The people were already assembling and preparing to stop her, when the Chevalier caught her at the door of a Mme. de Prets, thrust her in, and entering himself bolted the house door. The Abbé coming up, pistol in hand, stood on the threshold and threatened to shoot any one who interfered. His sister-in-law in her madness was not to be made a spectacle of to every one. In the house of Mme. de Prets a party of ladies was assembled. The Marquise rushed into the midst of them, followed by the Chevalier, crying out that she had been poisoned. The Chevalier declared before the ladies that his sister was insane, and they did not know at first what to make of this extraordinary scene. Mme. Brunette, the wife of the Calvinist preacher in the place, gave her some treacle, at the time supposed to be a sovereign remedy against poison. She swallowed it, but the fire of the poison made the Marchioness entreat for water. A tumbler was handed to her, but the Chevalier smashed it in her mouth as she was drinking. He succeeded in persuading the ladies that his unfortunate sister-in-law was out of her mind, and begged them to excuse such an unseemly irruption into their midst. Then the poor creature implored to be allowed to go into the adjoining room; this was granted, but the Chevalier followed her, and with his rapier stabbed her twice in the breast. She cried out, ran to the door and entreated help. He followed, and, blind with rage, stabbed her five times in the back. The last time the weapon broke and left the blade sticking in her shoulder. She fell at the feet of the assembled ladies drenched in blood. The Chevalier then ran downstairs, and cried to his brother, "Away! away! the job is done!" But as they hurried down the street they heard the women at the window crying for help and for a surgeon. The Abbé, in the idea that the Marquise was still living, had the incredible audacity to go back, enter the house, thrust the women aside, and put the pistol to the breast of his victim. Mme. Brunette struck up his hand, and the pistol did not go off. Thereupon the Abbé hit Mme. Brunette on the head, and again attempted to kill his sister-in-law, this time by braining her with the butt-end. Now, however, all the women present fell on him, dragged, beat, thrust, and succeeded eventually in expelling him from the house. It was nine o'clock at night when the murderous attempt was made. Darkness favoured the assassins; they knew that they would be pursued, so they fled to an estate that belonged to the Marquess at Aubernas, thence by boat down the river to the sea, and escaped pursuit by fleeing from France. The unfortunate Marquise lingered nineteen days. The surgeon was obliged to plant his knee against her back in order to obtain leverage for the extraction of the broken blade; but she died of the result of the poison rather than of her wounds.