PORTRAIT OF GABRIEL NICOLAS DE LA REYNIE, LIEUTENANT-GENERAL OF POLICE. Engraved by Van Schuppen, after the picture by Mignard, _Frontispiece_ PORTRAIT OF MADAME DE BRINVILLIERS, after the sketch by Charles Lebrun, _facing page 112_ MARIE MADELEINE DE BRINVILLIERS I. HER LIFE In the judicial annals of France there has never been a more striking or celebrated figure than the Marquise de Brinvilliers. The enormity of her crimes, the brilliance of her rank, the circumstances accompanying her trial and death,--the story of which, as told by her confessor, the abbé Pirot, is one of the masterpieces of French literature,--finally, the strange energy of her character, which after her execution caused her to be regarded as a saint by a portion of the population of Paris: all these things will for long years to come attract to her the attention of all who are interested in the history of the past. Michelet devoted to the Marquise de Brinvilliers a study in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_. But his story is very inaccurate and leaves many gaps. From the historical point of view, the little novel of Dumas is much to be preferred. The beautiful criminal has also been dealt with by Pierre Clément in his _Police of Paris under Louis XIV_, and more recently by Maître Cornu, in his discourse at the reopening of the lecture-term of the advocates to the Court of Cassation. The writer of the following pages has been able to make use of some fresh documents. In the trial of the Marquise de Brinvilliers there is much to interest the historian. It was the first of the terrible poison cases which caused such a sensation at the court of Louis XIV in the central years of his reign, and in which the greatest names in France were implicated; and Madame de Brinvilliers herself represents the most salient and most easily studied features of a type of woman which, as we shall see, repeated itself after her even on the steps of the throne. * * * * *