'Two or three days after Bazile's departure, Lady Brinvilliers told me that she had a very handsome bed, and hangings embroidered to match; that it was a bed which Sainte-Croix had pawned and which she had redeemed. She had it put up in her large room, where there was a close and wainscoted chimney-piece, and told me that I must come that night and sleep in that bed, and that she would expect me at midnight, but that I must not come earlier, because she had to arrange with her cook. Instead of going down at midnight to a gallery which commanded the windows of the room, I came down at ten o'clock, and looking through the windows into the room, the curtains not being drawn, I saw the lady walking up and down and dismissing all her servants.' We may remark in passing that this gallery still exists at the present day in the mansion inhabited by Madame de Brinvilliers in the Rue Neuve-Saint-Paul.[2] 'About half-past eleven,' continues Briancourt, 'Lady Brinvilliers, having undressed and put on her dressing-gown, took a few turns in the room, holding a torch in her hand; then she went to the chimney-piece, which she opened. Sainte-Croix stepped out, dressed in rags, with a worn-out jerkin and an old hat, and kissed the lady, and for a quarter of an hour they talked together. Then Sainte-Croix went back into the chimney-piece, and the lady pushed its two folding-doors to, so as to shut him in, and then came to the door, in some agitation; my own agitation was no less. Should I enter, or should I go away? But the lady seeing my confusion said: "What is the matter? Don't you want to come?" I saw much rage in her countenance, which was changed in an extraordinary degree. I went into the room, and the lady asked me if the bed was not very fine; I said that it was, and the lady rejoined, "Let us lie down then." Then the marquise got into bed. I had placed the torch on a stand, and she said, "Undress yourself and put out the light very quickly." I pretended to be undoing my shoes, desiring to know how far the lady's cruelty would go, and she said, "What is the matter with you? You look very solemn." Then I rose and, giving the bed a wide berth, said to the lady: "Ah, how cruel you are! What have I done that you want to have me murdered?" The lady sprang out of bed and flung herself upon me from behind; but freeing myself, I went straight to the chimney-piece. Sainte-Croix came out, and I said to him: "Ah, villain, you have come to stick a knife into me!" and as the torch was burning, Sainte-Croix made to flee, while Lady Brinvilliers rolled on the floor declaring that she would live no longer, but die; at the same time she sought her case of poisons, opened it, and was on the point of taking poison. I prevented her and said, "You wanted to get me poisoned by Bazile, and now you want to get me stabbed by Sainte-Croix." The lady threw herself at my feet, declaring that such had not happened to me and