The Marchioness de Brinvilliers was executed
on the 16th of July, 1676. A little more than
a year afterwards—that is to say, on the 21st
of September, 1677—an anonymous letter was
found in a confessional of the Jesuits' church
in the Rue Saint Antoine in Paris, in which it
was stated that a plot existed for poisoning both
the king and the dauphin. This letter greatly
disturbed the Sieur La Reynie, the lieutenant-
general of police, to whom it was brought, and
he set to work at once to endeavour to discover
its author. Eventually, he laid his hands on two
persons—Louis Vanens and Robert de la Mirée.
It was ascertained that Vanens, who professed
to study alchemy, was a manufacturer of love-
philters, and worse, having poisoned the Duke
of Savoy some years before; while the other
was his agent. La Reynie pursued a system of
induction, and gradually got at several persons,
namely, La Bosse, the widow of a horse-dealer;
La Vigoureux, the wife of "a woman's tailor;"
one Nail, and a woman named Lagrange. The
two latter were convicted of preparing poisons,
condemned to death, and executed on the 6th of
February, 1679. At the same time evidence was
taken against La Bosse and Vigoureux, the result
of which was the arrest, on the 12th of March,
of a certain Catherine Deshayes, the wife of a
jeweller, named Antoine Mauvoisin, or Voisin,
as she was returning from mass in the church
of Notre-Dame-de-Bonne-Nouvelles—bad news
for many of the great ones of Paris. From the
date of La Voisin's arrest, the poisoning affair
assumed unexpected dimensions. Although the
judges were enjoined to exercise the utmost
discretion, a rumour soon spread throughout
Paris that the highest in rank and the nearest to
the throne were compromised by La Voisin, and
one fine day, the 23rd of January, 1680, warrants
were issued for the apprehension of the Count
de Clermont, a prince of the House of Bourbon,
the Duchess de Bouillon, the Princess de
Tingry, lady of the queen's palace, the
Marchioness d'Alluye, the Countess du Roure,
Madame de Polignac, the Duke de Luxembourg,
and others of equal position, and that
some of them had been conveyed to the Bastille.
It was also stated that a sister of the Duchess
de Bouillon, the Countess de Soissons, Mazarin's
niece, she who had been the first favourite of
the king, and was the superintendent of the
queen's household, had, through the indulgence
of Louis the Fourteenth, been allowed to quit
Paris in all haste, and thus escape the
misfortune which had befallen the rest.

Louis the Fourteenth behaved tolerably well
in this affair. He determined to prosecute all
concerned in it, without distinction of rank.
But it must not be forgotten that the lives
threatened were his own, and those of members
of his family. The king's instructions were
most precise, and free from partiality. The
more the inquiry was prosecuted, the wider
the implications, and the number of the
proposed victims extended. The personages
endangered, besides the king and the dauphin,
were the minister Colbert, Mademoiselle de la
Vallière, and the Duchess de Fontanges; while
the Duchess de Vivonne and Madame de
Montespan herself were included as participators
in the meditated crime. La Reynie, who had
orders to send a report of the judicial proceedings
every day both to Colbert and Louvois,
relates that on the 6th of February, 1680, he
presented himself at the king's "lever" at St.
Germains, and that his majesty said to him
several things of importance ("plusieurs choses
de conséquence"), adding, that it "was necessary
to make war on another crime," which he did not
otherwise explain. The mystery which attaches
to these words, La Reynie does not unfold, but
the papers which he has left, and which still
exist in the Imperial Library of Paris, and
elsewhere, make it apparent that all the interrogations
put to the prisoners, with their replies,
were not indiscriminately shown to all the
judges, in order that facts should not be divulged
which were intended solely for the information
of the king, of Colbert, and of Louvois.
Exceptionally written on flying sheets, these
examinations could easily be destroyed, and thus
a commission was constituted within a
commission. It was, besides, intended that these
papers should be burnt, but, as always happens
in such cases, injunctions of this strict nature are
never obeyed—and the originals, as well as copies
of them, remain to this hour, which enable us in a
great degree to reconstruct the trial, the gravity
of which the public of that day was far from
suspecting. Amongst these papers are some
which Colbert has characterised as "sacrilege,
profanation, abomination—things too
execrable to be set down on paper"—but their
nature may be guessed at by referring to
Dulaure's History of Paris, though he, too,
speaks of them with a certain reticence.
Omitting, then, all such details, we turn to the
actual trial of La Voisin, the real object of which
was to enable the king to ascertain if there were
actually near his person, and enjoying his
intimacy, those who had conceived the idea of
poisoning him, or of causing him to swallow
philters which should eventually produce the
same effect.

The magnitude of this trial may be conceived
from the fact that no fewer than two hundred
and forty-six persons were included in the
accusation, thirty-six of whom were put to death
after undergoing the ordinary and extraordinary
"question" (torture), while of those whose lives
were spared, some were condemned to perpetual
imprisonment, the galleys, and exile, and the
rest arbitrarily detained in confinement for the
remainder of their days. The most guilty of the
band were condemned for poisoning, sorcery, and
impious masses, accompanied by the sacrifice of
infants; and fortune-telling, however simple the
folly may now appear, was looked upon as the
root of the general evil. La Reynie tells us that
in the confession of La Bosse (before she was
burnt), she made use of these expressive words:
"The best thing that can be done is to
exterminate the entire class of dealers in palmistry,
who are the ruin of women of quality and