dined with the prisoner, the latter after dinner showed her a small box, filled with a powder, saying laughingly, " There is the means of taking vengeance on one's enemies." Per ceiving that she had gone too far, the Mar quise exclaimed, " What have I told you? Do not say anything about it to any one 1"
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to those made in the confessional. The pa per (this according to the testimony of the Marquise) was written while suffering from delirium, the result of a fever. The direc tions of Sainte Croix relative to the box found in his rooms, offered no ground of suspicion against her. They were written
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THE TORTURE OF THE BOOT AS APPLIED AT THE PRISON OF THE GREAT CHATELET, IN PARIS, IN I 77 7. The Original Print is in the Collection Hennin.
Although an American or English lawyer of to-day would shudder at the huge mass of hearsay evidence introduced, the trial seems to have been impartially conducted, and the Marquise fairly convicted. Maitre Nivelle, her counsel, one of the leaders of the Paris bar, presented a strong brief in favor of his client. The admissions of guilt, he urged, should never have been received in evidence. They were analogous
before the Chevalier entered the Bastille, and consequently before he placed the poisons in the box. Penautier was clearly the party to whom, by the subsequent postscript, the poisons were to be delivered. The first por tion of the Chevalier's will related only to the letters which Madame de Brinvilliers had sent him. Her flight was the result of an attempt to avoid certain creditors, who were unduly pressing their claims.
