When Madame de Montespan was at the height of her power, rivals, jealous of her good fortune, applied to the sorceresses for formulae and powders to 'send her packing,' just as she had done with the idea of getting rid of La Vallière. These were the Duchess of Angoulême, Madame de Vitry, and her own sister-in-law, Antoinette de Mesmes, Duchess de Vivonne. The practices to which this last had recourse were precisely the same as those with which the secret life of Madame de Montespan has acquainted us. She applied to La Filastre and La Chappelain, who were also employed by the dazzling mistress of the king. The sorceresses did not hesitate between the two sisters-in-law, thinking to come off well either way: if the one wished to retain the affection of the king, the other sought to possess herself of it, and in either case money would fall into their purses. Louis did not allow the Duchess de Vivonne to be proceeded against, related so closely as she was to Madame de Montespan. It is probable also that he was dissuaded from it by Colbert, who had married one of his daughters to the Duke de Mortemart, son of the duchess. We may imagine the emotion, agitation, and anxieties aroused at Court and in Paris by the prosecutions directed by the Chambre Ardente against so large a number of persons belonging to the most distinguished families: the arrests of Mesdames de Dreux and Leféron, of Poulaillon and the Abbé Mariette, relatives of the chief magistrates; the warrants issued against the Duchess de Bouillon, the Princess de Tingry, the wife of Marshal la Ferté, the Countess de Roure; the hasty flight out of the kingdom of the Marchioness d'Alluye, the Viscountess de Polignac, the Count Clermont-Lodève, the Marquis de Cessac, the Countess de Soissons; the imprisonment in the Bastille of the famous Marshal de Luxembourg, who had employed magicians to beg the devil to remove his wife. 'Every one is agitated,' wrote Madame de Sévigné, on January 26, 1680, 'every one is sending for news and going into houses to pick them up.' Further, the public imagination was impressed; crimes were the stock topic of conversation. The most trifling accidents were attributed to poison. Every husband was accused of poisoning his mother-in-law. Terror reigned in Paris.