City of Light, City of Poison

by Holly Tucker

  While there is no record of La Reynie having attended The Fortune-Teller, he was no stranger to the Guénégaud Theater. A year earlier the owners had offered him a box to see Jacques Pradon’s Phèdre et Hippolyte. Some historians have suggested that La Reynie had a role in the development of the play for propaganda purposes, which is doubtful. The play reassured spectators that there was nothing to fear, and that otherworldly powers and poisons required too much imagination to be true. For the moment, however, the lieutenant of police felt anything but lighthearted about the prospect of charlatans, fortune-tellers, poisoners, and murderers in his city.

  Bouillon had no way of knowing as she laughed at Jobin’s gullible clients from her comfortable seat in the theater’s loge that she too would soon be sitting uncomfortably in front of the Arsenal judges.

  Two weeks after Bouillon attended the play, Louvois addressed a letter to one of the judges of the Chambre Ardent, Monsieur Robert. Frustrated that no arrests had yet been made, the minister of war reminded Robert that the king wanted justice imposed without concern regarding the social rank of the accused and gave the court full “liberty to make conclusions on the facts and proof presented.”

  Soon after receiving Louvois’s letter, the chamber requested the king’s approval to question the duchess of Bouillon and her sister Olympe, the countess of Soissons. In contrast to his minister’s disdain for the two women, the king had long had a fondness for the lively Mancini sisters. He appreciated the duchess of Bouillon’s feistiness and unwavering support of the arts. He also shared childhood memories of playing in the corridors with her sister Olympe, who was exactly his age, as well as their youthful explorations for a short time as lovers. As with most of his former mistresses, the king continued to hold a place, if small, for Olympe in his affections—despite her outrageous attempts to undermine his other affairs.

  The king reluctantly gave the tribunal permission to question the two women while also finding a way to inform Bouillon’s husband ahead of time of the sisters’ impending arrests. Both fearless by nature and newly emboldened by the king’s show of concern, the duchess arrived arm in arm with her husband and her nephew Vendôme on January 29, 1680, in the Arsenal chamber. Before answering any of the judges’ questions, she stated for the record that she was at court only as a gesture of “respect and obedience to the king.” However, she made clear her refusal to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the special tribunal, claiming that only the courts of the parlement had the right to judge her. After the judges assured her that her objections would be duly recorded, Bouillon settled onto the sellette and, without letting the judges ask questions, launched into a narrative that told a very different story than the one Lesage shared with La Reynie.

  The duchess claimed that she had long heard of Lesage and Voisin’s talent for producing “marvels.” Acting on impulse as she often did, she ordered her horsemen to hitch up her carriage and take her to Voisin’s home, where she was joined by her nephew Vendôme and Lesage. Lesage explained that he had the power to burn a piece of paper and have it reappear wherever she wished to see it. The duchess claimed that she had refused to participate. Instead she watched Vendôme write two or three wishes on the paper. Lesage filled the paper with sulfur and wrapped it tightly with silk thread. They then watched the ball burst into flames in Voisin’s bedroom fireplace. Lesage insisted that she would find Vendôme’s paper inside one of her vases at home. Once there, she looked in every piece of porcelain she owned. To little surprise she found nothing.

  Continuing her story, Bouillon claimed that Lesage arrived uninvited at her home a few days after her visit to Voisin. He stretched out his open hand to reveal the original piece of paper, intact and still wrapped in silk thread. Lesage asserted that the spirits had refused to cooperate because they had not been sufficiently paid. Bouillon did not believe the man, but she saw no harm in playing along. She gave Lesage several coins. He then set the ball on fire once again and left, telling her it would soon rematerialize. It never did, nor did she ever see Lesage again.

  Once she was done telling her story, she looked arrogantly at the judges, her eyes daring them to ask questions. The men shifted uncomfortably in their seats as they pondered silently how to approach the difficult witness. La Reynie, however, had heard enough. Making no attempt to hide his annoyance with Bouillon, he launched into a series of leading questions.

  “Is it not true that you are the one who wrote the message with a request for your husband’s death and put it in Lesage’s hands?” he asked.

  “No,” she responded defiantly. “The question is so strange that it answers itself.”

  Undeterred, La Reynie probed further, “Is it not true that you offered Lesage a considerable sum to hire him to do what you wished?”

  “No, I only gave him two coins,” Bouillon said curtly. La Reynie’s face betrayed his disbelief. Without pausing, he asked: “Why did you want to kill your husband?”

  “Kill my husband! Ask him what he thinks. He held my hand all the way to the door,” she answered. Turning to address all the judges, Bouillon declared with a voice full of haughty disdain: “Messieurs, is this all you have to say to me?”

  It was not. La Reynie leaned toward the woman and asked, “Madame, have you ever seen the devil?” he asked.

  “Monsieur,” she replied, glaring squarely at La Reynie. “I see him right now. He is ugly and old, and disguised as a judge.”

  Bouillon’s show of defiance left the judges speechless. Even the normally well-composed La Reynie found himself at a loss for words. After quickly calculating they had little to gain from a battle with the duchess, the judges dismissed her.

  The noblewoman rose from the sellette in belligerent triumph. Exiting the courtroom, she groused: “Truly, I would have never believed such smart men could ask such dumb questions,” making sure the judges heard every word. As she walked out of the Arsenal again arm in arm with her husband and Vendôme, the crowd waiting outside let out a cheer.

  Bouillon’s elder sister, the countess of Soissons, did not fight. Instead she fled. After learning of the impending arrests, the duke of Bouillon had rushed to his sister-in-law’s home. Finding Olympe among friends at a gaming table, Bouillon nodded his head toward a nearby room. She stood and followed him. Her brother-in-law wasted no time in explaining the situation: If she did not leave France immediately, she would soon be on her way to the Bastille. Without further discussion Olympe returned to the gaming room and excused herself, taking along her close friend, the marquise d’Alluye. The two quickly plotted their escape.

  After shooing their guests away on the pretext of having other dinner plans, Olympe and d’Alluye filled suitcases full of clothes, money, and jewels. The two women fled for the border at three in the morning, accompanied by two of Soissons’s children and her household staff.

  Upon hearing the news of her flight, the chamber proceeded with her trial in absentia. From a distance Olympe attempted to negotiate, offering to return to France as long as she would not be imprisoned in either the Bastille or Vincennes during the deliberations. The judges rejected the request.

  Some speculated that Louvois had been behind the countess’s arrest. Olympe herself was reported to have said before she fled, “[Louvois] is my mortal enemy because I refused to marry my son to his daughter. . . . He will have me die on the gallows or, at the very least, put me in prison.” The prolific court gossip Primi Visconti also described Louvois’s actions toward Soissons after her flight from France, claiming that Louvois arranged to have scores of black cats released outside a church in Brussels where Soissons was attending mass. Panicked by what they took as a sign of Soissons’s connection to the devil, the locals chased her from their city. The show had reportedly been arranged by spies from Louvois’s armies.

  Publicly the king remained unapologetic in his decision to alert the Mancini sisters, especially Olympe, of their impending arrests. Some said that he told his niece, the princess of Carignan, “Madame, I wante
d the Countess to flee. Perhaps I will have to make amends one day to God and to my people.”

  The king also signaled a seeming change of heart when it came to pursuing crimes of poisoning among preferred nobility when he ordered La Reynie to Saint-Germain for his morning rising not long after Bouillon’s trial. A single balustrade divided the narrow space between the king’s bed from the crush of courtiers who peered over one another’s shoulders, nudging and jostling, as they watched carefully selected nobles help the monarch perform his most intimate actions. Louis signaled to La Reynie as the police chief approached the balustrade. The two men chatted briefly about a variety of small matters. The king then turned to La Reynie, saying firmly, and likely loud enough for the court to hear, “It is necessary to make war on another crime.” Louis then dismissed him.

  Privately, however, the king sent firm orders to the tribunal that they should continue their work. Writing to the head judge, Boucherat, a week after Bouillon’s trial, Louvois explained that the king was more than aware of Parisian pushback against the tribunal. However, Boucherat should assure his colleagues of his majesty’s protection and remind them of their responsibility to impose justice with the same strength of resolve as they always had.

  The king issued a disclaimer, however, when it came to Mademoiselle des Oeillets. “His Majesty is assured that it is impossible that Lesage is telling the truth about her.” Louvois explained. He instructed the court to delay arresting Oeillets until La Reynie had investigated matters further. As for the others, they were urged to push ahead. “I have no doubt that you will find His Majesty ready to do what is proposed to him for the sake of justice.”

  The duke of Luxembourg, too, soon found himself before the court. Louvois had used the information he had coerced from Lesage to persuade the king to arrest the duke for blasphemy and witchcraft. In the days preceding the arrest, Louvois offered his own show of “support” by informing Luxembourg personally of the accusations against him. The minister encouraged his nemesis to flee to avoid the humiliation of prison. Rightly, Luxembourg did not know what to make of their conversation. He worried whether Louvois was making a genuine effort to extend an olive branch or instead setting a trap by encouraging him to flee, thus signaling his guilt.

  Every Wednesday the king gave an audience to nobles at the Château of Saint-Germain. Over the years Luxembourg came to count on a warm greeting from Louis. This time, however, the monarch’s face showed little more than quiet disdain. Luxembourg had not been the only person to notice the king’s change of heart. Murmurs soon filled the hall, as courtiers looked sideways toward Luxembourg, then toward one another, and back at the duke.

  Luxembourg gathered his composure and walked toward the king. “I would like to talk to Your Majesty,” he said with more deference than he was known for.

  Turning his head with royal nonchalance, Louis XIV dismissed the man drily: “If you are innocent, you have only to turn yourself in for questioning at the prison. I have made sure that there are good judges in place to examine these affairs, and I have given them my full confidence.”

  Luxembourg begged the king not to have him arrested. The plea fell on deaf ears. Luxembourg called for his carriage and ordered the driver to take him first to see his confessor, Père La Chaise, and then to the Bastille. Moments after Luxembourg’s departure, Louvois sent a letter by express courier to Boucherat, the head inquisitor at the Arsenal. “Monsieur de Luxembourg will arrive at the Bastille prison tonight. Please continue the proceedings against him.” The warden of the Bastille, Besmaux, also received instructions to show no mercy to Luxembourg, who was swiftly transferred to a tiny dank cell deep in the bowels of the prison.

  When news circulated that the duke, a respected “officer of the Crown,” was being kept in solitary confinement in the depths of the Bastille, the cries of protest among the nobility reached a deafening pitch. Madame de Sévigné noted: “Everyone is questioning a little the wisdom of the judges, who are creating a stir by scandalously targeting such big names for such little things.” To test just how reactionary La Reynie’s investigation had become, an anonymous correspondent sent the police chief a letter in code as if taunting him to take the bait. La Reynie took one look at the letter and decided it was a hoax.

  Luxembourg’s family protested his arrest. The duchess of Luxembourg threw herself at the king’s feet on three occasions, begging for her husband’s release. When this did not work, she presented a formal request to the tribunal judges that evoked formal provisions in the criminal ordinance of 1670 allowing for family visits and the right to an attorney. Once again she was rebuffed. By virtue of its special status, the court claimed it had no obligation to follow established procedures.

  On May 2, 1680, a full five months after his arrest, Luxembourg had a chance to view the only piece of physical evidence against him. The duke stood about four feet in front of the judges, who sat at a long table. The notary Sagot slid a slip of paper in front of him and asked Luxembourg if he recognized the signature. The duke confirmed it was his. It was a letter dating from 1665 that gave his assistant, Pierre Bonnart, permission to do all that was necessary to recover lost documents related to a sale of forest property. In it Luxembourg offered a handsome reward to anyone who helped find them.

  The duke explained that, without his knowledge, Bonnart took the letter to Lesage and hired him to perform rituals to find the papers, which materialized soon afterward. Late one night a few days later, Bonnart woke Luxembourg from a deep sleep and asked him to sign the original request for assistance to acknowledge that the services had been rendered and payment should be made to Lesage. It was still dark in the room, and the duke, who could not read what he signed, trusted his assistant.

  Bonnart later used the signed letter as extortion, threatening to spread rumors about the nobleman’s commerce with the devil. At the time Luxembourg believed he was still on fine terms with Louvois and turned to him for help. The minister declined to get involved.

  Luxembourg strained to see the incriminating document and asked the judges to let him examine it more closely. When they refused, the duke dived toward the table and grabbed the paper. In indignant desperation, Luxembourg waved the letter in front of the judges’ faces. Between the last line of the original order and his signature someone had inserted another sentence. The handwriting was different, and the ink much lighter. It gave instructions to make all spells necessary to recover the business documents. Luxembourg said he had been framed by Bonnart. He also suspected that Louvois had had a hand in resurrecting the matter, but chose not to voice his concerns given the minister’s clear influence over the proceedings.

  The court ruled that Luxembourg had indeed dabbled in fortune-telling and likely allowed himself to be duped by Lesage’s paper tricks. However, they concurred with Luxembourg that the physical evidence had been forged. In lieu of any substantial punishment, the judges exiled Luxembourg from Paris. Bonnart spent the remainder of his life doing hard labor in the galleys.

  The fate of Bouillon, Soissons, and Luxembourg intensified the nobility’s mistrust of the process. Perceptive as ever, Madame de Sévigné lamented, “Today the talk is all about the innocence of the accused and the horrors of defamation. Maybe tomorrow it will be the exact opposite . . . no one speaks of anything else. Truly, there is hardly another example of such a scandal in a Christian court.” Later the court chronicler also made her thoughts on La Reynie still clearer: “[The reputation] of Monsieur de La Reynie is abominable.” One contemporary offered a solution: “All we need to do is burn the witches, the witnesses, and the judges and all will be taken care of.”

  28

  “From One Fire to Another”

  Voisin appeared in front of the judges on February 17, 1680, a full eleven months after she was arrested, to hear the charges against her. The following day the court condemned her to death by fire. Monsieur Robert made the case for having her tongue pierced and a hand cut off before the execution, but after much discuss
ion, the chamber decided against it. Remembering the spectacle of Brinvilliers’s death, the judges were concerned that the added punishments could overexcite the crowd or, worse, lead spectators to feel sympathy for her.

  At one thirty in the afternoon on February 19, guards ushered Voisin into the torture room at the Bastille. The questioners, led by La Reynie, asked Voisin to review, one by one, her relationships with La Grange, Bosse, and Vigoureux, the noblewomen Leféron and Dreux, and a host of others. Voisin appeared calm and forthcoming during the interactions, though she revealed little new information. After five straight hours, the remainder of the Question—and the torture yet to come—was put off until the next morning.

  The sun had not yet begun to rise when Voisin was returned for questioning. This time the focus centered on the woman’s interactions with the countess of Soissons and the marquise of Alluye. Once again Voisin appeared forthcoming but revealed no new information. She admitted to having gone to Saint-Germain on two occasions to plead for the release of her former lover the alchemist Blessis. However, she denied ever having brought “powders” to either Saint-Germain or Versailles.

  The clock tower outside struck one. The questioners broke for lunch. An hour later they reconvened in the interrogation cell to question Voisin about the abortions she had performed. “I feel an obligation, for the relief of my conscience, to declare that Lepère performed a large number of abortions,” she said emotionlessly, never admitting that she also performed them at her home with the elderly midwife’s help.

  After several more hours and questions regarding scores of accused poisoners and their clients, Doctor Vezou and the surgeon Monsieur Morel entered the room. As before, their job was to witness Voisin’s impending torture to ensure that she would survive just long enough for the public execution to take place afterward.