i 9 3 



THE ALUMNI JOURNAL, 



indeed, it was stated on the trial that he 

 had taken enough poison to kill twenty 

 men — so they followed this up with mer- 

 cury, lunar caustic, aqua fortis, powder- 

 ed diamonds, and " a great spider." He 

 still survived, and now began to have 

 suspicions of foul play, though not of 

 poison, and he began to write threaten- 

 ing letters to Rochester. So finally, six 

 months after he had fallen into their 

 hands, he was killed by a large dose of 

 corrosive sublimate. 



In spite of the suspicions aroused by 

 his strange death, and hasty burial, Roch- 

 ester duly married the Countess, with 

 immense pomp, the King himself be- 

 ing prominent at the wedding, and for a 

 time he continued to flourish. But soon 

 the King grew tired of him, and his ene- 

 mies began to press him, some of the sub- 

 ordinates were ferreted out and forced to 

 confess, and finally Rochester and his 

 -wife were brought to trial before the 

 House ot Lords. The Countess con- 

 fessed, and was sentenced to death, but 

 Rochester fought hard and fiercely for 

 his life. He was overwhelmed at last bv 

 the Attorney General, Sir Francis 

 Bacon, who brought, without scruples, 

 the whole weight of the crown against 

 him, and he was finally found guilty and 

 condemned to death. 



But now, for some reason, after pressing 

 the trials most vigorously up to this 

 point, James I hesitated to sign the death 

 warrants. It was universally believed at 

 the time that he dared not ; that Roch- 

 ester knew some disgraceful secrets about 

 him which he threatened to divulge. At 

 any rate, after the guilty couple had lain 

 in prison for some five years they were 

 pardoned, to the huge indignation of 

 everybody, and were even pensioned 

 from the King's private purse. It is in- 

 teresting to learn that their love had by 

 that time turned to hate, and that, 

 though they lived together for years 



afterwards, they detested each other so 

 that for months they would not even 

 speak. 



It was in France, however, that the 

 infamous Italian art developed to its 

 fullest extent. It was probably intro- 

 duced by Catherine de Medici, a daugh- 

 ter of the great Florentine house of that 

 name, and the one who deluged all 

 France with blood by the massacre of St. 

 Bartholomew, and the civil wars to which 

 it gave rise. 



Maria de Medici, second wife of Henry 

 IV, of glorious memory, who, after his 

 assassination, governed France as regent 

 with but moderate success, is also sup- 

 posed to have been familiar with the art ; 

 and undoubtedly in her train were those 

 who both knew and practiced it. But it 

 was in the days of the Grand Monarque, 

 Louis XIV, that poisoning reached such 

 a pitch that, as Madame de Sevigne 

 says in one of her letters, it was feared 

 lest Frenchmen and poisoner should come 

 to mean the same thing. 



The first great shock given to the 

 court, thence to all France, from this 

 cause, was the sudden death in 1670 of 

 the beautiful, brilliant Henrietta, 

 daughter of Charles I of England, and 

 wife of Philippe of Orleans, brother of 

 King Louis. Henrietta, only twenty-six 

 years old, was the life of the whole court, 

 and a special favorite of the King, who 

 had just employed her, with immense 

 success, upon an important mission to 

 England. She had been, however, for 

 some time on very bad terms with her 

 jealous and narrow-minded husband, and 

 so it is easy to imagine the excitement 

 when she was suddenly taken ill, while 

 sitting with her ladies, and died in less 

 than nine hours. 



The grief and honor of the court can 

 hardly be described. Of course, the sus- 

 picions were at first all directed towards 

 her husband. We read, however, in 



