In one respect, at least, the evidence of Mariette and Lesage can be used in defence of Mme de Montespan. They both agreed that in the ceremonies performed in 1668, pigeons’ hearts had figured prominently. Yet Guibourg had testified that prior to this she had participated in black masses where babies had been slaughtered. If she had already offered live human sacrifices to the devil, it would surely have been eccentric of her to think that on subsequent occasions he could be propitiated by an oblation comprised of the vital organs of small birds.
* * *
Having once again secured La Reynie’s attention, Lesage did not confine himself to the subject of Mme de Montespan. He now offered an astonishing explanation as to why la Voisin had believed herself to be on the verge of acquiring 100,000 écus. It turned out, amazingly, that Mlle des Oeillets had promised to pay her this huge sum if la Voisin aided her to kill the King. Initially it had been hoped that this could be effected by magical means and some years before, Lesage had been brought in to perform spells which supposedly would send the King into a fatal decline. However, when this had had no effect, la Voisin had turned to two other male associates, Vautier and Latour, in the belief that they would achieve the desired results. This pair of ruffians had prepared deadly powders, which were handed over to Mlle des Oeillets. She had then devised an ingenious way of administering these to the King without being directly involved. When Mme de Montespan purchased love powders from la Voisin, it was Mlle des Oeillets who usually collected them for her. The next time Mlle des Oeillets was asked to do this, she substituted the aphrodisiacs with poison and gave it to Mme de Montespan. Mlle des Oeillets then waited for Mme de Montespan to give this to the King and thus unintentionally kill him.17
If Lesage could be believed, Mme de Montespan was not herself an assassin, but rather the unwitting dupe of her employee Mlle des Oeillets. To La Reynie this story seemed eminently plausible. He mused that there was at least one historical precedent, for Charles II of Navarre had poisoned his brother-in-law using a similar stratagem.18 It also tallied with the Delphic warnings issued as far back as 1677 by Magdelaine de La Grange, who had intimated that the King was in danger of being poisoned by powders.
La Reynie was sure that the mysterious ‘foreigner mixed up in all this’ with Mlle des Oeillets was the key to the conspiracy,19 for the assumption was that it was he who had provided her with the lavish funding that had enabled her to promise la Voisin such generous payment. It was true that La Reynie had not a clue as to this man’s identity, still less did he have any idea about where his money came from or what his motive was for seeking to murder the King. Nevertheless, La Reynie saw no reason to doubt his existence on that account.
The story about the obscene ceremonies devised by Guibourg using semen and menstrual blood also appeared horribly convincing to La Reynie. He noted that when Guibourg and Marie Montvoisin had described this incident, ‘they accorded with each other on circumstances which were so specific and so horrible that it is difficult to conceive that two people could have imagined and fabricated things so exactly alike without each other knowing’.20
It was obviously essential to find out more about all this and accordingly it was agreed that Louvois should question Mlle des Oeillets. La Reynie cautioned him that this must be done with the utmost sensitivity. He did not consider it imprudent to try to frighten her into volunteering information by hinting that prisoners in Vincennes had incriminated her. Alluding to love powders in the hope that this would evoke an unguarded response was also an acceptable risk. However, La Reynie advised Louvois that it would be dangerous to touch on subjects such as black masses and child sacrifice. Since Mlle des Oeillets remained at liberty, mentioning such things to her would fatally compromise secrecy and might alert others involved in similar activities.21
On 18 November Louvois interviewed Mlle des Oeillets. He was very impressed by the way she conducted herself, for she displayed ‘inconceivable steadfastness’ when questioned. She did not deny all knowledge of la Voisin, but was adamant that she had only ever visited her on a single occasion. That had been more than ten years earlier when she had gone to la Voisin’s house accompanied by several female friends who had thought it would be fun to consult the celebrated fortune-teller. When Louvois informed her that several prisoners in Vincennes knew things to her discredit, she declared robustly that that was quite impossible. She added that, if brought before her, they would not even recognise her.22
Louvois passed all this on to La Reynie, who grudgingly admitted that Mlle des Oeillets’s confident demeanour could be interpreted as ‘a very favourable presumption’ of her innocence. However, he did not fail to add that perhaps she was only calm because, knowing that la Voisin had died without incriminating her, she believed herself untouchable.23
Since Mlle des Oeillets had said she was willing to exhibit herself to the prisoners, she was taken at her word. On 22 November she was taken by Louvois to Vincennes, and there Guibourg, Lesage and Marie Montvoisin were separately led in to see her. Disconcertingly for Mlle des Oeillets, Guibourg and Lesage both identified her correctly. On the other hand Marie Montvoisin, who had said she would recognise Mlle des Oeillets with ease, initially failed to do so. A little later, however, she rectified this, saying she had been well aware who she was and had only pretended not to know her to spare her embarrassment. Since Marie had been under oath when she had initially said that Mlle des Oeillets was unknown to her, this in itself proved her readiness to perjure herself when it suited her.24
There can be no doubt that these three encounters had been a severe setback for Mlle des Oeillets. Nevertheless, the fact that Guibourg and Lesage had named her correctly should not be regarded as conclusive, for the identity parade had not been properly conducted. The way in which she had been shown to the prisoners on her own meant that the procedure was fatally flawed, for it would have been preferable if her accusers had been required to pick her out from among a group of women. As it was, it would not have been difficult for them to guess that this was Mlle des Oeillets who stood before them. All of them had been questioned extensively about her, and Marie Montvoisin had even been asked outright whether she would be able to recognise her.25
Understandably, however, Mlle des Oeillets was extremely shaken by what had happened. She told Louvois in desperation that she must have been mistaken for one of her relations, for she knew that a cousin of hers regularly frequented fortune-tellers. Louvois received these protestations coldly. Having lost all faith in her, he told La Reynie that no reliance could be placed on her assurances.26
* * *
As La Reynie tried to sift dispassionately through the evidence, he found himself plunged into ‘a strange agitation’. He noted plaintively, ‘I have done what I could to assure myself and to remain convinced that these facts are true and I have not been able to achieve this. Conversely I have looked for anything which could persuade me that they were false, and that has been equally impossible.’27
La Reynie admitted that his zeal to protect the King may at times have clouded his judgement. Perhaps, too, he had been prejudiced by cases such as that of Mme de Brinvilliers, for being exposed to such evil may have predisposed him to see it where none, in fact, existed. However, while he knew he must guard against excessive credulity, he considered that it would be criminally irresponsible to be too dismissive of these terrible allegations.
La Reynie spent December 1680 and January 1681 reassessing the facts. In one memorandum he penned around this time28 he noted that it was almost incredible that an attempt could have been mounted on the King’s life with a poisoned petition but, on the other hand, he found it hard to accept that an ill-educated girl of mediocre intelligence such as Marie Montvoisin could have invented such a story. It was true that no other witness had corroborated her tale, but this could be explained by the fact that the protagonists would have known that if it was established they had been seeking to kill the King the penalties they faced were far more terrible than those in
flicted for other capital crimes. In 1610 Henri IV’s murderer, François Ravaillac, had been tortured with red-hot pincers, then molten lead, boiling oil, resinous pitch and sulphur had been poured into his wounds. Once these preliminary agonies had been completed, he was pulled apart by wild horses, a process that lasted more than an hour.29 Even an unsuccessful attempt on Louis XIV’s life would have been punished with equal ferocity.
Other aspects of Marie’s story seemed fairly plausible to La Reynie. While it might strain the limits of credibility that Mme de Montespan could ever have contemplated murdering the King, she did at least have an obvious motive to try to eliminate Mlle de Fontanges. Taking this into account, La Reynie could accept that there might genuinely have been a scheme to poison the young woman using specially prepared material or gloves. While some might argue that this was not scientifically possible, La Reynie believed it had been independently established that Romani’s friend Blessis had mastered the technique. Above all, Romani’s admission that he had hoped to sell silks and gloves to Mlle de Fontanges was, in La Reynie’s view, immensely significant. He noted, ‘From that it follows that la Voisin’s daughter did not invent what she said about that’ and this led him to propound the dangerous syllogism that, if so, ‘everything she said on that matter can reasonably be presumed to be true’. Once this premise was accepted, other conclusions could follow for ‘if the plan of the stuffs and gloves is true, it is not impossible that that of the petition is true’.30
On the other hand, this went some way towards discrediting a claim made by la Filastre under torture. She had said that it was on the orders of Mme de Montespan that Mme Chapelain had instructed her to obtain a place in Mlle de Fontanges’s household in order to murder her. La Reynie noted that this would have meant that, following the arrest of la Voisin and the consequent collapse of the plan to kill Mlle de Fontanges with poisoned gloves, Mme de Montespan had sought out Mme Chapelain and coolly devised a new way to rid herself of her rival. It was difficult to believe she would have had the gall to do this at a time when la Voisin was in gaol and might at any time reveal the murderous plot concocted by the two of them.31
While admitting to doubts on this score, La Reynie was far from exonerating Mme de Montespan and it was at this point that he introduced another argument, which he had so far kept to himself. He noted that Marie Bosse, the first person to be convicted by the Chambre Ardente, had mentioned Mme de Montespan under torture but that, at the time, it had not been considered appropriate to take note of this.32 Unfortunately, this means that no record exists of her comments and, since La Reynie failed to specify the sort of accusations she made, it is impossible to assess their significance.
La Reynie believed there could be no question that at various times Guibourg had conducted black masses on naked women, which may have involved child sacrifice. ‘These scoundrels have given so many details … about them that it is very difficult to doubt it,’ he remarked. It did not automatically follow, of course, that Mme de Montespan had played any part in this and there were considerations that militated against the idea. It was difficult, for example, to believe that an upper-class woman would have been willing to visit so poor an area of Paris as Saint-Denis, where one of the masses had allegedly taken place.
Of one thing, however, La Reynie did feel reasonably confident, for he detected ‘a great appearance of truth’ in Guibourg’s claim that at la Voisin’s he had seen a pact drawn up in the name of Mme de Montespan.33 Once one accepted the existence of that, much else that Guibourg had said was arguably validated.
* * *
On reading through these arguments it is hard to avoid the conclusion that by early 1681 La Reynie thought that, on balance, there was more reason to believe than disbelieve that Mme de Montespan had been engaged in a wicked criminal conspiracy. However, he shrank from recommending a definite course of action, for he remained painfully conscious that proceeding further would stir up a destructive controversy. On 26 January he wrote a memorandum for Louvois in which, having surveyed the evidence, he summarised his dilemma. He pointed out that accusations had been made relating to ‘lèse-majesté against the divine and human order. There is nothing greater, and nothing is more important than the complete and perfect elucidation of these crimes.’ However, while it was obviously desirable that such offences should not go unpunished, it was debatable whether it was conducive ‘to the glory of God, in the interests of the King – and consequently that of the state – or for the good of justice to apprise the public of facts of this kind’. On the other hand, inaction was fraught with peril, for ‘if these crimes are hidden, what other strange and unknown things will befall, if one does not dare to penalise crimes on account of their enormity?’
It might be that the allegations against Mme de Montespan were baseless and her reputation would be damaged unfairly if they were made known to the commission. On the other hand, refraining from bringing these cases to court on that account raised the appalling prospect that ‘villains and monsters’ would escape justice by virtue of having ‘taken it into their heads … to accuse persons of high rank, to speak of the King, and to invent all these abominations’. Yet while it was clear that progress of any kind was impossible without resuming the judicial process, La Reynie recognised that this course was not without serious drawbacks.34
* * *
In this memorandum La Reynie raised another point to which he wished to draw attention. He said he found it curious that the eminent people named in the more recent phase of the enquiry had made no attempt to defend themselves from the aspersions that had been cast on them. He noted darkly, ‘This silence surprises me; it even makes me suspicious.’35
In fact, there is no reason to think that either Mme de Montespan or Mme de Vivonne had any idea of the sort of things that had been alleged against them. La Reynie himself noted in the same memorandum that although la Filastre had alluded to both ladies at her trial, not a whisper of this had reached the public. Counting La Reynie and Bezons, ten people had been present when la Filastre had been tortured, but they had preserved absolute silence as to what they had heard on that occasion.36 Unless, therefore, the King himself had informed Mme de Montespan, there is no way she could have learned of the extraordinary attacks on her character. Everything indicates that he had not chosen to enlighten her about this.
When the King had returned from his travels in September 1680, Mme de Montespan had also gone back to her apartment at Versailles. By now it was assumed that Louis no longer had a sexual relationship with her, but neither had he completely abandoned her. With his usual unfailing courtesy, the King continued to pay her afternoon visits although, to avoid awkwardness, he was usually accompanied by someone else such as his brother, who could act as a buffer between them.
By now the poor Duchesse de Fontanges had also lost her attraction for the King. Her health was in terminal decline and, though the King had the good manners to spend an hour a day with her, her sickliness had killed his passion. He still derived his greatest pleasure from his meetings with Mme de Maintenon, whose favour was undiminished. In the autumn of 1680 it was noted that the King appeared to be in an introspective mood,37 and this may have owed something to Mme de Maintenon’s influence. The strain of wondering whether Athénaïs was guilty of unspeakably foul practices doubtless also contributed to his pensive frame of mind.
While there can be no question that this was a difficult period for Mme de Montespan, she was clearly unaware of the horrors that were threatening to engulf her. Indeed, what is positively chilling is that throughout these months the King gave not the slightest indication that her conduct was under scrutiny, while all the time encouraging La Reynie to pursue enquiries against her. Far from betraying that he had any cause for disquiet, in November 1680 the King bestowed on Mme de Montespan a gift of 50,000 livres, ‘as a gratification in consideration of her services’.38
Reassured by such gestures, by late 1680 Mme de Montespan was adapting fairly well to her changed cir
cumstances. Her ambitions were now focused on securing the future of her children and throughout these months she devoted considerable effort to persuading the unmarried Duchesse de Montpensier to confer her vast inheritance on the Duc du Maine, Athénaïs’s eldest son by Louis. In her memoirs the Duchesse recalled that whenever Mme de Montespan came to call on her at this time, she was as amusing and entrancing as ever; it is inconceivable that Athénaïs could have conducted herself in this fashion had she realised the vile suspicions that were currently entertained of her. In February 1681 she appeared as oblivious as ever to the threat that was hanging over her: an observer reported that she was busy setting up a lottery in which, at a price, everyone at court could participate.39
* * *
No one else at court had any conception that Mme de Montespan had been implicated in the Affair of the Poisons. Since the acquittal of the Maréchal de Luxembourg, interest in the proceedings of the Chambre Ardente had subsided. There was an awareness that the enquiry was still in progress, but now that no cases were pending against court notables the subject no longer dominated the consciousness of Paris society.
It is difficult to credit the claim by M. Sagot, Recorder of the Chambre Ardente, that following the suspension of the Chamber, several courtiers urged the King to dissolve it altogether. Sagot noted sourly that they put forward various ‘different pretexts, of which the most specious was that a longer research into the question of poisons would discredit the nation in foreign countries’.40 However, Sagot was correct in saying that another important person made pleas to this effect, for it was at this point that the Controller-General of Finance, M. Colbert, became involved in the affair.
The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV Page 41