750 



POISONING. 



not better show his regard for the memory of his 

 sister-in-litw, than by desiring Bossuet to pronounce 

 her funeral oration. 



The princess, as we have seen, believed herself 

 poisoned. The court and city had the same be- 

 lief. The English ambassador, all Europe was 

 persuaded of it. One of her household named to 

 Voltaire the person who administered the poison ; 

 and stated that it was diamond dust, strewed on 

 strawberries with sugar. In Paris it was gene- 

 rally believed at the time, that she died in conse- 

 quence of drinking a glass of water, poisoned with 

 succory. But Voltaire thinks she died a natural 

 death, and that the malice of mankind and the love 

 of the marvellous alone, suggested the idea of poi- 

 son. The powder of diamonds, he says, is no more 

 poisonous than the powder of coral ; no impalpable 

 powder is mechanically poisonous. He might have 

 added that diamond powder enough to have taken 

 the place of sugar, on a plate of strawberries, was 

 not a poison very easily to be obtained. As to the 

 glass of water, Madame de la Fayette and another 

 lady drank of it, without inconvenience. The 

 princess had, for a long time, suffered by a diseased 

 liver; and this, in the opinion of Voltaire, was 

 the cause of her death. Great weight is due to 

 his opinion, and his arguments are not without 

 force. On the other band, are her own convic- 

 tions, and that of her family and the public at the 

 time ; her sudden death, too sudden it would seem 

 to be occasioned by an hepatic disease ; and finally 

 the express declaration of Louis XIV., who is as- 

 serted, on pretty credible authority, to have de- 

 clared his knowledge of the fact. 



The belief that she was poisoned, arising in the 

 manner related above, was strengthened by the 

 known existence of violent feuds in the court, 

 connected with secret negotiations, and derived ad- 

 ditional currency from a most extraordinary series 

 of incidents that occurred at this time. It was 

 precisely at this period, that the crime of poison- 

 ing, unknown to any extent in the civil wars of 

 France, fruitful as they were in almost every other 

 species of atrocity, made its appearance at Paris. 

 Voltaire justly mentions it as an extraordinary fact, 

 that as this base and terrific crime made its appear- 

 ance in Rome in the most flourishing period of the 

 republic, so it broke out in France in the proud- 

 est and most prosperous days of the monarchy. 



Mary Margaret d'Aubray, daughter of the magis- 

 trate Dreux d'Aubray, was, in the year 1651, 

 married to the marquis de Brinvilliers, son of Go- 

 belin, president of the chamber of accounts. 

 Brinvilliers had a fortune of thirty thousand livres 

 a year, and his wife brought him two hundred 

 thousand as a dowry. He was quarter-master of 

 the regiment of Normandy, and in the course of 

 his military services became acquainted with Go- 

 din de Sainte Croix, a young man of distinguished 

 family, a captain of cavalry in the regiment of 

 Trassy. This young officer, then a needy adven- 

 turer, ingratiated himself into the good opinion of 

 the marquis de Brinvilliers, became a constant 

 visiter at his house, and finally domesticated in his 

 family. Not long after this took place the mar- 

 quis died, without suspicion of foul play, but not 

 till his large property had almost vanished under 

 the extravagance and dissipation of bis wife. 



^ After his death, a discreditable intimacy between 

 his widow and the young Sainte Croix arose ; and 

 her faflier, to arrest and punish the scandal, ob- 

 tained a lettre de cachet for the commitment of 



[ Sainte Croix to the Bastile. It so hiippened, that 

 at this time, two Italians, one of whom was named 

 Exili, were confined in the Bastile as poisoners. 

 They had commenced business in Paris, in con- 

 junction with Glaser, a German apothecary, in 

 search of the philosopher's stone. Failing in this, 

 they took to vending secret poisons, by way of re- 

 pairing by crime, what they had lost by folly. The 

 ! confessional betrayed their guilty secret, and the 

 | two Italians were thrown into the Bastile. One 

 of them died. The other, Exili, though not con- 

 victed, was retained in prison, and found the means, 

 from the interior of the Bastile, of carrying on his 

 nefarious practices. 



Precisely at this period, Sainte Croix was com- 

 mitted to prison, and confined in the same apart- 

 ment with Exili. Actuated by the most violent 

 and lawless passions, the wicked arts of Exili fur- 

 nished him prompt means of revenge and gratifica- 

 tion. At the close of a year's imprisonment, they 

 were both released, but Sainte Croix kept Exili 

 with him, till he had made himself master of his 

 art. As soon as he had acquired it himself, he 

 taught it to the marchioness de Brinvilliers, who 

 assumed the character of one of the sisters of 

 charity, distributed food to the poor and nursed the 

 sick in the hospitals, in order that she might have 

 an opportunity of trying the strength of her poi- 

 sonous preparations, on the unhappy wretches who 

 came under her care. This is asserted by Pitaval, 

 in the trial of Brinvilliers in the Causes Celebres, 

 and was believed by the public at the time. Vol- 

 taire denies it, but only, according to Beckmann, 

 for the pleasure of differing from Pitaval, (avocat 

 sans cause, as Voltaire calls him,) and it is admitted 

 by Voltaire that Brinvilliers and Sainte Croix were 

 connected with persons, who were charged with 

 this fiendish practice. 



Possessed of this frightful instrument of malice, 

 Brinvilliers now disclosed a demoniac temper, such 

 as perhaps no mortal ever exhibited. She bribed 

 La Chausee the servant of Sainte Croix, to poison 

 the magistrate d'Aubray her father, and her bro- 

 ther a counsellor of parliament, who lived at home. 

 Her father took the poison ten times, and her bro- 

 ther five, before they sunk under it. An attempt 

 was then made on her sister; but suspicion was 

 awakened; her sister was on her guard, and 

 escaped. The guilty couple proceeded so cau- 

 tiously, that the suspicions did not fall on them. 



An accident betrayed the horrid mystery. Sainte 

 Croix, when engaged in preparing the poison, was 

 accustomed to wear a glass mask. It happened, on 

 some occasion, to drop off while he was thus en- 

 gaged, and he was found asphixiated in his labora- 

 tory. This account, we must own, sounds suspi- 

 cious. The object of the mask must have been to 

 prevent his inhaling the fumes of the poisonous 

 drugs which be compounded ; but how could he 

 live without breathing? "We could almost believe, 

 that his fair friend found it at last convenient to 

 close their relations by this summary process. Be 

 this as it will, on searching his effects, a small box 

 was found, addressed in the handwriting of Sainte 

 Croix to the marchioness, with an earnest request 

 in writing, addressed to those into whose hands 

 the box might fall, after his death, that it might 

 be conveyed to her, or if she were not living, that 

 it might be burned. This box was opened, and 

 was found to contain a number of preparations of 

 poison, of different kinds, with labels indicating 

 their quality. When the knowledge of these in- 



