by Holly Tucker
Charas quickly pulled out a small knife and grabbed the man’s thumb to gash the area of the injury and release the venom. The man resisted, saying that it was nothing, just a little bite. Charas persisted, and the man agreed instead to have the bite cauterized with a red-hot metal spoon. As doctors believed at the time, hot metal applied to the skin burned poison from the skin. Moments later the man collapsed. Pale and weak pulsed, he began convulsing.
The apothecary raced downstairs to his shop. A large vase marked “Theriac” sat on the shelf among scores of decorated porcelain jars. A cure-all, theriac served as treatment for everything from menstrual cramps and fever to epilepsy and plague. Each apothecary created his own proprietary blend that contained upwards of eighty different ingredients, many exotic and imported from the farthest corners of the known world: cinnamon, saffron, rhubarb, sage, aniseed, ginger, myrrh, opium, and above all, snake flesh.
Charas lifted the heavy vessel to his mixing table, scooped out a generous amount of the powder, and emptied it into a mortar. Given that the tourist was in a particularly bad state, Charas sprinkled a hearty amount of “salt of viper,” venom extracted from a snake’s fangs and evaporated into a crystalline substance, to add punch to the mixture.
Charas mixed his impromptu antidote with wine, honey, and castor oil. Running back upstairs, the apothecary administered the thick mixture to his patient in small portions. With each dose the man became violently ill. Undeterred, Charas continued to force the man to take the theriac spoonful by spoonful until on the eighth try he was finally able to keep the medicine down. Over the next five hours the man slowly improved—“happy in his unhappiness,” Charas bragged, “to have been saved so quickly and efficiently.” Whether his recovery actually resulted from Charas’s mixture or from the purging it caused remains unclear, but the apothecary, and his special blend of theriac, was now famous.
In May 1670, La Reynie accepted an invitation from Charas to witness the preparation of theriac. In the interests of keeping Paris safe from poisoners, the police chief agreed to certify the authencity of the apothecary’s mixture. For this the police chief invited the dean of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, as well as two senior professors at the medical school. Joining them were three representatives of the king’s Corps of Royal Apothecaries.
In preparation for the visit Charas ordered substantial quantities of the ingredients needed to make the theriac. Large boxes sat on the floor around an enormous marble mortar. Once opened, the boxes filled the shop with heady scents and contained a hodgepodge of materials of all colors and textures. Some of the ingredients were recognizable by their smell (cinnamon, ginger, pepper, fennel, licorice, myrrh, and musk) or their appearance (dried irises and rosebuds, poppyseeds, thorns); others were more mysterious—or at least sounded as much: dried root of spikenard; terebinth resin (extracted from a flowering cashew plant native to Africa), earth of Lemnos (which looked to be little more than dirt, despite its alleged medicinal properties), along with other plants reputedly hailing from Macedonia, Libya, Egypt, the Americas, and places between.
Vipers’ teeth, skin, and flesh held, of course, a prized place among the ingredients. Charas preferred collecting the snakes in the late spring and early summer, rather than the winter when the creatures were too thin and too lethargic. The best ones, he claimed, came from the areas around Lyon or Poitiers. He disagreed vigorously with traditional practices of whipping the snakes before cutting off their heads and tails in order to stir up as much venom as possible. He also resisted the idea that the snakes should be boiled, as this produced only a “stinking, phlegm-like” stew having no medicinal effect whatsoever. Instead Charas proposed that the snakes be treated kindly beforehand in order to extract the maximum amount of venom. Once killed, they should be skinned, gutted, and then carefully dried and reduced to a fine powder.
Charas’s precision was not limited to his snakes. Every ingredient, all sixty-five of them, came with complex prescriptions. Moving from box to box, Charas scooped a small amount of each into a bowl, offering a description to La Reynie and the other observers: the name of the ingredient, its weight, its origins, where it was harvested, how it was prepared, and its “proven” medical uses.
La Reynie listened carefully, but with some impatience. The police chief had many other things to do, most pressing of which were the stacks of reports from his commissioners and detectives piling up in his absence. When the apothecary finished his presentation, La Reynie nodded to the inspectors who then weighed each ingredient and poured it into a small mortar, pulverizing it to assess its quality. They agreed unanimously that Charas’s “drugs were as beautiful in the middle and back of the box as they were on top,” suggesting the freshest and highest quality possible.
Inspection after inspection, Charas transferred the full contents of each ingredient into a mortar—large enough to hold the entire contents of the sixty-five boxes, weighing in all over several hundred pounds. La Reynie could not stay for the entire process; it would take hours to mix the theriac properly. Reaching for an enormous pestle, Charas began pounding, crushing, and stirring the ingredients in the equally enormous mortar. Pausing only to take a breath and to wipe his brow, he talked the observers into helping him sift the mixture over and over through a large screen made of delicate silk. Only when the entirety of the mix could pass through the screen without leaving any small chunks behind did the apothecary declare his hard work over.
At the end of the long day, and on behalf of La Reynie, the inspectors issued Charas a formal certificate of authenticity, which the apothecary posted proudly in the window of his shop: “We certify that Monsieur Moyse Charas has crafted in our presence three hundred pounds of theriac . . . with an exact and very curious selection and preparation of ingredients. We have been very satisfied and approve with praise . . . this preparation which has been made according to the best pharmaceutical rules.”
Once the deaths started, all of Paris soon lined up in front of the Golden Viper in search of Charas’s certified theriac.
10
“Madame Is Dying, Madame Is Dead!”
Henrietta Anne was not feeling well. For several weeks she had suffered from frequent and excruciating pains in her stomach and been unable to eat. The court gossip Montpensier observed that she resembled “a dressed-up dead person, on whom someone had put some rouge.” Henrietta Anne tried to maintain appearances, going so far as to ask the queen during a visit to Versailles if they might dine a little earlier than normal together because she had not eaten all day and was famished. When the two women sat down to eat, Henrietta ate her food as if there were nothing wrong. But the “tears in her eyes” gave her away.
A few days later, as she rested at the Château of Saint-Cloud in the company of several other noblewomen, a servant poured Henrietta a glass of chicory tea. No sooner had she taken a sip than she placed one hand on her side and exclaimed, “Ah! What pain. I cannot bear it.” Her face turned crimson and then drained of color. Friends and servants helped Henrietta Anne to her room, where she collapsed on the bed. They unlaced her corset, reassuring her with every loosening of the ribbon that all would be well. The fear and doubt in their own eyes told another story.
Now dressed in a loose fitting gown, Henrietta Anne writhed in pain as she waited for the royal doctor to arrive. As Philippe stood beside Henrietta Anne’s bed, the doctor declared she likely suffered from a simple case of indigestion or colic and prescribed a standard course of bloodletting and herbal enemas to soothe the cramping. Delirious with pain, she moaned that it was not indigestion: She believed the glass of chicory water she drank contained poison.
Between cries of pain Henrietta Anne murmured to her estranged husband, “Hélas, Monsieur, it has been a long time since you’ve loved me, and this is unjust.” Philippe appeared “neither moved nor embarrassed by Madame’s opinion.” As the pain continued she whispered, “I shall not be alive tomorrow.”
At the news of her illness, Louis rushed from Ve
rsailles to her bedside. As she gasped to breathe, Henrietta Anne said again, “I have been poisoned.” The royal doctors conveyed their condolences to the king, explaining that there was little more they could do. A priest administered the last rites, making the sign of the cross over a once-vibrant woman, gasping now for breath.
Visibly distressed, Louis said his final farewells to the woman who had brought so much light and happiness to his life and to the court. Whispering in her ear, Louis gave Henrietta Anne permission to slip away. Her breathing slowed; her fingers turned cold. The king lifted his eyes to the heavens and offered up a prayer before he left the room. Henrietta Anne died not long after.
The rumors began immediately. Philippe’s hatred of Henrietta Anne was legendary, but was he—or his exiled lover, the chevalier of Lorraine—capable of such a horrific deed?
Henrietta Anne’s brother King Charles II, newly restored to the English throne, was distraught upon hearing the news of his sister’s death. The peace between France and England, recently brokered with her help, remained tenuous. The English had long viewed the French as untrustworthy and corrupt, and the death of one of their own, possibly at French hands, brought Londoners onto the streets to protest and demand vengeance.
As for Louis XIV, he could not bring himself to believe that his own brother could be involved. To help minimize the potential diplomatic disaster and to learn the truth, Louis demanded an immediate autopsy. Two esteemed French physicians, Pierre Bourdelot and Antoine Vallot, joined two English counterparts whom the English ambassador selected: the royal doctor, Hugh Chamberlain, and the royal surgeon, Alexander Boscher. Henrietta Anne’s unclothed body was laid on a table. As the ambassador watched, one of the French surgeons reached for a large lancet. A “fetid vapor and bad odor” stung the air as he sliced through the middle of her body, between the breasts and down through to the stomach. The English physicians cringed not because of the stench, but because of what they perceived as the clear ineptitude of the practitioner. They muttered that he would damage the organs they were there to examine if he did not pay closer attention.
Boscher leaned in for a better look. The intestines were gangrenous. The liver was of a grayish-yellow color and crumbled between the fingers like “breadcrumbs.” Holding his breath, he moved his head still closer toward the inside of the body and observed a hole in the upper part of the stomach. The careless surgeon had indeed nicked it. The stomach was full of “an extraordinary quantity of bile.” Boscher remarked nonetheless that there was no “excoriation or corrosion . . . or lesions of any part.” From this he concluded that the cause of death could only be an overproduction of bile.
After arguing a bit about the sloppy work of the French surgeon, all those in attendance—French and English alike—signed a joint report asserting that it had been “very boiling bile, very corrupt and malign, and very impetuous, which caused all the disorders in the above said parts.” They concluded that ill health, rather than poison, caused Henrietta Anne’s death. If it had been poison, her stomach would have been “pierced and rotten.”
Few at court, including the king, ever forgot the heartbreaking oration given by Bishop Jean-Benigne Bossuet at Henrietta Anne’s funeral. His words captured the overwhelming grief that consumed the court in the wake of her violent and unexpected death. “O cruel night, tragic night, night of terror!” exclaimed Bossuet, raising his arms in distress. “When there rang out, sudden as a clap of thunder, that shocking report: Madame is dying, Madame is dead!”
The king wept for his loss. The death of Henrietta Anne devastated him. He had rebuffed her as a girl, but grew to care deeply for the woman she became. While the doctors dismissed accusations that she had been poisoned at the hands of her own husband, the very possibility had been unsettling.
The next time he would shed no tears and spare no sympathy.
11
Poison in the Pie
Henrietta Anne’s death was not the only story of poisoning swirling among the nobility. The memory of the sudden illness and death of Civil Lieutenant Dreux d’Aubray in 1666 was resurrected after the equally dramatic deaths of his sons, Antoine and François.
The d’Aubray brothers were both highly respected lawyers. In spring 1670 they had traveled to their country estate in Villequoy for the Easter holidays with their sister, the marquise of Brinvilliers. They also invited along friends from Paris, all eager to escape the noisy city.
One night the family and their guests gathered for dinner. A fire blazed in the great stone hearth at one end of the long table where François d’Aubray and his brother traded stories and gossip with their friends. The convivial yet formal conversations among the nobility around the table contrasted with the frenzied activity in the kitchens. Cooks wearing smeared aprons scurried to and fro as they prepared the dishes well-dressed servers brought out to the table.
Among the servants was a man named La Chaussée, who was responsible for decanting the wine served at the d’Aubray family meals. He descended into the cellar, examined the many bottles of wine lining the walls, selecting one. Upon returning to the kitchen, he opened the bottle and poured one glass. Looking over his shoulder, La Chaussée slipped a small vial from his vest and quickly sprinkled a bit of white odorless powder into the glass. As La Chaussée walked toward the family dining room, he swirled the wine in the glass, holding it up briefly in front of a candle lantern. Some grit had settled in the bottom of the glass, but not much more than would have been expected from any bottle at the time.
La Chaussée bowed with respect as he placed the glass in front of his master. François d’Aubray paused in his conversation long enough to bring the glass to his nose to appreciate the wine’s bouquet. François handed the glass to his brother, who brought it to his lips and took a small sip. Antoine’s eyes widened in panic. “Brother, your men would poison me!” he exclaimed. La Chaussée, thinking on his feet, apologized profusely to his master, explaining that the glass had been used earlier to give a servant a dose of medicine, which may have left a residue of bitterness. Unhappy that the glass had been used by a servant and also not washed properly, the brothers nevertheless seemed satisfied with his explanation.
One afternoon not long after François d’Aubray’s close call, La Chaussée lingered in the noisy, bustling kitchen as the other servants prepared the elaborate dishes to be served that evening. From the corner of his eye he spied a cook preparing a hearty meat pie. He chatted with her as she cooked the filling for the tart—prized ris de veau (sweetbreads, or calves’ pancreas) and rognons de coq (rooster kidneys)—and poured it into the piecrust. When the cook turned her head, he reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a tiny vial, and emptied its contents into the pie.
That night seven people who ate the pie became violently ill—but no one was sicker than François and his brother Antoine. Those who accompanied them back to Paris in the cortege of coaches could not be sure whether they were bringing the men back to their homes to recover, or whether the trip would soon turn into a funeral procession. When the elder d’Aubray was finally carried by stretcher from his carriage, his family and employ of servants barely recognized him, so much had the poison ravished his body. In a show of feigned devotion, La Chaussée did not leave the man’s side once. François succumbed to death two painful months later.
Two surgeons and an apothecary arrived at his home shortly afterward. As the lancet pierced François’s bloated belly, the men recoiled from the putrid smell that arose from the incision. Plunging his hands wrist deep inside the abdominal cavity, one of the surgeons extracted the stomach. It was black and riddled with ulcers. François’s liver was also verdigris from the gangrene. Still, the doctors were reluctant to conclude that he had been poisoned.
While the doctors pondered the causes of François’s death, brother Antoine also took his last breath. An autopsy revealed that both men had died of very similar conditions. Their deaths were identical in symptoms and circumstances to those of their father several
years earlier. Physicians speculated that the deaths resulted from an extraordinary disease “so rare and unknown, and yet common to a whole illustrious family,” while also remaining open to the possibility of poisoning.
The medical investigators did not explore at the time whether La Chaussée had had a hand in the deaths. He had conducted the poisonings so slowly and artfully that for two years investigators overlooked him as a potential suspect. They were soon to discover how shortsighted they had been.
12
An Alchemist’s Last Words
The death of Godin de Sainte-Croix in 1672 would have gone unnoticed had he not been broke. In the days that followed, his cramped living quarters felt even tighter as they filled with witnesses to the process: the man’s widow, her lawyer, a lawyer who represented various creditors, and local commissioner Sébastien Picard. Two notaries also sat in small chairs, balancing a portable table laden with a stack of parchment paper and an inkwell on their knees.
Wearing a long black robe and square tam, Picard scanned Sainte-Croix’s small home. Despite the size of the space, the commissioner noted that the task would require several days. Further complicating matters, there was no doubt that Sainte-Croix had dabbled in alchemy. In fact there seemed to be little space in the home for much else. Every nook and cranny was stuffed with bottles and vials, cups and spoons, alembics and drying racks. The space could easily have been mistaken for an apothecary shop or an alchemist’s laboratory.
After the inventory got under way, the commissioner heard someone knocking insistently on the main entrance door below. Picard walked to the window and peered down to see a man dressed in a long gown. While he could not see his face, the tonsure indicated that he was a member of the clergy. Picard went to the door and greeted the man, who introduced himself as the family’s priest.