Madame de Sevigné, seeing him one day in his carriage with Penautier,
said to a friend, "There goes the Archbishop of Narbonne with _his
star_!"
The Marquis of Brinvillier is never mentioned in the course of the
proceedings in this extraordinary case, and there are no traces of his
subsequent life. Madame de Sevigné says that he petitioned for the life
of his _chère moitié_. Wretched as he must have been, he is the less
entitled to sympathy because his own dissolute character contributed to
bring his misfortunes upon himself. He probably spent his latter days
in the deepest retirement, hiding himself from the world, as the bearer
of a name indissolubly associated with crime and infamy.
* * * * *
(_This paper will be followed, in our next number, by another on the
same subject._)
FOOTNOTE:
[Footnote 11: This incident has suggested to Sir Walter Scott the
catastrophe of the diabolical Alasco, in _Kenilworth_:
"The old woman assured Varney that Alasco had scarce eaten or drunk
since her master's departure, living perpetually shut up in the
laboratory, and talking as if the world's continuance depended on what
he was doing there.
"'I will teach him that the world hath other claims on him,' said
Varney, seizing a light and going in search of the alchemist. He
returned, after a considerable absence, very pale, but yet with his
habitual sneer on his cheek and nostril. 'Our friend,' he said, 'has
exhaled.'
"'How! what mean you?' said Foster; 'run away--fled with my forty
pounds, that should have been multiplied a thousand fold? I will have
Hue and Cry!'
"'I will tell thee a surer way,' said Varney.
"'How! which way?' exclaimed Foster. 'I will have back my forty
pounds--I deemed them as surely a thousand pounds multiplied--I will
have back my in-put at the least.'
"'Go hang thyself, then, and sue Alasco in the devil's court of
Chancery, for thither he has carried the cause.'
"'How!--what dost thou mean?--is he dead?'
"'Ay, truly is he,' said Varney, 'and properly swollen already in the
face and body. He had been mixing some of his devil's medicines, and
the glass mask, which he used constantly, had fallen from his face, so
that the subtle poison entered the brain and did its work.'
"'_Sancta Maria!_' said Foster; 'I mean, God in his mercy preserve us
from covetousness and deadly sin!'"]
SERENADE TO FRANCESCA.
"Quei trasporti soavi
Ch'io provai nell' amore nascente!"
I.
Under your casement, lady dear!
A voice, that has slumber'd for many a year,
Is waking to know if the same heart-vow
That bound us erewhile doth bind us now.
Waken! my early--only love!
And be to my bosom its still sweet dove!
II.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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