the path he had marked out for himself, even after Louvois, to overcome his scruples, had enlisted the assistance of Colbert, the second of the all-powerful ministers.

Boileau once said: 'I admire Monsieur Colbert's inability to endure Suetonius because Suetonius had revealed the infamy of the emperors.' There we have the explanation of his conduct, apart from the personal interest he had in the innocence of Madame de Montespan.

Colbert had only followed at a distance the work of the commissioners of the Chambre Ardente, and he knew only vaguely the charges brought against the king's mistress. He applied to a celebrated advocate of the time, Maître Duplessis, for a statement establishing the innocence of Madame de Montespan, and indicating means of quashing the unhappy proceedings. Colbert even did his best to supply him with arguments.

Duplessis drew up the statement desired. Colbert acknowledged its receipt on February 25, 1681: 'I have seen and examined with care the memorandum you have sent me; I have to receive another to-morrow on the second charge (the attempted poisoning of Mademoiselle de Fontanges), which is no less serious than the first (the attempt on Louis XIV by means of the petition), and the disproof of which is, in my opinion, more complete and perfect.' And Duplessis sent him a second statement with these words: 'Have the goodness to look at the general observation at the beginning, because it may provide answers to many things which appear sufficiently well proved.' The memorials of Duplessis, backed up by Colbert, had no more effect on La Reynie than the arguments of Louvois. The advocate and the minister asked that the prisoners should be dealt with summarily by the Chambre, that torture should not be applied so that they might not reveal the gravest facts, and that as soon as the case had been rapidly despatched, all the documents should be burnt forthwith. But La Reynie said that it was impossible not to follow the rules of justice, and that the Chambre could only judge according to custom and law.

* * * * *

The Chambre Ardente was in a quandary. On the one hand it saw the necessity of yielding to the absolute refusal of Louis to authorise the reading in court of the documents in which Madame de Montespan was concerned; on the other, there was the no less absolute refusal of La Reynie to allow the judges to pronounce a sentence in which all the guarantees custom gave the accused were not respected. It seemed a complete deadlock. The king had gradually allowed himself to be led very far from the resolutions of rigorous equity which he had at first displayed. He had violated the secrets of the documents so far as to communicate to persons of note such parts of the reports of the investigations as concerned them; he had connived at the flight of the Prince de Clermont-Lodève, the Countess de Soissons, and many others. He had trembled at the thought of what revelations La Voisin might make: 'I explained to the king,' wrote Louvois to Bazin de Bezons on December 3, 1679, 'of the reasons you and the commissioners have for beginning the investigation of La Voisin's case, but his Majesty did not give his approval; and this evening I shall give orders to Boucherat and La Reynie not to bring it into court.'

On July 18, 1680, Louvois wrote to La Reynie from Montreuil-sur-Mer: 'The king has not thought fit to give the order you request that the commissioners may be authorised to give judgment in case of necessity, his Majesty not regarding it as seemly that the Chambre should judge prisoners in his absence.' In spite of the efforts made to enwrap the sittings at the Arsenal in impenetrable secrecy, public opinion was not deceived, and we find evidence in many private letters that the king was preventing the prosecution of 'people of the Court.' 'You are aiming at riff-raff,' exclaimed Lalande, one of the prisoners, in open court on July 31, 1681, 'and you ought to aim higher.'

At length, as we have seen, after the declaration of La Filastre on October 1, 1680, the sittings of the Chambre were suddenly suspended.

'This day, October 1, 1680, in execution of the decree of September 30 of the said year, which condemned Françoise Filastre and Jacques Joseph Cotton to death, they have been put to torture ordinary and extraordinary; but the said Filastre having made, both at and apart from torture, declarations of great importance, and the king having seen the report containing fresh declarations made by her in the chapel of the said château of the Bastille before going to execution, his Majesty, for considerations important to his service, was unwilling that the said matters should be laid in gross before the Chambre, and gave orders to Monsieur Boucherat, President of the said court, to close the sittings.'

From that day there was open conflict between the lieutenant of police on the one hand and the ministers supported by all the ladies and courtiers on the other. 'The king,' wrote La Reynie's secretaries, 'was strongly urged by the courtiers, and even by persons in high places, to close the Chambre entirely, under various pretexts, the most specious of which was that a longer investigation of the poisoning cases would bring the nation into discredit abroad.' La Reynie pleaded in answer the respect due to justice, the duty incumbent on the king to have the greatest criminals who had ever appeared in his kingdom brought to trial and punished, and finally, the necessity of purging France of these appalling practices in poison and sacrilege, which had taken in a few years proportions that no one would have conceived possible. He went to Versailles and talked to the king for four days in succession, and for four hours each day. It is a pity that we have no record of the words he addressed to the king and his ministers. Single-handed, he vanquished them all.

'Monsieur de la Reynie having been heard by the king in his cabinet, in presence of the Chancellor and Monsieur de Colbert and the Marquis de Louvois, on four different days, and for four hours each day, his Majesty at length resolved on the continuation of the Chambre, and ordered Monsieur de la Reynie to continue his ordinary investigations; nevertheless, to take no steps on any of the declarations contained in the reports of the torture and execution of La Filastre, which his Majesty, for considerations relating to his service, does not wish to be divulged.'

The court sitting at the Arsenal resumed its labours on May 19, 1681, but on the condition laid down by the king that nothing further should be done in regard to the declarations in which Madame de Montespan had been involved. On December 17, the facts which he had wished to keep from the knowledge of the judges reappeared with new force at the examination of La Joly. Louvois at once wrote to Bazin de Bezons, the fellow-commissioner of La Reynie, instructing him to be careful to put all these declarations into separate portfolios not to be shown to the judges. La Reynie in fact perceived that the difficulties of the Court, in regard to a regular performance of its duties, were increasing from day to day, and it was not long before he understood, and made his colleagues see also, that the mere fact of the suppression of the report containing the replies of Filastre under torture rendered it impossible to investigate legally the cases of the principal prisoners. This he clearly demonstrated in notes really admirable in their outspokenness and sound judgment. And to measure their dignity and courage, we must remember that his words were addressed directly to Louvois and Louis XIV. But Louis' character was not great enough to allow him to sacrifice his pride to the public good, to consent to such a humiliation in the eyes of his subjects and of Europe. He adhered to his veto on the communication of the Montespan documents to the Chambre. On his part, La Reynie remained inflexible, refusing to allow a case to be tried in which the whole of the documents were not submitted to the court. Yet something had to be done: a Chamber must be either open or shut.

After having done everything possible to enable justice to follow its course in complete independence, so as to reach the guilty however high-placed they were, La Reynie indicated the only solution which would permit the magistrates--since they were not allowed to fulfil their duty to the full--not to fail in so much of their duty as lay in the limited field still open to them.

There were at that time in France tribunals in which judges sat, and _lettres de cachet_ which operated without legal formalities, at the mere command of the king. Elsewhere we have shown how, almost at the same period, d'Aguesseau, the most illustrious of French judges, asked for _lettres de cachet_ in the course of a case in which he was engaged. Like d'Aguesseau, La Reynie might have said: 'I am not accused of a fondness for extraordinary ways and a hatred of the forms known to justice, yet I find here many reasons for having recourse to orders from the king' (_lettres de cachet_).

'His Majesty being unwilling to give the Chambre cognisance of certain facts,' he wrote on April 17, 1681, to Louvois, 'or that it should try certain prisoners and certain accused parties, reserving them to himself because of their importance, to deal with them through his own justice and the other means he proposes to make use of, it seems to me that we can arrive at the end the king is aiming at by very simple methods, and there can be no objection since the commissioners of the Chambre will have no knowledge of the matters concerning which they are not to be judges.'

What was required, according to La Reynie, was to give up the investigation of the cases of those who had knowledge of facts implicating Madame de Montespan; and since it was impossible to try them according to the rules of justice, to be satisfied with imprisoning them under _lettres de cachet_ in the royal fortresses. In face of the attitude taken up by La Reynie in refusing to proceed to a judgment which would violate the traditional forms and the securities they granted to the accused, the king and his ministers had perforce to yield.

La Reynie enumerates a long list of the criminals charged with monstrous crimes who hoped by this means to escape the rigour of trial, the anguish of torture and death by the stake or the gibbet, and he adds:--

'There are 147 prisoners at the Bastille and Vincennes; of this number there is not one against whom there are not serious charges of poisoning or dealings in poison, and further charges of sacrilege and impiety. The majority of these criminals are likely to escape punishment.

'La Trianon, an abominable woman, in regard to the nature of her crimes and her dealings with poison, cannot be tried, and the public, in losing the satisfaction of an example, is no doubt losing also the fruit of some new discovery and the total conviction of her accomplices.

'Nor can the woman Chappelain be tried, because La Filastre was confronted with her: a woman of large connection, long devoted to the study of poisons, suspected of several poisonings, continually practising impieties, sacrilege, and sorcery; accused by La Filastre of having taught her the practice of her abominations with priests; deeply implicated in the case of Vanens.

'For the same reasons, Galet cannot be tried; although a peasant, a dangerous man, and dealing openly in poisons.

'Lepreux, a priest of Notre Dame, engaged in the same practices as La Chappelain, accused of sacrificing the child of La Filastre to the devil.

'Guibourg--this man, who cannot be compared to any other in regard to the number of his poisonings, his dealings with poison and sorcery, his sacrilege and impiety, knowing and known by every notorious criminal, convicted of a great number of horrible crimes--this man, who has mutilated and sacrificed several children; who, apart from the sacrilege of which he is convicted, confesses to inconceivable abominations; who says he has practised by diabolical means against the life of the king; of whom we hear every day new and execrable things, and who is loaded with accusations of crimes against God and king--he, too, will assure impunity to other criminals.

'His concubine, the woman Chanfrain, guilty with him of the murder of some of her children, who has shared in some of Guibourg's sacrifices, and who, according to appearances and the turn the case was taking, was the infamous altar on which he performed his ordinary abominations, will also remain unpunished.

'There is also a large number of other accused persons who will remain free from punishment for their crimes. The girl Monvoisin cannot be tried, nor Mariette, whatever may come to light about him. Latour, Vautier, and his wife will not only remain unpunished, but, for considerations prompting to the concealment of their secret crimes, their case will not be heard through.'

La Reynie says further, not without a touch of melancholy: 'In all this there is reason to wonder at the providence of God. If Mariette had been captured before the trial of La Voisin, and they had spoken about the business of Madame de Montespan, this monster (La Voisin) would have escaped justice, and La Filastre also, if she had put forward what she said at her torture.'

It remained to close the Chambre without too great a shock to public opinion, or leading people to believe that after so much noise the whole thing was to be smothered. 'We must wind up the Chambre,' writes La Reynie, 'but we must avoid doing so with an appearance of weariness and disgust combined, so that the large number of persons interested may not find occasion to discredit justice, and so that the wicked people who remain, known or unknown, may not cease to be in terror, or, losing their fear, recommence their ill-deeds with the same freedom as they had before.'

The magistrates who composed the Chambre were themselves keenly desirous that its closing should be announced. Among other reasons, the lieutenant of police gives their reluctance and aversion to condemn, 'a reluctance which good men cannot help feeling,' and their sorrow at not being able to try the principal offenders.

It was important, then, not to appear to close the Chambre from any feeling of weariness, and above all not to awake any suspicion of the real causes at work. The public was already murmuring. Compelled as they were, on account of the complicity of Madame de Montespan, to allow all the accused who had had dealings with La Voisin to go scot-free--to wit, the Abbé Guibourg, Lesage, and other guilty persons--the judges took up again the case of Vanens, which had lain dormant. But here again the principal actor, Vanens, escaped the rigour of the law through his connection with the favourite. The commissioners of the Chambre had the good luck to find unexpectedly, in one of the reports, a denunciation against a certain Pinon du Martroy, a councillor to the Parlement, who had been involved in the disgrace of Fouquet. At the time when judgment had been passed on the financiers after the fall of Fouquet, the goods of Pinon had been seized, and Guibourg said that, to wreak vengeance and secure Fouquet's release from prison, he had performed incantations against the king, as well as practised sorcery. Pinon was dead, but he was said to have had a confidant in Jean Maillard, auditor to the exchequer. This man was secured, and as he occupied a prominent position, his case created a great sensation. He was condemned on February 20, 1682, for having 'known and not revealed the detestable designs formed against the person of the king.' The councillor denied everything at his torture, and adhered to his denial till the moment of his death. It is certain that among the various accusations brought before the commissioners of the Chambre Ardente, those directed against Maillard are among those that were least fully proved. The execution took place on February 21, and, contrary to custom, at midday.

It was followed on July 16, 1682, by that of La Chaboissière, Vanens' valet. This wretch was condemned to be hanged after preliminary torture. He was less guilty than Vanens, of whom he had only been the tool; but his low rank had put him beyond the pale. Then the proceedings were brought to a close in due form, without any appearance of a serious miscarriage of justice in the eyes of the crowd. The Chambre Ardente was finally closed by a _lettre de cachet_ of July 21, 1682.

La Reynie did not consider that his work was yet done. In his correspondence with Louvois, he had constantly harped on the idea that they should profit by the experience gained during the long investigations of the court to avoid the recurrence of such crimes. He was intrusted, along with Colbert, with the drafting of an order. On August 30, 1682, appeared the famous edict against soothsayers and poisoners, which was the joint work of these two great men; magicians and sorceresses were driven from France, the manufacture and sale of poisons necessary in trade and medicine were regulated by ordinances which have triumphed over time and revolutions, and after two centuries are still in force to-day.

* * * * *

The numerous prisoners whose connection, close or remote, with the machinations of Madame de Montespan safe-guarded them from trial, were transferred under _lettre de cachet_ into different fortresses--those which appeared the safest in the kingdom. With excessive precaution, Louvois ordered that each of them should be fastened to his prison by an iron chain, one link of which was to be imbedded in the wall and another fixed to the person of the prisoner.

All these unhappy creatures remained in this condition till their death, some of them for more than forty years. The minister sent the most rigorous instructions to prevent them from holding communication with anybody outside, and to secure that the staff employed in providing for their material and spiritual wants should be reduced to the lowest possible number and composed of persons in whom entire confidence might be placed. And to destroy in advance any effect which the revelations of the prisoners might make on the minds of the governors of citadels and fortresses, Louvois sent these officers word that their new guests were villains who had invented infamous calumnies against Madame de Montespan, the falsity of which had been proved before the Chambre, and that if any of them happened to open his lips on the subject, he was to be answered at once with a sound flogging.

The most important of the prisoners--Guibourg, Lesage, Galet, and Romani--were conveyed to the citadel of Besançon. Guibourg died there three years after his entrance.

Fourteen women were taken to the castle of St. André de Salins. Louvois wrote in regard to them on August 26, 1682, to the lord-lieutenant of Franche-Comté:--

'The king having thought fit to send to the château of St. André de Salins some of the people who were arrested in virtue of warrants of the court that dealt with the matter of the poisons, his Majesty has commanded me to inform you that his intention is that you prepare two rooms in the said château, so that six of these prisoners may be kept safely in each of them, the which prisoners are to have each a mattress in the place arranged for them, and to be fastened either by a hand or a foot to a chain which shall be fastened to the wall, the said chain however to be long enough not to prevent them from lying down. As these people are criminals who deserve extreme penalties, the intention of the king is that they be thus fastened for fear they should injure the people set to guard them, who will go in and out to bring them food and attend to them generally. His Majesty's intention is that you prepare two similar rooms in the citadel of Besançon, so that twelve of the prisoners may be kept securely there. You will observe that these rooms are to be so situated that no one can hear what these people say.'

Auzillon, one of the staff of the provost of the Isle de France, escorted the principal sorceresses, Pelletier, Poulain, Delaporte, the girl Monvoisin, and Catherine Leroy, to the citadel of Belle-Isle-en-Mer.

La Chappelain, the companion of La Filastre, was imprisoned in the castle of Villefranche, where she died forty years later, on June 4, 1724. She lived there in company with another sorceress who, like her, had been withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Chambre Ardente, and for the same reasons--namely, La Guesdon.

The governor of Villefranche wrote in August 1717, that 'of two old prisoners of state for poison, the survivors of four who had been locked up there for thirty-six years, La Guesdon died on the 15th instant, leaving forty-five livres in silver, which she had saved during that time out of her eight sous a day for food: of these she instructed her surviving companion to take what she needed for her personal use, and to use the balance in paying for prayers for her--this is one pensioner the less for the king. The woman was seventy-six years old; the survivor (La Chappelain) is no younger. They were in the same room.'

Finally, a few prisoners at the Bastille and Vincennes, wholly ignorant of the poison affair, and others whose innocence was recognised by the commissioners of the Chambre Ardente, had been shut up, unluckily for themselves, in the same room with prisoners implicated in the crimes of Madame de Montespan. This chance meeting condemned them to perpetual confinement.

'Manon Bosse,' writes La Reynie, 'was sent to the nuns of Baffens, at Besançon, under the name of Mademoiselle Manon Dubosc, where the king pensioned her to the tune of 250 livres; she was never liberated, because she had been locked up with the daughter of La Voisin, who had told her everything.'

La Gaignière, under the same circumstances, was put in the common workhouse. Nanon Aubert also had been placed with La Voisin's daughter: 'This was the reason that she was not set at liberty, but in 1683 she was placed with the Ursulines of Besançon, and afterwards with those of Vesoul, with orders to say that she was detained for dealings with a lady of quality accused of poison, and she was made to pass for a young lady of rank. The king payed a pension of 250 livres per annum.'

The most characteristic example is that of Lemaire, brother of the woman Vertemart. His complete innocence was absolutely proved. There was no possible charge against him but his having been shut up with the Abbé Guibourg, who 'had told him everything.' On August 4, 1681, Louvois wrote to La Reynie: 'At present Lemaire is not to be set at liberty. I have written to Desgrez what will enable him, if he shows him my letter, to endure his long detention with less pain.' Louvois and Louis XIV were struck by the revolting iniquity of this detention. In August 1682, Louvois sent to Lemaire the considerable sum of 150 pistoles, promising to forward an equal sum every year on condition that he took himself out of the kingdom, never set foot in it again all his life, and spoke to nobody in the world of what he had heard while at Vincennes. If he ever broke one of these engagements, the king would have him seized and incarcerated for the rest of his days.

* * * * *

La Reynie died on June 14, 1709, at the age of eighty years. In his will there is a touching clause which depicts this excellent man to the life. He asks that his body may be interred in the parish cemetery, and not in the church, 'being unwilling that my corpse should be laid in a spot where the faithful assemble, and that the decay of my body should increase the pollution of the air, and thereby endanger the life of ministers and people.' The lieutenant of police, who had devoted a part of his life to the sanitation and good government of the great city confided to his administration, gave an excellent practical lesson on his death-bed, doubtless to the wounding of his dearest sentiments as a Catholic and a believer.

Gabriel Nicolas de la Reynie was in fact a character of rare worth. In our account of him, we have not had to show him as the man of fine culture, the scholar in constant correspondence with Baluze, purchasing and collecting Greek and Latin manuscripts, the skilled patron of the printing-press, the bibliophile to whom we owe the preservation of the original text of Molière. He was a worthy representative of his period, the great epoch in French history. The seventeenth century attained the furthest extremes in good as in evil. It was then that France produced her greatest captains, her greatest statesmen, her most illustrious judges; it was then that the greatest names in literature, art, philosophy, and scholarship dazzled the world; then that the 'daughters of charity' displayed their devotion; that Madame de Chantal diffused around her the sweet perfume of her virtues; but it was then, too, that a Marquise de Brinvilliers extended the boundaries of crime, and an Abbé de Guibourg murdered children upon an altar, over the bare body of a Marquise de Montespan.

THE DEATH OF 'MADAME'[12]

Who has not read Bossuet's funeral oration on Henrietta Anne of England, Duchess of Orleans? Who has not thrilled at the echo of that powerful and poignant apostrophe?--'O woful night! O awful night, when there rang through the air like a sudden thunderclap the amazing tidings, Madame is dying, Madame is dead!... Madame passed from morn to eve like the grass of the field. In the morning she flourished, with what graces you know; in the evening we saw her cut down.... What awful speed! In nine hours the work is accomplished.' Bossuet's masterpiece has crowned the memory of Madame with an immortal halo in which the charms, the quick and exquisite imagination of the young princess, who enchanted her contemporaries,--the lady who set the tone for taste and wit in the midst of the wittiest and most brilliant Court the world has ever known--will shine resplendent through the ages.