Several writers have thought that the sorceresses compromised the greatest names in France before the judges in the hope of saving their lives, by connecting themselves with personages so high in station that no one would dare to lift a hand against them. Quite the contrary. We see La Voisin concealing, up to the very moment of her execution, her relations with the king's mistress, for her greatest fear was that the horrible punishment meted out to regicides might be applied to her. In an expansive moment, she said to her guards at Vincennes: 'I fear, more than anything else that I am asked about, a certain journey to court.' We shall have much to do presently with this journey the sorceress made to court on behalf of Madame de Montespan. It was at the last moment, after hearing her death-sentence, against which there was no appeal, that Françoise Filastre made her startling depositions of September 30 and October 1, 1680, as the result of which Louis XIV, in terror, caused the sittings of the Chambre Ardente to be suspended. The statements of Marguerite Monvoisin were confirmed in detail by those of the Abbé Guibourg, with whom she had no means of communicating after her arrest. Thus, as La Reynie says, they were proved 'according to the rules of justice.' To-day, history furnishes still further proofs. We have just heard the daughter of La Voisin: 'Every time anything fresh happened to Madame de Montespan, or she feared some diminution in the favour of the king, she told my mother.' Now, if we follow in the correspondence of Madame de Sévigné and the court chronicles the checkered story of the relations between Madame de Montespan and the king from 1667 to 1680, and compare it further with the depositions made before the Chambre Ardente, we find a precise confirmation of the declarations of Marguerite Monvoisin. It was several times observed by La Reynie that 'the time mentioned by the accused is of consequence to Madame de Montespan.' How, and by whom, was the haughty favourite led to the haunts of the witches? Historians have put forth many hypotheses on this subject. They were not acquainted with the declaration of La Chaboissière, the valet of Vanens, whom we have already mentioned: 'that the chevalier de Vanens deserved to be drawn and quartered for the counsel he had given to Madame de Montespan.' La Chaboissière had scarcely let this confession escape him than he wished in great agitation to retract it, and begged that the words might not be written down in the report of his examination. La Reynie disentangled this confession from the chaos of official documents, and sharply underlined it as the starting-point of the drama.