Princes and Poisoners: Studies of the Court of Louis XIVFunck-Brentano, Frantz
History
Princes and Poisoners: Studies of the Court of Louis XIV
Funck-Brentano, Frantz
France -- Court and courtiers; France -- History -- Louis XIV, 1643-1715; Poisoners
Glaser was the principal, probably
the only person who furnished Sainte-Croix and his mistress with
poisons. In their correspondence the two lovers call the poisons which
they used 'Glaser's recipe.' These poisons, however, as we shall see,
were very simple; in these days they would appear clumsy. Exili, who
goes out of our story, remained connected with Queen Christina, and in
1681 made an excellent marriage when he wedded the Countess Ludovica
Fantaguzzi, cousin of Duke Francis of Modena.
* * * * *
As soon as Sainte-Croix left the Bastille he renewed his relations with
the Marquise de Brinvilliers. Her passion had only been heightened by
the imprisonment of her lover. Wounded in her pride, she felt the birth
within herself of an implacable and violent hatred of her father. Her
dissipations, her gaming, her wild flings in her lover's company (she
paying expenses, after the fashion of that period), had embarrassed her
fortune. 'I accuse myself,' she said in her confession, 'of having given
a great deal of my wealth to this man, and he ruined me.' The desire of
attaining possession of her paternal inheritance, and the yearning,
growing day by day more imperious, for wreaking vengeance on her father
for the affront put upon her, suggested to her a frightful crime. There
might frequently have been seen, drawing up at the market-square of
Saint-Germain, a carriage from which alighted a young officer and a
fashionable lady. They went on foot to the Rue du Petit-Lion, in which
Glaser the chemist lived. Arrived at his house, they sought a retired
room. The neighbours, puzzled by these strange goings-on, spoke of false
money. Soon this young lady might have been seen, under the edifying
appearance of piety and religion, going into the hospitals; she bent
over the beds of the patients with words of gentleness and affection;
she carried them confections, wine, and biscuits; but the patients whom
she approached inevitably succumbed, ere long, in horrible anguish. 'Who
would have dreamt,' writes Nicolas de la Reynie, the lieutenant of
police, 'that a woman brought up in a respectable family, whose form and
constitution were delicate and who in appearance was sweet-natured,
would have made an amusement of going to the hospitals to poison the
patients, for the purpose of observing the different effects of the
poison she gave them?' She poisoned her own servants, too, 'to try
experiments.' 'Françoise Roussel says that she has been in the service
of Lady Brinvilliers. The latter one day gave her some preserved
gooseberries to eat, on the point of a knife, and soon afterwards she
felt ill; she gave her also a moist slice of ham, which she ate, and
since then she has had severe abdominal pains, feeling as though her
heart were being stabbed.' The poor woman was ill for three years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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