Chapter III: A Magistrate (2)

The circumstances in which this startling death occurred have aroused the attention of historians. Madame had returned from England, where she had succeeded in getting the Treaty of Dover signed on June 1, 1670, by the ministers of her brother Charles II--the treaty assuring Louis XIV of the alliance of England against Holland, and permitting him to conquer Flanders and Franche-Comté for France. Madame remained at Dover from May 24 to June 12; she then re-embarked for France, happy in the successful result of her mission; and she arrived at Saint-Germain on the 18th. 'At the age of twenty-six,' says Madame de la Fayette, 'she saw herself the link between the two greatest kings of the century; she had in her hands a treaty on which depended the fate of a part of Europe; the pleasure and the importance given by affairs of moment being joined in her with the attractions bestowed by youth and beauty; there was a grace and a sweetness enveloping her whole person that won for her a kind of homage, which must have been the more pleasant in that it was rendered rather to her personality than to her rank.'

Need anything be said of the manners of Monsieur? 'The miracle of firing the heart of this prince,' says Madame de la Fayette, 'was reserved for no woman in the world.' And yet his heart was wonderfully tender! Madame had definitively secured the exile of the Chevalier de Lorraine, the infamous friend of her husband.

Madame died suddenly at St. Cloud, a prey to the most cruel anguish, on the night of the 29th of June 1670, about three o'clock in the morning. Rumours of poison were instantly set afloat, which were not long in gaining strength and currency. They formed the general opinion at Court, in Paris, in the whole of France, in England, Holland, and Spain, where Madame's daughter became queen. Charles II refused to receive the letter in which the Duke of Orleans informed him of his sister's death. 'The Duke of Buckingham, the English ambassador,' wrote Colbert de Croissy, 'is in transports of rage.' The people of London were hardly restrained from violent outbursts against the Frenchmen residing there. The streets rang with the cry of 'Down with the French!' The French embassy had to be protected. Monsieur's second wife, Madame Palatine, was always convinced that Madame had died of poison, and everything tends to show that Louis XIV, at all events in the first moments, shared these suspicions.

In regard to the possible authors of the crime, some accused the Dutch, against whom the Treaty of Dover was directed; others accused Monsieur himself and the Chevalier de Lorraine. In either case, the historical interest of the problem is very great; the popular imagination heightened it through the magnificent commentary with which Bossuet embroidered the death of the beautiful princess; and it has been enhanced by all the efforts made for more than a century past to solve it. 'For fifty years and more,' writes one of the masters of modern erudition, M. Arthur de Boislisle, 'the question has been more closely studied, and the evidence weighed with more care, at least by impartial and serious writers familiar with the documents of Louis XIV's reign or with scientific problems. But it happens that some have abstained from giving a decisive verdict, and others have varied between poison, in which Walckenaer, Paul Lacroix, and François Ravaisson very firmly believed, and death by accident or disease, accepted by Mignet, Loiseleur, and Littré; with the result that the question has become darkened rather than illuminated between conclusions diametrically opposed, but coming from men of equal authority.' Monsieur de Boislisle himself refrains from stating any conclusion, and recently we have Doctor Legué, a specialist, in his interesting book, _Médecins et Empoisonneurs_, devoting a new study to the question, and endeavouring to prove that Madame was poisoned by corrosive sublimate.

Thanks to a minute study of the documents, guided by the work of Monsieur de Boislisle we have just quoted, thanks above all to the skilful guidance of two masters of modern science, we arrive, as will be seen by and by, at an indisputable solution.

I

In accordance with the first principle of historical criticism, it is important at the outset to determine exactly the value of the sources whence we may derive particulars serviceable to our investigation. The sources are divided into three well-marked categories--(1) The reports of the physicians and surgeons; (2) the accounts of the persons who were able to approach Madame in her last moments, or were in a position to hear authoritative descriptions; (3) the official correspondence of the courts of London and Paris.

The first category presents to us five reports of the post-mortem examination:--

(_a_) The official report signed by the fifteen physicians and surgeons, French and English, who were present at the autopsy.

(_b_) The _Account of the Illness, Death, and Autopsy of Madame_, by the Abbé Bourdelot, physician. Bourdelot was one of the French physicians present at the post-mortem.

(_c_) The report of Vallot, physician to the late queen-mother. Vallot was regarded as one of the most eminent physicians of his time. He was present among the French doctors at the autopsy. His report was officially carried to London by the Marshal de Bellefonds.

(_d_) The _Memoir of a Surgeon of the King of England who was present at the Opening of the Body_. This surgeon's name was Alexander Boscher.

(_e_) The account of Hugh Chamberlain, physician-in-ordinary to the King of England, also present at the operation. This document, like the preceding, is exceedingly useful for checking the official report and the report of the French physicians. Some writers have believed that Louis XIV, fearing a rupture with England, dictated the opinion the French physicians were to give. Boscher and Chamberlain were absolutely independent representatives of the English Government.

To these five documents, of unquestionable authenticity, may be added the notice inserted in the _Gazette_ of July 5, 1670, which was officially inspired by the Court physicians, and the opinion of the famous Guy Patin, Dean of the Medical School of Paris, though he was not actually present at the autopsy.

In our second category, the narratives of persons who approached Madame in her last moments, or heard authoritative accounts, we must mention prominently the account written by the charming Countess de la Fayette, _The History of Madame Henrietta of England, first wife of Philip of France, Duke of Orleans_. The Countess de la Fayette was attached to the suite of Madame; she never left her during the day on which she died. She has left a simple, precise, and sober account of the short illness, in which every line bears the stamp of truth.

Next to this valuable document must be cited the letter of Bossuet, who was present at the final scene, and the story of Feuillet, canon of St. Cloud, who was with Madame before Bossuet arrived.

The third category comprises the correspondence exchanged between the courts of England and France and their representatives: these would be documents of the greatest value, if their official and diplomatic character had not imposed the greatest reserve on the writers, and even dictated their sentiments. There are first of all the letters of Louis XIV and Hugues de Lionne to Charles II and to Colbert de Croissy, ambassador at London; then, the despatches of Louis and of Hugues de Lionne to Monsieur de Pomponne, ambassador at the Hague; on the English side, five letters addressed by Lord Montagu, ambassador at the French Court, to Lord Arlington, secretary of state to Charles II, and the letters of Lord Arlington to Sir William Temple.

Such are the only documents worthy of credence we have at our disposal for studying the circumstances of the death of Madame, for it is necessary to reject in the most absolute manner the accounts of Saint-Simon and of Monsieur's second wife, Madame Palatine. Chéruel, and more especially Monsieur de Boislisle, have shown the improbabilities and absurdities of these, and we shall not refer to them again. The work of Monsieur de Boislisle is particularly interesting in showing that these two famous narratives had a common source. As to the testimony of d'Argenson, Voltaire, and others, destitute, in the nature of the case, of any authority comparable to that of the authors we have mentioned above--it is unnecessary in the points where it confirms the others; on the points where it contradicts them, it cannot prevail; and on the points where it contains new information, it is dangerous to follow, for we lack any evidence by which to check it. Littré acted judiciously in neglecting these writers when compiling his study on the death of Madame, and the reproach levelled against him by Loiseleur is without justification. On the contrary, it is perhaps to this happy stroke of criticism that Littré owed the success of his argument.

II

We proceed to recount, in the simplest and most precise manner in our power, the circumstances of the death of Madame; and from this narrative alone we shall see emerge one of the facts we intend to establish, namely, that Madame could not have been poisoned.

Henrietta of England, 'more comparable to the jasmine than to the rose, very slender, delicate, slightly round-shouldered--not less pleasing for that--exhausted, not only by four accouchements in rapid succession, but by the fast life then led at Court, was only kept up,' says Monsieur de Boislisle, 'by that sanguine temperament which is the prerogative of high-strung women.' In 1664 Guy Patin wrote: 'The Duchess of Orleans was taken ill at Villers-Cotterets, and her physicians have prescribed ass's milk.' The presumption is, then, that she suffered from some stomachic disorder. 'The king,' wrote Hugues de Lionne to Colbert de Croissy, 'tells us that more than three years ago she complained of a pain in the side which compelled her to lie flat for three or four hours without finding ease in any posture.' Madame was constantly afflicted with a pain at one fixed spot in the breast. 'She further used to complain,' wrote the Abbé Bourdelot, 'of a cruel burning pain, not in the abdomen, but in the chest.' She was always wanting to vomit. 'Most often she could take only milk for food, and remained in bed for days together.' These facts indicate, as Dr. Le Gendre tells us, that Madame suffered from a chronic inflammation of the stomach, a form of gastritis. The reports of the autopsy show, further, that Madame was afflicted with pulmonary tuberculosis, and it is not rare for these two morbid conditions to co-exist.

During the journey she made in Flanders with the king and Monsieur before her departure for England, the appearance of the young princess caused much alarm. 'She was reduced to living on milk,' writes Madame de la Fayette, 'and retired to her own room as soon as she got out of the coach, and as a rule she went to bed.... One day, when the talk fell on astrology, Monsieur said that it had been foretold that he would have several wives, and judging from the state Madame was in, he was beginning to believe it.'

Madame returned from England on June 18. Her condition had become very much worse. Next day she kept her bed. 'She went into the queen's room,' wrote Mademoiselle de Montpensier, 'like a dressed-up corpse with rouge on its cheeks, and when she went out, everybody, including the queen, said that she had death written on her face.' 'On June 24, 1670,' writes Madame de la Fayette, 'a week after her return from England, Monsieur and she went to St. Cloud. The first day she went there she complained of pains in the side and abdomen, to which she was subject. Nevertheless, as it was extremely hot, she desired 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 the 27th, and on Saturday she was so ill that she did not bathe. I arrived at St. Cloud on Saturday at six o'clock in the evening. I found her in the gardens. She told me that I should think her looking cross, and that she was not at all well. She had supped as usual, and she walked in the moonlight till midnight.' The preceding lines, every detail of which is of great importance, have been neglected by the historians who have concluded she was poisoned.

'On Sunday the 29th, at dinner, Madame ate as usual, and after dinner she lay down on some cushions, as she often did when she was at liberty. She had made me place myself near her,' says Madame de la Fayette, 'so that her head was almost on me. An English painter was painting Monsieur's portrait; we were talking about all sorts of things, and meanwhile she fell asleep. During her nap she changed so considerably that after watching her for a long time I was surprised at it, and thought that her spirit must do a great deal towards adorning her countenance, since it was so pleasant when she was awake and so little attractive when she was asleep. But I was wrong in this reflection, for I had several times seen her sleeping, and had never yet seen her less lovely. When she awoke, she rose from the place where she had been lying, but with so haggard a face that Monsieur was surprised and called my attention to it. She then went away into the drawing-room, where she walked up and down for some time with Boisfranc, Monsieur's treasurer, and while talking to him, complained several times of the pain at her side.'

We are coming to the moment when any poisoning must have taken place; we see already that the mischief was done.

'Monsieur went downstairs to return to Paris. He found Madame de Meckelbourg on the steps, and came up again with her. Madame left Boisfranc and came to Madame de Meckelbourg. As she was speaking to her, Madame de Gamaches brought to her, as well as to me, a glass of chicory water that she had asked for some time before. Madame de Gourdon, her tire-woman, gave it to her. She drank it, and then, replacing the cup on the salver with one hand, she pressed her side with the other, saying, in a tone that betokened severe pain, "Oh! what a dreadful twinge! Oh, what a pain! I can bear it no longer!"

'She reddened in uttering these words, and the next moment turned a livid pallor, which surprised us all; she continued to cry out, and told us to take her away, as she could no longer stand. We took her in our arms; she tottered along half doubled-up; I held her while some one unlaced her. She moaned all the time, and I noticed that she had tears in her eyes. I was amazed and affected by it, for I knew that she was the most patient creature in the world. Kissing the arms I was holding, I said that she was evidently in great pain, and she told me I could not imagine how great. She was put to bed, and as soon as she was there, she cried out more loudly than she had yet done, and threw herself from one side to the other like a person in infinite agony. Some one went off to find her chief physician, Monsieur Esprit; he came, said it was colic, and prescribed the ordinary remedies for such ailments. All the time the pain was dreadful. Madame said that it was much worse than we thought, and that she was dying, and begged some one to go in search of a confessor for her.'

The young princess believed that she was poisoned. A sort of antidote was brought her in the shape of oil and powdered adder, which made her vomit. After some hours of frightful agony, Henrietta of England expired while Bossuet was reciting the last exhortations.

Face to face with death, Madame displayed a greatness of soul to which all who approached her have borne touching testimony. 'Madame was gentle towards Death,' said Bossuet, 'as she had been with all the world. Her great heart was neither embittered nor wrathful against the dread foe. Nor did she face him with proud disdain, but was content to look him in the face without emotion and to welcome him without distress.'

III

This bare narrative of the facts would be sufficient to weaken the opinion of those who believe that the Princess Henrietta died of poison. The following observations will contribute to deprive it of all credit. Writers are unanimously agreed about the fact that Madame could only have been poisoned by the glass of chicory water given her by Madame de Gamaches. Now as soon as suspicions awoke in the mind of Madame and her circle, that is to say, the moment after the drink had been taken, Monsieur ordered some of the water to be given to a dog; Madame Desbordes, the princess's maid, who was heartily devoted to her, told her that she had made the drink, and had herself drunk some of it, and Madame de Meckelbourg also drank some. We are thus bound to acknowledge that the famous chicory water could not have been poisoned. Monsieur J. Lair, with his clear and vigorous mind, has well analysed the scene: 'The decoction of which so many persons had drunk was harmless; it was the cup that ought to have been examined.' 'The details given by Madame de la Fayette and others,' writes Monsieur de Boislisle, 'exclude the idea of poison poured into the glass itself; and indeed Madame Palatine says that what was poisoned was not the water itself, nor the vessel in which it was made, but the cup which was reserved for the princess, and which no one else would have dared to use.'

It is a fact that the seventeenth-century poisoners sought to prepare goblets and silver cups in such a way as to poison the persons who were afterwards to use them. Among the constant friends of La Voisin, La Bosse, La Chéron, and La Vigoureux, the most renowned sorceresses of the period, we find a certain François Belot, one of the king's bodyguard, making a specialty of this, and deriving a comfortable income from it, until the day when this trade led him to the Place de Grève, where he was broken on the wheel on June 10, 1679. His method of procedure was as follows: 'He crammed a toad with arsenic, placed it in a silver goblet, and then, pricking its head, made it urinate, and finally crushed it in the goblet.' During this pleasant operation he mumbled his wicked charms. 'I know a secret,' said Belot, 'such that in doctoring a cup with a toad and what I put into it, if fifty persons chanced to drink from it afterwards, even if it were washed and rinsed, they would all be done for, and the cup could only be disinfected by throwing it into a hot fire. After having thus poisoned the cup, I should not try it upon a human being, but upon a dog, and I should intrust the cup to nobody.' But it happened that a client of Belot's, being somewhat sceptical, got a dog to drink out of the doctored cup, and found that the animal was not harmed in the least; he even picked a violent quarrel with the magician about the matter, taunting him with the worthlessness of his wares. Belot spoke frankly to the commissioners of the Chambre Ardente: 'I know that the toad cannot do anybody any harm; what I did with the silver cups and trenchers was done solely to get hold of such cups and trenchers.' His skill, nevertheless, enjoyed a very substantial reputation. At the same date the magician Blessis was believed to know how to manipulate mirrors in such a way that any one who looked in them received his deathblow.

These facts seem mere childish folly under scientific investigation. The knowledge people had of poisons in the eighteenth century was limited to arsenic, antimony, and sublimate; it did not enable them so to poison a cup as to cause sudden death to the person using it, without his being aware of the poison at the moment of drinking it. The opinion of Professor Brouardel on this point is explicit; and Dr. Legué, convinced as he is of the poisoning of Madame, admits that the story of the cup can only make any well-informed man smile.

The conclusion is that as Madame could not have been poisoned by the water she drank, or by the cup containing the water, she could not have been poisoned at all.

IV

'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 Français_ 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 Hôtel 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 Hôtel 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.'