214 MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIEH8. 



HENRIETTA. 



Will you have the kindness to tell us about her? 



MRS. F. 



This wretched woman was rich and beautiful, and the wife 

 of the Marquis de Brinvilliers, but was anxious to marry 

 Sainte Croix, a captain in the army, and sought only to get 

 rid of her husband, in order to accomplish her wicked pur- 

 pose. Her father caused Sainte Croix to be shut up in the 

 Bastile, where he became acquainted with an Italian of the 

 name of Exill, who made a trade of poisons, and who was 

 one of those who were concerned in the death of more than 

 a hundred and fifty people at Rome, during the pontificate of 

 Innocent the Tenth. From him he learned the secret of his 

 horrid art, and communicated them to the Marquise de Brinvil- 

 liers, who was as anxious as Sainte Croix to revenge herself 

 upon her family. Deaf to every human feeling, this wretched 

 woman first tried the poisons by mixing them with bis- 

 cuits, which she distributed to the poor: she then poisoned 

 her father and her two brothers, and endeavored to destroy 

 her husband; but Saint Croix, disgusted at crimes so revolt- 

 ing, did not wish to marry a woman as wicked as himself, 

 and as often as she gave a poison to her husband, Sainte Croix 

 administered an antidote, so that he survived all the atrocious 

 attempts of the Marquise. At last her practices were discov- 

 ered. Her accomplice, Sainte Croix, died suddenly, from 

 the following accident. The poisons which he prepared were 

 of so subtile a nature, that the mere inhaling of them was 

 fatal; Sainte Croix, therefore, always worked with a glass 

 mask, in order to intercept the noxious exhalations; but one 

 day the mask accidentally fell from his face, and he was 

 immediately suffocated. 



HENRIETTA. 



Sainte Croix's mask reminds me of the Iron Mask. 



MRS. F. 

 We will talk about that when I have finished my account 



