THE ALUMNI JOURNAL. 



Finally he beheaded her. Her bod)' was 

 burned; and next day the people scram- 

 bled for her ashes, as for relics of a 

 saint, and hunted Degrais, so that his 

 lite was in danger for months. 



"Well, it is done ! Bruivilliers is in 

 the air!" So wrote Mme. de Sevigne 

 to her daughter on the afternoon of the 

 execution, July 17, 1676. " Her poor, 

 little body was thrown into a big fire and 

 the cinders to the wind. So now we are 

 breathing her, and some poisoning in- 

 clination will soon seize us and astonish 

 us all." 



These words speedily came true. The 

 judges foolishly published some of the 

 evidence, and soon everybody knew that 

 the best doctors and chemists in France 

 had been absolutely unable to identify 

 the poisons of Saneti Croix or to recog- 

 nize their effects. As a result of this 

 and of the attention called to the subject, 

 f r the next few years a perfect mania of 

 poisoning seemed to prevail in France. 

 The materials were traced to an old mid- 

 wife, La Voisin, who had in the past few 

 years achieved a great reputation as a 

 fortune teller and a sorceress. She had 

 made a great fortune, was patronized 

 only by the wealthy and fashionable, 

 and, in concert with a woman called L,a 

 Vigoreux, and an ex-priest, Lesage, had 

 made, it appeared, a regular business of 

 selling slow poisons under the suggestive 

 name of succession powders. 



These persons, and several minor ac- 

 complices, were arrested at the close of 

 1679, put to the torture and finally ex- 

 ecuted. In their house was found a list 

 of their customers and patrons, which 

 included many of the noblest names in 

 France. All Paris was beside itself. 

 The King raged and insisted on the 

 matter being probed to the bottom. 

 Statesmen, generals, ladies of the court, 

 dukes and duchesses were thrown into 

 the Bastille, and kept in close confine- 



ment, while a special court, the " Cham- 

 bre Ardente," was hastily organized, 

 with full powers to try offenders of the 

 highest rank. 



Some of these were probably accused 

 on insufficient grounds. The Marshal 

 de Luxembourg, for instance, although 

 Marshal of France and one of her great- 

 est generals, ranking in title and dignity 

 next to royalty itself, was kept in the 

 Bastille for fourteen months, under the 

 terrible charge of having foully murdered 

 a young girl. His trial was long and 

 severe, but no sentence was passed, and 

 it seems probable, from what we can 

 now gather, that he had consulted La 

 Voisin as a sorceress and not as a pois- 

 oner. 



The same was, so far as we can tell, 

 the case with one of the great ladies of 

 the court, the Duchess de Bouillon, for- 

 merly Marie-Anne Mancini, a niece of 

 Cardinal Mazarin. She was accused of 

 trying to poison her husband for the sake 

 of the famous general M. de Vendome. 

 She entered the court, accompanied by 

 her husband, in the face of an immense 

 crowd, and faced the judges fearlessly, 

 answering their questions and insisting 

 that she only went to La Voisin "to see 

 the sibyls and prophetesses which she had 

 promised to show her." "Did you see 

 the devil," asked La Reynie, the oldest 

 and most disliked of the judges, " after 

 you had gone to look for him?'' 

 " Monsieur," she answered, " I see him 

 here at this minute, disguised as a judge, 

 very ugly and very horrid." 



Her explanations satisfied the court, 

 and she was discharged, to the great joy 

 of her many friends and relatives. But 

 her sister Olympia, Duchess de Soissons, 

 whose beauty had some years before 

 captivated young King Louis, was less 

 fortunate. Her husband had recently 

 died, under very suspicious circum- 

 stances, and the King, probably remem- 



