THE POISON DRAMA AT THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV. By John de Morgan. IN the whole history of criminal trials noth ing can be found to equal the horrors revealed in the courts of France during the reign of Louis XIV. In the secret history of every European nation there are chapters so strange, dealing with acts and characters so humanly incredible, that they can only be believed when supported by the most irre fragable evidence. The condemnation in 1676 of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers,' perhaps one of the most atrocious criminals that ever lived, led a bold and independent magistrate to investigate the acts of certain palmists and fortune tellers, who had ob tained great power over some of the most conspicuous members of Parisian society. Madame de Brinvilliers had not been dead very long before Gabriel de la Reynie, then Lieutenant of Police, ran to earth La Voisin and her confederates, little thinking that in so doing he was about to lead to the expo sure of a series of crimes which were without parallel in the history of civilized society. La Voisin, a pretty, petite woman, with bright blue eyes, with the countenance of an angel, was a fiend incarnate, for at her trial she confessed to having put to death over 2,380 children and to have connived at the murder of something like a hundred adults. La Voisin arrived in Paris from the country at the very time when superstition had its strongest hold on the minds of the well-to-do people. She rented a house in the suburbs with a pretty garden, which she kept in perfect order, — she loved flowers and animals and birds, so simple and inno cent was her nature, — and then set about, by means of well-prepared advertisements, 1 See " The Sainte Croix-de Brinvilliers Case," by H. Gerald Chapin; The Green Bag, Vol. XIV, No. 5; May, 1902.
to attract the wealthy to her stances. She soon was in command of an income of twenty thousand dollars which she spent upon her lovers and friends, and in enter taining a peculiar and mixed clientele, among whom was Guillaume, the public executioner who had recently decapitated the Marchio ness de Brinvilliers, the famous architect Fauchet, the magician Le Sage, and the alchemist Blessis. At the back of her house she had erected a sort of chapel, beyond which was a furnace; it was in the chapel that the " Black Mass " was celebrated. La Voisin delivered her oracular sayings clothed in a robe of sky-blue brocade, em broidered in silver, and a train of a deeper shade of blue velvet, edged with the richest lace. The cost of this robe was equal to fifteen thousand dollars. La Voisin's chief accomplice was the Abbe Guibourg, who is described by a contemporary as being " squinteyed and old, with bloated face and prominent blue veins forming a network on his cheeks." In the chapel at the rear of La Voisin's house he used to say mass, according to the proper rites, wearing the alb, stole and mani ple, but on the altar a woman, generally nude, lay with arms outstretched, a taper in each hand, and on her body the mass was said. At the moment of the offertoire a child had its throat cut, Guibourg usually sticking a long, sharp needle into its neck. The blood of the expiring victim was poured into the chalice and mixed with the blood of bats and other materials obtained by filthy means. Flour was added to solidify the mess, which was then made to imitate the Host, to be consecrated at the moment when, in the sacrifice of the mass, transubstantiation takes place. " Black masses " were not the
