princesses of the court, nothing be denied me of all that I shall ask the king, as well for my relatives as my servitors.' 'Guibourg had bought for a crown (12s. 6d. to-day) the child who was sacrificed at this mass,' writes La Reynie, 'and who was offered to him by a fine girl; and having drawn blood from the child, whom he stabbed in the throat with a penknife, he poured it into the chalice, after which the child was taken away and carried to another place.' The details of the mass at Mesnil were revealed by Guibourg, and further confirmed by the deposition of La Chanfrain, his mistress. The second mass on the body of Madame de Montespan took place a fortnight or three weeks after the first, at St. Denis, in a tumbledown hut. The third took place in a house at Paris, whither Guibourg was conducted blindfold, and from which he was brought back in the same way as far as the arcade of the Hôtel de Ville. At this time the journal of the health of the king, drawn up by D'Aquin, the chief physician, states that Louis suffered from violent headaches. Towards the end of this year, 1673, he was attacked by dizziness of such a kind that at times his sight became clouded and he felt on the point of collapse. 'Is it rash,' observes Monsieur Loiseleur very justly, 'to see in these headaches and faintnesses the effect of powders provided by La Voisin?' The hypothesis of Monsieur Loiseleur will be sustained in detail by a declaration of the magician Lesage which will be found below. It remains to inquire how Madame de Montespan contrived to get the powders prepared by the sorceress into the food of the king, surrounded as he was by officers of the buttery. Two revelations, both of November 8, 1680, made, the first by Lemaire, locked up at Vincennes with the Abbé Guibourg, the second by Lesage, will give the indication we desire. We read in the notes La Reynie took for his personal guidance by way of memoranda: 'November 8, 1680, Lemaire asked to speak to me; told me that being in the same room with Guibourg and another man, Guibourg told them such strange things, especially in regard to Madame de Montespan, that he does not know what to make of it, and that if there was any officer who ought to be suspected, it would be Duchesne, the butler; that Duchesne was a footman in the house of Madame d'Aubray, that he has since served Monsieur Bontemps, and then Madame de Montespan, who was very kind to him, and made him officer of the buttery, and that he is always at Madame de Montespan's service.' Further: 'From the last examinations of Lesage, and that of November 8 particularly, it appears that Gilot, also an officer of the buttery, was involved in the impious trade in 1668, and that he sought Lesage's assistance for the designs of Madame de Montespan.'