THE SAINTE CROIX-DE BRINVILLIERS CASE. By H. Gerald Chap1n. ON a fine autumn evening in the year of our Lord, 1665, the gates of the Bas tille swung open to receive a new prisoner. Under arches and through passageways the carriage rolled, and crossing the main court yard came to a halt before the prison office. The guards quickly ushered into the presence of the Governor a young and handsome offi cer, of perhaps twenty-eight or thirty, in the uniform of a captain of cavalry. The neces sary formalities were soon over, and the name of the new arrival duly entered on the prison register — Gaudin de Sainte CroLx. The assignment of a cell was, however, a question not so easily disposed of. The reign of a Richelieu and a Mazarin, followed by that of the fourteenth Louis, had sufficed to fill the ancient fortress to overflowing. "There is no way out of the difficulty, Monsieur le Chevalier," observed the Gov ernor, with a certain amount of politeness extorted by the prisoner's well-known rank, "but to place you in a cell already occupied. Let us see," again turning the leaves of the register. " No, a separate room is out of the question." Addressing a warder : " The pris oner will be placed with Exili." It was thus that fate had written the pro logue to a series of crimes destined to spread overmastering fear and suspicion throughout the length and breadth of seventeenth cen tury France. The Chevalier Gaudin de Sainte Croix was reputed to be of noble family, though his own escutcheon bore, perforce, the bar sinister. While serving as captain in the regiment of Tracy, he had become the intimate friend of a brother officer, the Marquis de Brinvilliers, colonel of the Normandy corps. That an introduction should follow to Madame la
Marquise, was natural; — that Sainte Croix should become the paramour of his friend's wife was not to be wondered at, when the character of each was considered. De Brin villiers, himself a man of notoriously licen tious life, was utterly indifferent to the entire proceeding. Monsieur de Dreux d'Aubray, Civil Lieu tenant at the Chatelet de Paris, father of the Marquise, and a man of almost Puritanical rigidity of character, chose to view the subject in a different light. Remonstrance hav ing been tried, with no avail, and as the re lations of the Marquise with Sainte CroLx were fast becoming notorious, he procured the issuance of a lettre de cachet. Under it the Chevalier was arrested while in the very carriage of Madame de Brinvilliers. Of all the prisoners which the Bastille had held, or was destined to contain, it is doubt ful whether any exceeded in utter depravity the Italian Exili. Italy, since the days of the Borgias, had been a perfect school of poisoning, but never had the practice become so widespread as toward the latter half of the seventeenth century. That epoch witnessed the invention of the deadly liquid of Tofana, openly offered for sale as "Manna of St. Nicholas of Bari." The formula has been lost long since, but it is thought to have been a strong solution of arsenic. Tofana herself confessed its deadly work in over six« hundred cases. In about the year 1659 it was that the " league of young wives with old husbands " was discovered, presided over by La Spara. Exili had been driven from Rome under the suspicion of being closely connected with that band of poisoners which under Innocent X. are said to have caused the death of over
