La Voisin stated to La Reynie: 'Some women asked if they would not soon become widows, because they wished to marry some one else; almost all asked this and came for no other reason. When those who come to have their hands read ask for anything else, they nevertheless always come to the point in time, and ask to be ridded of some one; and when I gave those who came to me for that purpose my usual answer, that those they wished to be rid of would die when it pleased God, they told me that I was not very clever.' Margot, La Voisin's servant, said that the whole world came there, adding: 'La Voisin is to-day dragging a great ruck down with her--a long chain of persons of all sorts and conditions.' The Parisians used to go in companies to the house of the fortune-teller: they were quite pleasure parties. The merry crew would overflow into the garden lawns surrounding the cottage at Villeneuve-sur-Gravois. This was the district, but sparsely inhabited, between the ramparts and the St. Denis quarter. The sorceress was brought into the city drawing-rooms as nowadays fashionable singers are brought. 'At that time, La Voisin had as much money as she wanted. Every morning, before she rose, people were waiting for her, and she had visitors all the rest of the day: after that, in the evening, she kept open house, engaged fiddlers, and enjoyed herself thoroughly; this went on for several years.' This life had little resemblance, it will be seen, to that of her ancestress, the witch described by Michelet: 'You will find her in the most dismal places, isolated,--in houses of ill-fame and ruined huts and hovels. Where could she have lived except on wild heaths--the hapless wretch who was so hunted down, the accursed, proscribed, hated poisoner?' La Voisin earned in a year as much as £2000 or even £4000 in English money; but her gains were spent in revelry. She entertained her lovers in princely style, for she would have thought it unworthy of her if they were not comfortable; and her lovers were many. We find in the first rank of them André Guillaume, the executioner of Paris, who beheaded Madame de Brinvilliers, and who, by a horrible coincidence, only just escaped executing La Voisin herself: among them also the Viscount de Cousserans, the Count de Labatie, Fauchet the architect, a wine merchant of the neighbourhood, Lesage the magician, the alchemist Blessis, and others. We must add that Blessis and Lesage spent much money on her, ostensibly in connection with the philosopher's stone, for La Voisin had a sincere faith in alchemy. She subsidised great enterprises, and helped to establish manufactures, being much interested in scientific and industrial progress; but in regard to industrial undertakings she fell mainly into the hands of sharpers who swindled her out of her money.