One day brought the discovery of the crimes of these two. The poisons that St Croix delighted in, were many of them, so deadly of breath, that he wore a glass mask to protect his face and lips from the vapours, and on one occasion, while he was at work, the mask fell off. He died instantly. No one coming forward to claim the adventurer’s effects, they fell into the hands of Government. Among the articles was a certain casket, which the marchioness claimed, and so insistently and vehemently, that the authorities became suspicious, and first had the casket opened. Its contents were composed of packets of many kinds of poisons, each ticketed with a description of the effects they produced. When she learned of the opening of the casket, the murderess made her escape to England; but still in terror of pursuit, she fled back to the Continent, where she was tracked down at Liège, and taken under arrest back to Paris. The crimes, one by one, were brought home to her, and she was condemned to be beheaded and burned. Refusing however, to plead, she was put to the question by the torture of swallowing water—“Surely,” she cried, when she saw the three bucketfuls of water standing ready, “it is not intended to drown me, for it is absurd to suppose that a person of my dimensions can swallow all that!” Not content with her own criminal work, she was proved to have supplied the means for it to many suspected of similar crimes. Implicated among those was the Duc de Luxembourg, and some of his friends, who, it will be remembered, were suspected of causing the death of the amiable and lamented Duchesse d’Orléans. One person escaped who might well be supposed would have been one of the marchioness’s first victims—her husband. It is believed that his indifference to her induced her to pass him over. Madame de Sévigné, however, mentions the _on dit_ that she did more than once attempt to poison Brinvilliers; but that St Croix, for his own reason, administered him an antidote, and the marquis survived to intercede for his wife’s life, but, of course, ineffectually. When she was arrested at Liège, a kind of general written formula framed in vague allusion to her criminal doings was found upon her, clearly for using in confession, to which she went with great regularity. This was sufficiently explicit to confirm the other evidences of her guilt. “She communicated her poisons frequently in pigeon-pies—by which a great many were killed,” writes Madame de Sévigné, “not from any particular reason for despatching them, but out of mere curiosity to try the effects of her drugs. The chevalier de Guet, who had been a guest at her delightful entertainments about three years ago, has been languishing ever since. She inquired the other day if he was dead; upon being answered ‘No,’ she said, turning her head on one side, ‘He must have a very strong constitution then.’ This Monsieur de la Rochefoucauld swears to be true.”