Marie Brissart, widow of a Parlement counsellor, tenderly loved and handsomely supported a captain of guards named Louis Denis de Rubentel, Marquis de Mondétour, who became lieutenant-general in 1688. He was a personage of whom Saint-Simon, a severe censor, speaks thus: 'He had been able to contemn basenesses, and to withdraw into his virtue, which was beyond his wealth.' Madame Brissart used to send him money when he was on service, after having equipped him from top to toe on his departure. It happened that the cavalier displayed some coldness towards his mistress, with the idea of getting her purse to open still more generously. The widow, seeing nothing of her captain, became alarmed, and hastened to La Voisin. She began her incantations, with the assistance of Lesage. The magician walked up and down the garden with a wand, with which he struck the earth, repeating the words, _Per Deum sanctum, per Deum vivum!_ Then he said: 'Louis Denis de Rubentel, I conjure thee in the name of the Almighty to go find Marie Miron (Madame Brissart's maiden name): she to possess thee wholly, body, soul, and spirit, and thou to love none but her!' On another occasion, he put into a little ball of wax a paper on which the names of Rubentel and Madame Brissart were written, and in the presence of the latter threw the ball into the fire, where it burst with a loud noise. These fine charms were still without result, when one morning La Voisin, with the intuition of a clairvoyant, said to her weeping client: 'You write every day and send your maid to Rubentel, but he pays no attention to you; it is mad conduct to write and send every day'; and the lady having ceased to write and send, Monsieur de Rubentel, who in turn began to be afraid lest so precious a fount should dry up, returned to her 'without anything else having been done; yet the lady, believing that La Voisin had done some extraordinary thing, gave her twelve pistoles.' The witch heard all sorts of confessions. There were wonderful dreams of adoring affection told her by lovers of twenty years, who came to her red with emotion, or wrote thrilling letters in order to bring their torment to an end, begging her to soften the hard hearts of their mistresses, or to bend the opposition of a cruel father. Or it was the fierce carnal love of mature women obstinately clinging to the lovers who were neglecting them for fresher girls. There were also the passions of ambitious women, greedy for money and honours, which bring us to the horrors of the 'black mass.'