THE POISONERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

BY GEORGE HOGARTH.

THERE are few things in the history of mankind more extraordinary than the frightful extent to which the crime of secret poisoning was carried, in several countries of Europe, during a large portion of the seventeenth century. It appears to have taken its rise in Italy, where it prevailed to a degree that is almost incredible. The instrument chiefly used in its perpetration was a liquid called aqua tofanu, from the name of Tofania, its inventor, a woman who has acquired an infamous celebrity. According to the account of Hoffmann, the famous physician, this woman confessed that she had used this liquid in poisoning above six hundred persons; and Gmelin says that more people were destroyed by it than by the plague, which had raged for some time before it came into use. This crime also prevailed, though for a shorter time and to a smaller extent, in France; and was far from being unknown in England. We intend to give our readers such information as we have collected on this curious subject; and though the most regular way might be to begin with the Signora Tofania herself, and the diffusion of her practices in her own country, we prefer giving at present the history of the most eminent of her followers, the Marchioness de Brinvillier, whose atrocities created so much excitement in France in the time of Louis the Fourteenth, as we shall thus be enabled at once to place the matter in its most striking light. We have consulted, we believe, most of the French works in which there are any particulars respecting this lady; and our readers may take the following as a faithful account of her life.

Marie-Marguerite d'Aubray was the daughter of M. d'Aubray, a gentleman who held a considerable judicial office in Paris. In 1651 she married the Marquis de Brinvillier. The match was a suitable one, both in respect to station and property. The marquis had estates of thirty thousand livres a-year; and his wife, who had two brothers and a sister, brought him a fortune of two hundred thousand livres, with the prospect of a considerable share of her father's inheritance. The marchioness enjoyed the gifts of nature as well as of fortune. Her figure was not remarkably handsome, but her face was round and pretty, with a serene and quiet expression; and she had an air of innocence, simplicity, and good-nature which gained the confidence of everybody who had any intercourse with her.

The Marquis de Brinvillier was colonel of a regiment of foot. While on service, he had contracted an intimacy with a gentleman of the name of St. Croix, a captain of cavalry. There was some mystery about this man's birth. It was known that he was from Montauban. Some thought him an illegitimate scion of a noble house; others said he belonged to a respectable family; but all agreed that he was totally destitute of the gifts of fortune.

The part which this personage acted in the occurrences of which we are about to give a sketch, makes it worth while to repeat the description of him contained in some of the memoirs of the time. His

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countenance was handsome and intelligent; he was remarkably courteous and obliging, and entered into any benevolent or pious proposal with the same alacrity with which he agreed to commit a crime. He was vindictive, susceptible of love, and jealous to madness. His extravagance was unbounded, and, being unsupported by any regular income, led him into every sort of wickedness. Some years before his death, he assumed an appearance of devotion, and it is said even wrote some tracts on religious subjects.

The Marquis de Brinvillier was much addicted to pleasure. St. Croix got into his good graces, and was introduced into his house. At first he was only the husband's friend, but presently he became the wife's lover; and their attachment became mutual. The dissipation of the marquis's life prevented him from observing his wife's conduct, so that the pair carried on a guilty commerce without any suspicion on his part. His affairs became so disordered, that his wife succeeded, on this ground, in obtaining a separation, and after this paid no respect to decency or concealment in her connexion with her paramour. Scandalous, however, as her conduct was, it made no impression on the mind of the marquis, whose apathy induced the marchioness's father, M. d'Aubray, to use his paternal authority. He obtained a lettre de cachet against St. Croix, who was arrested one day when he was in a carriage with the marchioness, and carried to the Bastile, where he remained for a year.

Absence, far from abating the marchioness's passion, only inflamed it; and the constraint to which she found it necessary to subject herself in order to prevent a second separation, inflamed it still more. She conducted herself, however, with such apparent propriety, that she regained her father's favour, and even his confidence. St. Croix availed himself of the power which love had given him over his mistress to root out every good principle or feeling from her mind. Under his horrid lessons she became a monster, whose atrocities, we hope and believe, have hardly ever been paralleled. He resolved to take a dreadful revenge on the family of D'Aubray, and at the same time to get his whole property into the possession of the marchioness, that they might spend it together in guilty pleasures.

While St. Croix was in the Bastile, he had formed an acquaintance with an Italian of the name of Exili, to whom he communicated his views. Exili excited him to vengeance, and taught him the way to obtain it with impunity. Poisoning may be called, par excellence, an Italian art. With many fine qualities, vindictiveness and subtlety must be acknowledged to be strong features in the character of that people; and hence their early superiority in this art of taking the most deadly, and at the same time the safest, revenge on their enemies. It appears, accordingly, (as we have already said,) that it was from the Italians that the poisoners of other countries derived their skill. They acquired the art of composing poisons so disguised in their appearance and subtle in their effects, that they baffled the penetration and art of the physicians of that age. Some were slow, and consumed the vitals of the victim by almost imperceptible degrees; others were sudden and violent in their action; but few of them left any traces of their real nature, for the symptoms they produced were generally so equivocal, that they might be ascribed to many ordinary diseases. St. Croix greedily devoured the instruc

tions of his fellow-prisoner, and left the Bastile prepared to exercise his infernal art.

His first object of vengeance was M. d'Aubray himself; and he soon found means to persuade the daughter to become the agent in the destruction of her father. The old gentleman had a house in the country, where he used to spend his vacations. All his fondness for his daughter, whom he now believed to have been "more sinned against than sinning," had returned; and she, on her part, behaved to him with an appearance of affectionate duty. She anxiously attended to his every comfort; and, as his health had suffered from the fatigues of his office, she employed herself in superintending the preparation of nice and nourishing broths, which she gave him herself with every appearance of tender care. It is needless to say that these aliments contained some articles of Italian cookery; and the wretch, as she sat by his bed-side, witnessing his sufferings and listening to his groans, shed abundance of crocodile tears, while she eagerly administered to him remedies calculated to insure the accomplishment of her object. But neither the agonies of the poor old man, nor his touching expressions of love and gratitude to the fiend at his side, could turn her for a moment from her fell purpose. He was carried back to Paris, where in a few days he sunk under the effects of the poison.

No suspicion was entertained of the cause of his death; the idea of such a crime could not even have entered into the imagination of any one. No external symptoms appeared, and the expedient of opening the body was never thought of. The friends of the family were desirous only of pitying and comforting them; and the inconsolable daughter, who had tended her father with such filial piety, had the largest share of sympathy. She returned as soon as possible to the arms of her paramour, and made up for the restraint imposed on her during her father's life by spending the money she had inherited by his death in undisguised profligacy.

It afterwards appeared that this abandoned woman had made sure of the efficacy of her drugs by a variety of experiments, not only upon animals, but on human beings. She was in the habit of distributing to the poor poisoned biscuits, prepared by herself, the effect of which she found means to learn without committing herself. But this was not enough: she desired to be an eye-witness of the progress and symptoms of the effects produced by the poison; and for this purpose made the experiment on Françoise Roussel, her maid, to whom she gave, by way of treat, a plate of gooseberries and a slice of ham. The poor girl was very ill, but recovered; and this was a lesson to St. Croix to make his doses stronger.

Madame de Sevigné, in one of her letters, written at a time when the public attention was engrossed by this strange affair, says, “La Brinvillier used to poison pigeon-pies, which caused the death of many people whom she had no intention of destroying. The Chevalier du Guet was at one of these pretty dinners, and died of it two or three years ago. When in prison, she asked if he was dead, and was told he was not. His life must be very tough, then,' said she. M. de la Rochefoucauld declares that this is perfectly true."

M. d'Aubray's inheritance was not so beneficial to his infamous daughter as she had expected. The best part of his property went

to his son, M. d'Aubray, who succeeded to his father's office, and another brother a counsellor. It was necessary, therefore, to put them out of the way also; and this task St. Croix, thinking his accomplice had done enough for his purposes, took upon himself.

He had a villain at his devotion of the name of La Chaussée. This man had been in his service, and he knew him to be a fit agent in any atrocity. The marchioness got La Chaussée a place as servant to the counsellor, who lived with his brother the magistrate, taking great care to conceal from them that he had ever been in the service of St. Croix. La Chaussée's employers promised him a hundred pistoles and an annuity for life if he succeeded in causing the death of the magistrate, who was their first object of attack. His anxiety to do his business promptly made him fail in his first attempt. He gave the magistrate a glass of poisoned wine and water; but the dose was too strong and no sooner had the magistrate put his lips to the glass, than he cried, “Ah, you scoundrel, what is this you have given me?-do you want to poison me?" He showed the liquid to his secretary, who, having examined it in a spoon, said it was bitter, and had a smell of vitriol. La Chaussée did not lose countenance, but, without any appearance of confusion, took the glass and poured out the liquor, saying that the younger M. d'Aubray's valet had taken some medicine in this glass, which had produced the bitter taste. He got off with a reprimand for his carelessness, and the matter was no more thought of.

This narrow escape from a discovery did not deter the murderers from prosecuting their design; but they took more effectual measures for its success, not caring though they should sacrifice by the same blow a number of people with whom they had no concern.

In the beginning of April 1670, the magistrate went to pass the Easter holidays at his house in the country. His brother the counsellor was of the party, and was attended by La Chaussée. One day at dinner there was a giblet-pie. Seven persons who eat of it became very ill, while those who had not partaken of it suffered no uneasiness. The two brothers were among the former, and had violent fits of vomiting. They returned to Paris a few days afterwards, having the appearance of persons who had undergone a long and violent illness.

St. Croix availed himself of this state of things to make sure of the fruit of his crimes. He obtained from the marchioness two promissory deeds, one for thirty thousand livres in his own name, and another for twenty-five thousand livres in the name of Martin, one of his familiars. The sum at first sight appears a small one, amounting only to about two thousand three hundred pounds sterling; but the immense difference in the value of money since the seventeenth century must be taken into account. Such, however, at all events, was the price paid by this demon for the death of her two brothers.

Meanwhile the elder D'Aubray became worse and worse; he could take no sustenance, and vomited incessantly. The three last days of his life he felt a fire in his stomach, which seemed to be consuming its very substance. At length he expired on the 17th of June 1670. On being opened, his stomach and duodenum were black, and falling to pieces, as if they had been put on a large fire; and the liver was burnt up and gangrened. It was evident that he

had been poisoned: but on whom could suspicion fall?—there was no clue whatever to guide it. The marchioness had gone to the country. St. Croix wrote her that the magistrate was dead, and that, from his brother's situation, he must soon follow. It so turned out. The unfortunate counsellor died, after having lingered three months in excruciating torments; and he was so far from suspecting La Chaussée of any hand in his death, that he left him a legacy of three hundred livres, which was paid.

These three murders were still insufficient. There was yet a sister who kept from the marchioness the half of the successions which she wished to gain by the death of her father and brothers. The sister's life was repeatedly attempted in the same way; but the shocking occurrences in her family had made her suspicious, and her precautions preserved her.

The poor Marquis de Brinvillier was intended by his fury of a wife for her next victim. "Madame de Brinvillier," says Madame de Sevigné in another of her letters, "wanted to marry St. Croix, and for that purpose poisoned her husband repeatedly. But St. Croix, who had no desire to have a wife as wicked as himself, gave the poor man antidotes; so that, having been tossed backward and forward in this way, sometimes poisoned, and sometimes unpoisoned, (désempoisonné), he has, after all, got off with his life."

Though everybody was convinced that the father and his two sons had been poisoned, yet nothing but very vague suspicions were entertained as to the perpetrators of the crime. Nobody thought of St. Croix as having had anything to do with it. He had for a long time ceased, to all appearance, to have any connexion with Madame de Brinvillier; and La Chaussée, the immediate agent, had played his part so well, that he was never suspected.

At last the horrible mystery was discovered. St. Croix continued to practise the art which had been so useful to him; and, as the poisons he made were so subtle as to be fatal even by respiration, he used to intercept their exhalations while compounding them by a glass mask over his face. One day the mask by accident dropped off, and he fell dead on the spot; "a death," says the French writer who mentions this occurrence, "much too good for a monster who had inflicted it by long and agonizing pangs on so many valuable citizens." Having no relations that were known, his repositories

This incident has suggested to Sir Walter Scott the catastrophe of the diabolical Alasco, in Kenilworth:

"The old woman assured Varney that Alasco had scarce eaten or drunk since her master's departure, living perpetually shut up in the laboratory, and talking as if the world's continuance depended on what he was doing there.

"I will teach him that the world hath other claims on him,' said Varney, seizing a light and going in search of the alchemist. He returned, after a considerable absence, very pale, but yet with his habitual sneer on his cheek and nostril. Our friend,' he said, 'has exhaled.'

"How! what mean you?' said Foster; 'run away-fled with my forty pounds, that should have been multiplied a thousand fold? I will have Hue and Cry!'

"I will tell thee a surer way,' said Varney.

"How! which way?' exclaimed Foster. I will have back my forty pounds -I deemed them as surely a thousand pounds multiplied-I will have bac my in-put at the least.'

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