Home › La Voisin › La Voisin: Marquise
La Voisin: Marquise
The Captain was handsome, and Madame la Marquise amorous. Behold then all the usual personnel of a tragedy of three. After a while the intrigue became a matter of family concern. The lady's father, the Civil Lieutenant d'Aulroy, procured a lettre de cachet, and had the erring lover immured in the Bastille as the easiest and least public way out of the difficulty. "Evil communications corrupt good manners," says the proverb. The proverbial philosopher understated the danger of such juxtaposition. Evil manners added corruption even to their kind. In the Bastille the exasperated lover listened to the wiles of Exili; and another stage of misdoing began. The Marquise determined on revenge, and be sure that in such a case in such a period even the massive walls of the Bastille could not prevent the secret whisper of a means of effecting it. D'Aulroy, his two sons, and another sister perished. Brinvilliers himself was spared through some bizarre freak of his wife's conscience. Then the secret began to be whispered -first, it was said, through the confessional; and the Chambre Ardente, analogous to the British Star Chamber, instituted for such purposes, took the case in hand. The result might have been doubtful, for great social forces were at work to hush up such a scandal, but that, with a truly seventeenth century candour, the prisoner had written an elaborate confession of her guilt, which if it did not directly assure condemnation at least put justice on the right track.
The trial was a celebrated one, and involved incidentally many illustrious persons as well as others of lesser note. In the end, in 1676, Madame la Marquise de Brinvilliers was burned-that is, what was left of her was burned after her head had been cut off, a matter of grace in consideration of her rank. It is soothing to the feelings of many relatives and friends-not to mention those of the principal-in such a case when "great command o'ersways the order" of purgation by fire. Before the eddy of the Brinvilliers' criminal scandal reached to the lower level of Madame Voisin, a good many scandals were aired; though again "great command" seems to have been operative, so far as human power availed, in minimising both scandals and punishments. Amongst those cited to the Chambre Ardente were two nieces of Cardinal Mazarin, the Duchesse de Bouillon, the Comtesse de Soissons, and Marshal de Luxembourg. In some of these cases that which in theatrical parlance is called "comic relief" was not wanting. It was a witty if impertinent answer of the Duchesse de Bouillon to one of her judges, La Reyne, an ill-favoured man, who asked, apropos of a statement made at the trial that she had taken part in an alleged invocation of Beelzebub, "and did you ever see the Devil?" - "Yes, I am looking at him now. He is ugly, and is disguised as a Councillor of State!"
The King, Louis XIV, took much interest in the trial and even tried now and again to smooth matters. He even went so far as to advise the Comtesse de Soissons who was treated by the Court rather as a foolish than a guilty woman, to keep out of the way if she were really guilty. In answer she said with the haughtiness of her time that though she was innocent she did not care to appear in a Law Court. She withdrew to Brussels where she died some twenty years later. Marshal de Luxembourg-François Henri de Montmorenci- Boutteville, duke, peer, Marshal of France to give his full titles was shown to have engaged in an attempt to recover lost property by occult means.
On which basis and for having once asked Madame Voisin to produce his Satanic Majesty, he was alleged to have sold himself to the Devil. But his occult adventures did not stand in the way of his promotion as a soldier though he had to stand a trial of over a year long; he was made Captain of the Guard and finally given command of the Army.
La Voisin with her accomplices a woman named Vigoureux. and Le Sage, a priest-were with a couple of score of others arrested in 1679, and were, after a spell of imprisonment in the Bastille, tried. As a result Voisin, Vigoureux and her brother, and Le Sage were burned early in 1680. In Voisin's case the mercy of previous decapitation, which had been accorded to her guilty sister Brinvilliers, was not extended to her. Perhaps this was partly because of the attitude which she had taken up with regard to religious matters. Amongst other unforgivable acts she had repelled the Crucifix-a terrible thing to do according to the ideas of that superstitious age.
C