City of Light, City of Poison

by Holly Tucker

Burn Notice

  xx

  never to trust: P. Visconti, Mémoires sur la cour de Louis XIV, 1673–1681, ed. Jean-François Solnon (Paris: Perrin, 1988), 73. As one contemporary observer noted, all it took was for “the king to open his mouth and speak about someone” and, depending on his tone, the person would forever be seen as “a saint or avoided like a soul damned.”

  xx

  more dynamic officer: Marc-René de Voyer de Paulmy d’Argenson succeeded Nicolas de La Reynie as lieutenant criminel de police in 1697. He was forty-five years old; La Reynie was seventy-two.

  xxi

  constant traffic: T. Spawforth, Versailles: A Biography of a Palace (New York: Macmillan, 2010), 110.

  xxii

  support and confidence: Versailles: La Galérie des Glaces, Catalogue Iconographique, http://www.galeriedesglaces-versailles.fr/html/11/collection/c29.html, accessed May 1, 2016.

  CHAPTER 1

  Crime Capital of the World

  3soaked into the earth: France Observed in the Seventeenth Century by British Travellers Stocksfield, England: Oriel Press, 1985, 54. “Paris is always dirty,” a British visitor observed. “By perpetual motion dirt is beaten into such a thick black unctuous oil, that where it sticks, no art can wash it off.”

  4“to kill the living”: “A world of coaches, carts, and horses of sorts go to and fro perpetually, so that sometimes one shall meet with a stop half a mile long of those coaches, carts, and horses [and] can move neither forward nor backward,” ibid., 54; C. Jones, Paris: The Biography of a City (New York: Penguin, 2006), 168; quote from Jean-Paul Marana, cited in Eric Le Nabour, La Reynie: Le policier de Louis XIV (Paris: Perrin, 1990), 22.

  4leaving him dead: L. Bernard, The Emerging City: Paris in the Age of Louis XIV (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1970), 159; on the murder of the watchmaker, see J. Saint-Germain, La Reynie, 98.

  4making the city all the more unsafe: S. Carroll, Blood and Violence in Early Modern France (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2006), 138.

  5few followed this mandate either: For discussion on the size of daggers and bayonets, see BNF, mss. français, 16847, fols. 10–11; for ordinances against carrying pistols, see fol. 14; A. P. Trout, City on the Seine: Paris in the Time of Richelieu and Louis XIV (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 173–174.

  5kept a knife at her bedside precisely for that task: On Madame Surqualin, see Saint-Germain, La Reynie, 98.

  5pick a fight: A. Hussey, Paris: The Secret History (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2010), 163.

  6worked as apprentices to a woodcarver: J. D. Melish, “Order and the People: Men, Women, and the Courts in Control of Male Public Violence in a Parisian Faubourg under Louis XIV” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Michigan, 2005), 4, 55–76.

  6nearly three-quarters of a day’s pay: Ibid., 59.

  6that a duchess paid for similar services: Melish, 61.

  7“Day and night they kill here”: G. Patin, Lettres choisies du feu Mr. Guy Patin. (Paris: Chez Jean Petit, 1692).

  7from the violent world outside: For more on the Tardieu murders, see A. Lebigue, Les Dangers de Paris au XVIIe siècle: L’Assassinat de Jacques Tardieu, Lieutenant Criminel au Châtelet de sa femme, 24 août 1665 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1991), and P. F. Riley, A Lust for Virtue: Louis XIV’s Attack on Sin in Seventeenth-Century France (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2011), 16–17.

  8crumpled to the floor: Riley, Lust for Virtue, 16–17.

  9filled the large dining room: J. Saint-Germain, Madame de Brinvilliers, La Marquise aux poisons (Paris: Hachette, 1971), 14.

  10until he could find a more profitable pursuit: A Narrative of the Process Against Madam Brinvilliers and Her Condemnation and Execution, for Having Poisoned Her Father and Two Brothers (London: Jonathan Edwyn, 1676), 3.

  10to live her life exactly as she wished: The marquis would later flee the country in an attempt to hide from his creditors; E. Pirot, Relation des vingt-quatre dernières heures de la vie de Marie-Madeleine d’Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers, ed. G. Rouillier (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1883), 4.

  11“yours with all my heart”: Saint-Germain, Brinvilliers, 36.

  11never to be heard from again: E. Dutray-Lecoin and A. Fargette, “Le désordre social et politique, la main du roi s’y oppose,” La Bastille, ou, l’enfer des vivants: À travers les archives de la Bastille (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 2010), 86.

  11“made to disappear”: F. Funck-Brentano, Les Lettres de Cachet (Paris: Libraire Hachette, 1926), xxii, 15–18. Louis XIV made ample use of lettres de cachet. Between 1661 and 1715 (the years of his reign) Louis sent 2,309 people to the Bastille on his signature alone; this does not include other lettres de cachet ordering others into exile, convents, or hard labor in the colonies.

  13“strange heat in his entrails”: Mémoire du procès extraordinaire d’entre Dame Thérèse Mangot, veuve de feu Messire Antoine Daubray, vivant lieutenant civil, demanderesse, accusatrice et appellante, d’une sentence du present mois de mars. Contre le nommé La Chaussée, prisonnier ès prisons de la conciergerie. et la Dame De Brinvilliers, absente et fugitive (Paris: n.p., 1672), 84.

  13divided his assets among his daughter and her two brothers: For reasons that are not clear, d’Aubray did not include his other daughter—about whom we know very little—in his will; F. Funck-Brentano, Le Drame des poisons (Paris: Hachette, 1902), 79.

  13“in such extreme peril”: D’Aubray d’Offemont to Colbert, 10 September 1666, F. Ravaisson, Archives de la Bastille (4: 9).

  13d’Aubray was dead: G. Patin, “M. d’Aubray d’Offemont à Colbert,” 10 September 1666 (4: 10).

  13could not be capable of poisoning her own father: “Mémoire de M. de la Reynie,” n.d. (6: 396).

  14an illness he had battled several years earlier: Factum en forme de requête pour Damoiselle Angélique Domaigné et le Sieur Baron de Divette son beau-père, accusés de l’empoisonnement, autres crimes (Paris: Veuve Dupont, 1681), 58. Danjou, 79.

  CHAPTER 2

  City of Light

  16every aspect of French political, economic, and social life: See J. Soll, The Information Master: Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s Secret State Intelligence System, (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009).

  16“too much trouble reading them”: Ibid., 78.

  16rather than social, political, or economic advantage: Saint-Germain, La Reynie, 21.

  18“if this is agreeable to you”: October 4, 1665, BNF, Mélanges de Colbert, 132, fol 188, cited in Saint-Germain, La Reynie, 24.

  18quiet seriousness: The marquis de Sourches described La Reynie as having “much intellect . . . he spoke little and had an air of seriousness”; see P. Clément, La police de Paris sous Louis XIV (Paris: Didier et Cie, 1866), 68.

  18“what was causing its disorders”: Saint-Germain, La Reynie, 15.

  18Châtelet complex: While La Reynie’s headquarters were at the Châtelet, he worked often in his sprawling estate on the rue du Bouloi, north of the Louvre, near Les Halles, Nabour, 60.

  18“the threats of your courtiers”: P. J. Stead, The Police of France (New York: Macmillan, 1983), 15.

  19no “better man or a more hardworking magistrate” for the job: A. Somerset, The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004), 126.

  19“establish law and order in Paris”: La Reynie to Séguier, June 24, 1667 in Clément, Police, 68–69.

  21“as it was in the countryside”: A. Franklin, Estat, noms et nombre de toutes les rues de Paris en 1636, d’après le manuscrit inédit de la bibliothèque nationale; précédés d’une étude sur la voirie et l’hygiène publique à Paris depuis le XIIe Siècle, Vol. 10 (Paris: Éditions de Paris, 1988), 129.

  21in the well-populated halls of the Louvre: A. Williams, “Domestic Espionage and the Myth of Police Omniscience in Eighteenth-Century Paris,” Consortium on Revolutionary France 1750–1850: Proceedings 7 (1979), 57.

  21“in order to rid their box of
the unpleasant smell”: Maland, 247.

  21“the streets are so clean now”: Saint-Germain, La Reynie, 74.

  22“each person in the quarter shall contribute”: Edict, 1 September 1667, in Delamare, Administration de la Police, fol 153. Edict, 1 Septembre 1667 in Delamare, Collection formé par Nicolas Delamare sur l’administration de la police de Paris et de France, BNF, mss. français 21740.

  23in their Sunday sermons: P. F. Riley, “Hard Times, Police and the Making of Public Policy in the Paris of Louis XIV,” Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 10, no. 2 (1983).

  23the majority of Paris’s streets: W. Schivelbusch, “The Policing of Street Lighting,” Yale French Studies 73 (1987): 61, see also E. Defrance, Histoire de l’éclairage des rues de Paris (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1904), 37.

  23whips, canes, and swords: A-P. Herlaut, L’éclairage des rues à Paris à la fin du XVIIe et au XVIIIe Siècles (Paris: P. Renouard, 1916), 226.

  23“almost as light as daytime”: J. Dejean, How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 137. Cottelet was writing in 1671.

  24“an opportunity to repent”: La Reynie to Colbert, 19 November, 1671 in Clement, Police, 428.

  25hospitals, public charities, and orphanages: Saint-Germain, La Reynie 92, 95. Riley, Lust for Virtue, 42–43.

  25the streets are much less muddy: The author of the letter was the musician Charles Coypeau d’Assoucy; cited in Defrance, 42.

  25“eternalize his memory”: Mercure Galant, April 23, 1672, 280.

  25“Security and Clarity of the City 1669”: Defrance, 38.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Street at the End of the World

  27Court of Miracles: H. Sauval and C. B. Rousseau, Histoire et recherches des antiquités de la ville de Paris (Paris: Charles Moette, 1733), 513–514.

  27“without any miracles”: Ibid.

  27“Stop thief!”: Ibid, 513.

  28life and death: R. Briggs, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (New York: Penguin, 1988), 69.

  28among household remedy manuals: A good example of a standard grimoire is the one found among Voisin’s belongings at the time of her arrest. “Secrets véritables et éprouvés en premier lieu pour le mariage,” Archives de la Bastille, ms. 10355, fol. 365.

  29“you, Madame, are a marquise”: S. Mechior-Bonnet and A. de Tocqueville, Histoire de l’adultère (Paris: Éditions de la Martinière, 2000), 13.

  29known for removing red marks and sunspots: Confrontation between Marguerite de Henard and Voisin, n.d. (Ravaisson, 5: 370); see also Mongrédien, La Vie Quotidienne sous Louis XIV, for preparations used in daily life that we would now consider odd or superstitious.

  29aphrodisiac properties: M, Wilson, Poison’s Dark Works in Renaissance England (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2013), 189-190. The remnants of the amniotic sac of newborn foals, called “hippomane,” were similarly prized for their love-inspiring properties.

  30a love powder: “M. de la Reynie à M. de Louvois,” 1680 (4: 14).

  30“causes titillation and delight”: J. Marten, A Treatise of the Venereal Diseases, 1711: 91.

  30after swallowing a mixture of ground cantharis and nettles: Amboise Paré, Oeuvres complètes (Paris: J-B Baillère, 1841), vol. 3, 326–329.

  30“corroded and burnt parts of humors”: Ibid.

  31“who had gotten herself into trouble”: Frances Mossiker, The Affair of the Poisons: Louis XIV, Madame de Montespan, and One of History’s Great Unsolved Mysteries (New York: Knopf, 1969), 177.

  31more than 2,500 aborted children: Vautier interrogation, 2 November 1679 (6: 37).

  32“You’ll see soon enough if you are with child”: Interrogation of Voisin’s daughter, 28 March 1680 (6: 198).

  32her next meal or glass of wine: For an inventory of items found in Lepère’s home, see Archives de la Bastille, ms. 10342, fols. 78–87.

  32a resounding yes: Interrogation of Voisin’s daughter, 28 March 1680 (6: 198).

  32injected into the woman’s uterus: Lepère interrogation, 27 May 1679 (5: 379–380).

  32“wonderful for the womb”: J. Riddle, Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 140.

  32the Church condemned: T. R. Forbes, The Midwife and the Witch (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 118.

  33baptizing the aborted fetuses: Lepère interrogation, 27 May 1679 (5: 380). Voisin and Lepère confrontation, 15 June 1679 (5: 406); on midwifery and witchcraft, see Malleus Maleficarum; Forbes; and H. Tucker, Pregnant Fictions: Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early-Modern France (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2003) 55–75.

  34performed abortions: Descriptions based on Lesage interrogation, 15 July 1680 (6: 249–250); Interrogation of Voisin’s daughter, 13 August 1680 (6: 288–289); details of the preparation of the toad poison provided by Voisin, in reference to Bosse (“Procès-Verbal of the Voisin Question,” 19 February 1680, 6: 150–151). There is every reason to believe that the two women used the same or similar methods. Voisin makes frequent reference to toad poison in interrogations.

  34rinsed between uses: Chéron interrogation, 27 March 1679 (5: 300).

  34ready for their next customer: Lesage interrogation, 5 July 1680; see also ibid., 15 July 1680. Ravaisson (6: 249); interrogation of Voisin’s daughter, 13 August 1680 (6: 289).

  CHAPTER 4

  To Market

  This chapter is based on those portions of Marie-Marguerite Voisin’s testimony that are sufficiently confirmed in La Reynie’s interrogations of other suspects; see 4: 198, 6: 120, 165–166, 194–198, 294, 298.

  35coin clutched tightly in her fist: Interrogation of the Daughter Voisin, 28 March 1680 (6: 194).

  36red wig and a gray cape: Vigoureux interrogation, 18 February 1679 (5: 215). Vigoureux testified that Lesage wore a gray bouracan; these were cloaks made of goat hair or, less commonly, of camel hair.

  37burned that one in the fire: Vigoureux interrogation, 18 February 1679 (5: 215).

  38preparing for Holy Communion: Lesage places this episode at the end of 1667 or the beginning of 1668; that is, after the king and Montespan became lovers, Lesage interrogation, 15 November 1680 (6: 356–366); BNF, mss. français 7608, fols. 269–271.

  38same blessing as the host and the wine: Lesage interrogation, 15 November 1680. (6: 357).

  39“Indubitably,” he added: Ibid.

  39a few months later: Interrogation of Mariette at Châtelet, June 30, 1668 (4: 11); interrogation of Lesage and Mariette at Tournelle, September 26, 1668 (4: 11–13); La Reynie to Louvois, 1680 (4: 13–15); draft of letter, La Reynie to Louvois, n.d. (6: 372–374).

  40“I don’t believe it”: Guy Patin, cited in Ravaisson, 4: 11.

  CHAPTER 5

  Agitation without Disorder

  43more than thirty thousand horses: Standen, 189; Mémoires de Coligny, 123-124, cited in C. Rousset, Histoire De Louvois et de son administration politique et militaire (Paris: Didier et cie, 1863), 105.

  43“the pomp that accompanies the king on this trip”: Bussy-Rabutin to the Comte de Coligny, Mémoires de Coligny 123–124, cited in C. Rousset, Histoire de Louvois et de son administration politique et militaire (Paris: Didier et cie, 1863), 105.

  45“peace as a dowry”: A. Fraser, Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King (New York: Anchor Books, 2007), 54.

  45“round all over”: Visconti, 161.

  46“people who get along”: Renee, Les Nièces de Mazarin, 177.

  46pairing for a king: Mémoires de Madame de Motteville, ed. M. Petitot, 34: 367; See Renée, 179.

  47“easy to love”: Fraser, 59.

  47a royal child would soon be on its way: Ibid., 62.

  48awkward young girl: N. N. Barker, Brother to the Sun King: Philippe, Duke of Orléans (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 74.

  48failed to “entertain” his new wife: Ibid., 79
.

  48“find themselves with her [chez elle]”: Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne La Fayette, Histoire d’Henriette d’Angleterre (Paris: Charavay Frères, 1882), 40.

  48“something about her that made one love her”: Fraser, 65.

  48“the arbiter of all that is delightful”: Ibid.

  49filled the air: La Fayette, 43.

  CHAPTER 6

  The Dew and the Torrent

  50“Greek statue”: C. Saint-André, Henriette D’Angleterre et la Cour de Louis XIV (Paris: Plon, 1933), 59.

  50among court insiders: Fraser, 113.

  51sister-in-law’s home: He was joined by Marie-Thérèse, his wife; Philippe and Henrietta Anne’s eldest daughter, Anne Marie Louise (Mademoiselle); and the countess of Soissons.

  51graceful tomboy: Fraser, 73.

  51“as if you were saying yes”: A. Houssay, Mademoiselle de La Vallière et Madame de Montespan: Études historiques sur la cour de Louis XIV (Paris: Henri Plon, 1860), 29.

  51for her sins: Madame de Sévigné described her appreciatively as a “little violet hiding under the grass, who was embarrassed to be a mistress, to be a mother, to be a duchess; never will there be another like her,” September 1, 1680. Sévigné (2: 1066).

  53“but I myself am not interested”: Fraser, 109.

  53not to count on ever seeing one denier: J. Lemoine and A. Lichtenberger, De La Vallière à Montespan (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1902), 137–138.

  54most precious and expensive pair of earrings: Ibid., 147–148.

  54“present myself in front of the queen”: J. Lair, Louise de La Vallière et la jeunesse de Louis XIV d’après des documents inédits, avec de nouveaux portraits, plans, documents et notes (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1902), 199.

  54“as much wit or beauty as she does”: Madame de Chartier, cited in Phelps, 448.

  54carriage ride alone: Saint-Maurice, 31.

  54trumping the Dew: See Sévigné 1: 342, 1: 665–666, 2: 342–343, 3: 304.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Door Marked 1

  55silk-upholstered beds and chairs: Saint-Maurice, 71.

  55in the royal tents: Clément, Montespan, 44.