The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (57 page)

TEN

THE END OF THE AFFAIR

In late March 1681 the poor young Duchesse de Fontanges retired to Port Royal convent in Paris. This was no mere Easter retreat, for she went there ‘to prepare herself for the voyage to eternity’. Having been ailing ever since her miscarriage fifteen months earlier, her health had now deteriorated to a point where she was obviously ‘in an irrecoverable condition’. Since death was so clearly imminent, her confessor had persuaded her to remove herself to a more fitting environment, for ‘the court was not a proper place for that last act’. The English ambassador heard that her inexorable decline had ‘cost many royal tears’,
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but though the King undoubtedly was saddened by her plight, his love for her had already so much diminished that the prospect of losing her did not leave him utterly desolate.

Her physicians had predicted she would not survive till Easter, but in the event she lingered a little longer and it was 28 June before she finally succumbed to the congestion clogging up her lungs. On being informed, the King initially indicated that he considered it undesirable for an autopsy to be performed,
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presumably because he feared that this would encourage rumours that she had been poisoned. Despite this, a post-mortem was, in fact, carried out, perhaps at the insistence of her family.

The doctors found that her lungs were in an appalling condition (with the right one in particular being full of ‘purulent matter’) while her chest was flooded with fluid. This led an early twentieth-century doctor who took an interest in the case to conclude that she had died from pleuro-pneumonia induced by tuberculosis. However, in view of the fact that she is known to have suffered from a persistent loss of blood after her miscarriage, a more recent authority suggested that when she lost her baby, a fragment of the placenta lodged in her uterus. This would have been a source of infection, which ultimately brought about an abscess on the lungs. An alternative suggestion is that she was killed by a rare form of cancer, which occasionally develops after a cyst on the placenta is expelled during pregnancy. The fact that Mlle de Fontanges’s heart and liver were described in the autopsy as somewhat ‘blighted’ and ‘corrupted’ did lead one person to argue that this could have been caused by the slow action of arsenic, but this has remained an isolated opinion.
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On the whole the overwhelming probability is that she died from complications arising from her earlier miscarriage.

Among her contemporaries, that astute observer Primi Visconti was one of those who attributed Mlle de Fontanges’s terminal illness to her pregnancy, for he observed wryly that she died ‘a martyr to the King’s pleasures’. Mindful that Louise de La Vallière and Mme de Ludres had also withdrawn to convents, the Comte de Bussy joked that sharing the King’s bed appeared a sure route to salvation,
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but the doleful spectacle prompted more sombre reflections in others. For them, the passing of the exquisite creature who had revelled in her conquest of the King, and whose extravagance and love of luxury had been so marked, appeared a grim illustration of the fleeting nature of worldly triumphs.

Inevitably, many people at court elected to think that Mlle de Fontanges had been poisoned. Although no reports of la Filastre’s final confessions or Marie Montvoisin’s allegations had reached the public, the fact that the young woman herself had blamed poison for her illness, coupled with the fact that poison was very much on people’s minds, ensured that it was whispered that she had been a victim of foul play. It was equally predictable that Mme de Montespan should be named as the person responsible. Years later the Duchesse d’Orléans recalled how, at the time, there was talk that Mme de Montespan had given her rival poisoned milk, though the Duchesse conceded that she had no idea whether there was any truth in this. In her memoirs Mme de Maintenon’s niece, Mme de Caylus, recorded, ‘Many rumours circulated about this death to Mme de Montespan’s detriment.’ Even the cautious German diplomat Ezechiel Spanheim alluded to these suspicions when in 1690 he wrote a description of the French court, noting that Mlle de Fontanges had been carried off by ‘a vexatious malady which stayed with her from her first childbed and which a fairly common report, perhaps without any foundation, attributed to a beverage given to her on Mme de Montespan’s secret orders’.
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After a hiatus of nearly nine months the
Chambre Ardente
resumed its sittings on 19 May 1681. The King had seen to it that the commissioners should not hear the cases of those individuals who Marie Montvoisin and la Filastre claimed had conspired with Mme de Montespan, but there were plenty of other matters to which they could address themselves. The suggestion by Colbert’s legal adviser, Duplessis, that torture should no longer be used to elicit confessions was ignored. If anything, indeed, its use was intensified.

Several cases of sacrilege were now dealt with by the commissioners. In July Étienne Desnoyers, Jean Huet and François Lalande were executed. All had been present when Cotton – the priest who had been burnt alongside la Filastre – had performed black masses. On 9 July the priest Gilles Davot, who had performed masses for Lesage, was hanged and his body burnt. The public executioner declined to do the hanging because Davot had been his confessor. The task had to be carried out by his assistant, though he, too, may have suffered qualms, as Davot had once been his schoolmaster.
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The commission next meted out justice for a murder that had taken place almost fifteen years earlier. Before her execution, Mme Voisin had recalled being told by one of her clients that a woman called Mme Lescalopier had poisoned her husband. The allegation was treated seriously as M. Lescalopier’s death had been considered suspicious at the time. Upon his death there had been talk of arranging an autopsy to discover whether he had been poisoned, but his widow had had him buried before one could be carried out.
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As a result of la Voisin’s declaration, fresh enquiries were made and this led to the arrest of Anne Poligny and Denise Sandosme, who confessed to having supplied Mme Lescalopier with poison. On 16 July the pair were hanged. Mme Lescalopier herself could not be brought to justice as she had fled the country on hearing that her accomplices had been arrested. In her absence she was tried and sentenced to death. Although it had not been possible to lay hands on her person, symbolic justice was enacted when an effigy representing her was decapitated in the Place de Grève.
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Jeanne Chanfrain, concubine of the ghastly Guibourg, was also tried for murder. Several of her associates had declared that she had aided Guibourg to kill some of the children they had produced together. According to one account she had walled up one and thrown another into a river. It is not clear whether she had, in fact, done this, for she never confessed it even under torture. At one point she did imply that she had seen Guibourg murder one of her children but she subsequently retracted even this. Anyway, as she herself pointed out, before being placed in the
brodequins,
anything she said under torture should be discounted, as she knew that pain could drive her to admit crimes she had never committed.
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Another ‘extremely dangerous’ woman, who supposedly was as inveterate a poisoner as Mme Voisin, was brought to trial in late 1681. She was a forty-four-year-old widow named Marguerite Joly, who had been arrested the previous March after Guibourg had denounced her. Under interrogation she had admitted arranging abortions and had hinted that she knew of instances when children had been offered up to the devil. No less shocking was the discovery that for a long while la Joly’s most devoted client had been Mme de Dreux who, only in April 1680, had been freed by the
Chambre Ardente
after being admonished and fined. At the time several of her acquaintances had been indignant that she had been given even this mild reprimand, but evidence now emerged that she was not as blameless as they had imagined. Indeed, la Joly herself would later claim that Mme de Dreux was ‘worse than the Brinvilliers lady’.
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This was not entirely fair, as it seems unlikely that Mme de Dreux had ever succeeded in murdering anybody. According to Mme Joly, she boasted that she had poisoned two former lovers, a M. Pajot and M. de Varennes, but this was never proved. It does seem, however, that for years she had harboured murderous intentions. La Joly would later claim that if any woman so much as looked at Mme de Dreux’s lover, the Duc de Richelieu, Mme de Dreux would want her out of the way. Furthermore, seven or eight years earlier Mme de Dreux had been intent on killing the Duchesse de Richelieu. La Joly had supplied her with a powder to do the job, but Mme de Dreux had been nervous of using it. She had thought it too risky to suborn one of Mme de Richelieu’s servants to give it to her, fearing that either she would be caught or that the suspicions of M. de Richelieu (who had no conception of what she was planning) would be aroused. In the end she had decided it would be preferable to do away with the Duchesse by using magic. Accordingly, a wax figurine of the Duchesse had been fashioned. Mme de Dreux had planned to melt this in the belief that the Duchesse would go into a physical decline as the effigy representing her diminished.
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Mme Joly added that Mme de Dreux had also wanted to kill her brother, M. Saintot, and his wife, though with an equal lack of success.

Far from being discouraged by these failures, Mme de Dreux had remained incorrigible. Not even her formal rebuke from the commissioners had deterred her from seeking to eliminate her enemies with la Joly’s aid. La Joly claimed that shortly after her release from prison Mme de Dreux had contacted her again in hopes of liquidating a lady who was showing an unwelcome interest in the Duc de Richelieu.

On 16 July 1681 a fresh arrest warrant was issued against Mme de Dreux but she had fled the country on learning that la Joly was in custody. Even so, the case against her was presented to the commission early the following year and on 22 January 1682 judgement was passed on the fugitive. Although her husband and the faithful Duc de Richelieu had been soliciting the court to show her mercy, she was banished from France in perpetuity. Nevertheless, after a time Mme de Dreux felt able to flout the terms of her sentence. In March 1690 Louvois wrote a stern letter to M. de Dreux saying that the King had ‘learned with surprise’ that Mme de Dreux was currently in Paris. He warned that unless she left the kingdom within a week she would be sent to prison. However, within two years the King had modified the original sentence by acceding to a request that she could settle at her husband’s country residence near Chinon.
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Mme Joly was not so fortunate. Her trial took place at the end of 1681 and resulted in her being sentenced to be burnt alive. On 19 December she was subjected to the water torture prior to execution. During this ordeal she not only repeated her claims about Mme de Dreux but admitted her own involvement in other hideous crimes. She said she had been present when the baby nephew of a friend of hers called la Poignard had been sacrificed. Twenty-two years ago, another child had been offered up to the devil in order to bring about a marriage desired by her client Mlle de Saint-Laurens. She stated that her associate Anne Meline had poisoned numerous people, including la Joly’s own husband. She herself had despatched a number of victims using arsenic, which she obtained from a female apothecary. This woman was familiar with her needs and was well aware that when la Joly asked her for cosmetic lotion, what she really wanted was ‘poison to send people to the next world’.
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After la Joly had endured an hour and a quarter of torture, the doctors present indicated that she would not survive if her agony went on any longer. Having been laid on a mattress to recuperate, she immediately retracted much of what she had just said. Although she still maintained that long ago a child had been sacrificed at the behest of Mlle de Saint-Laurens, she now denied that la Poignard’s nephew had been slaughtered; she also changed her story about the apothecary, who she said had never sold her poison. In fact, she protested that she had never poisoned anybody, but whatever the truth of the matter her punishment had been fixed. That evening la Joly was burnt alive. A few days later her associates, la Meline, the abortionist, Marie Bouffet, and Louison Desloges (who had acted as an intermediary between la Joly and Mme de Dreux) were hanged.

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Not all of those who came before the
Chambre Ardente
were dealt with so harshly. Mme Brissart, who had used spells to attract her lover, M. Rubantel, and who la Voisin had claimed had sought to poison her sister (though it seems the latter had died of natural causes) was banished from Paris for three years and fined 1000 livres. Mme Cottar was merely admonished and fined 100 livres for having employed magic and charms to win the heart of her admirer, M. Forne. On 14 July 1681 the Marquise de Fontet was given an absolute discharge by the Chamber, but since she had already spent eighteen months in prison she could be said to have paid a heavy penalty for having introduced the Maréchal de Luxembourg to Lesage.
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Although it had been agreed that persons alleged to have conspired with Mme de Montespan could not be brought to trial, when another plot on the King’s life was uncovered, those implicated were treated with the full rigour of the law. The details came to light fortuitously, after La Reynie had begun investigating a reported attempt to kill Colbert. In the process, he had stumbled on the trail of a still more serious crime.