"And where is that, Fanchon? Where would you go if in trouble and perplexity?"

"My Lady, if I had lost all my jewels,"--Fanchon's keen eye noticed that Angelique had lost none of hers, but she made no remark on it,--"if I had lost all mine, I should go see my aunt Josephte Dodier. She is the wisest woman in all St. Valier; if she cannot tell you all you wish to know, nobody can."

"What! Dame Josephte Dodier, whom they call La Corriveau? Is she your aunt?"

Angelique knew very well she was. But it was her cue to pretend ignorance in order to impose on Fanchon.

"Yes, ill-natured people call her La Corriveau, but she is my aunt, nevertheless. She is married to my uncle Louis Dodier, but is a lady, by right of her mother, who came from France, and was once familiar with all the great dames of the Court. It was a great secret why her mother left France and came to St. Valier; but I never knew what it was. People used to shake their heads and cross themselves when speaking of her, as they do now when speaking of Aunt Josephte, whom they call La Corriveau; but they tremble when she looks at them with her black, evil eye, as they call it. She is a terrible woman, is Aunt Josephte! but oh, Mademoiselle, she can tell you things past, present, and to come! If she rails at the world, it is because she knows every wicked thing that is done in it, and the world rails at her in return; but people are afraid of her all the same."

"But is it not wicked? Is it not forbidden by the Church to consult a woman like her, a sorciere?" Angelique took a sort of perverse merit to herself for arguing against her own resolution.

"Yes, my Lady! but although forbidden by the Church, the girls all consult her, nevertheless, in their losses and crosses; and many of the men, too, for she does know what is to happen, and how to do things, does Aunt Josephte. If the clergy cannot tell a poor girl about her sweetheart, and how to keep him in hand, why should she not go and consult La Corriveau, who can?"

"Fanchon, I would not care to consult your aunt. People would laugh at my consulting La Corriveau, like a simple habitan girl; what would the world say?"

"But the world need not know, my Lady. Aunt Josephte knows secrets, they say, that would ruin, burn, and hang half the ladies of Paris. She learned those terrible secrets from her mother, but she keeps them safe in those close lips of hers. Not the faintest whisper of one of them has ever been heard by her nearest neighbor. Indeed, she has no gossips, and makes no friends, and wants none. Aunt Josephte is a safe confidante, my Lady, if you wish to consult her."

"I have heard she is clever, supernatural, terrible, this aunt of yours! But I could not go to St. Valier for advice and help; I could not conceal my movements like a plain habitan girl."

"No, my Lady," continued Fanchon, "it is not fitting that you should go to Aunt Josephte. I will bring Aunt Josephte here to you. She will be charmed to come to the city and serve a lady like you."

"Well,--no! it is not well, but ill! but I want to recover my jewels, so go for your aunt, and bring her back with you. And mind, Fanchon!" said Angelique, lifting a warning finger, "if you utter one word of your errand to man or beast, or to the very trees of the wayside, I will cut out your tongue, Fanchon Dodier!"

Fanchon trembled and grew pale at the fierce look of her mistress. "I will go, my Lady, and I will keep silent as a fish!" faltered the maid.

"Shall I go immediately?"

"Immediately if you will! It is almost day, and you have far to go. I will send old Gujon the butler to order an Indian canoe for you. I will not have Canadian boatmen to row you to St. Valier: they would talk you out of all your errand before you were half-way there. You shall go to St. Valier by water, and return with La Corriveau by land. Do you understand? Bring her in to-night, and not before midnight. I will leave the door ajar for you to enter without noise; you will show her at once to my apartment, Fanchon! Be wary, and do not delay, and say not a word to mortal!"

"I will not, my Lady. Not a mouse shall hear us come in!" replied Fanchon, quite proud now of the secret understanding between herself and her mistress.

"And again mind that loose tongue of yours! Remember, Fanchon, I will cut it out as sure as you live if you betray me."

"Yes, my Lady!" Fanchon's tongue felt somewhat paralyzed under the threat of Angelique, and she bit it painfully as if to remind it of its duty.

"You may go now," said Angelique. "Here is money for you. Give this piece of gold to La Corriveau as an earnest that I want her. The canotiers of the St. Lawrence will also require double fare for bringing La Corriveau over the ferry."

"No, they rarely venture to charge her anything at all, my Lady,"

replied Fanchon; "to be sure it is not for love, but they are afraid of her. And yet Antoine La Chance, the boatman, says she is equal to a Bishop for stirring up piety; and more Ave Marias are repeated when she is in his boat, than are said by the whole parish on Sunday."

"I ought to say my Ave Marias, too!" replied Angelique, as Fanchon left the apartment, "but my mouth is parched and burns up the words of prayer like a furnace; but that is nothing to the fire in my heart! That girl, Fanchon Dodier, is not to be trusted, but I have no other messenger to send for La Corriveau. I must be wary with her, too, and make her suggest the thing I would have done. My Lady of Beaumanoir!" she apostrophized in a hard monotone, "your fate does not depend on the Intendant, as you fondly imagine. Better had he issued the lettre de cachet than for you to fall into the hands of La Corriveau!"

Daylight now shot into the windows, and the bright rays of the rising sun streamed full in the face of Angelique. She saw herself reflected in the large Venetian mirror. Her countenance looked pale, stern, and fixed as marble. The fire in her eyes startled her with its unearthly glow.

She trembled and turned away from her mirror, and crept to her couch like a guilty thing, with a feeling as if she was old, haggard, and doomed to shame for the sake of this Intendant, who cared not for her, or he would not have driven her to such desperate and wicked courses as never fell to the lot of a woman before.

"C'est sa faute! C'est sa faute!" exclaimed she, clasping her hands passionately together. "If she dies, it is his fault, not mine! I prayed him to banish her, and he would not! C'est sa faute! C'est sa faute!"

Repeating these words Angelique fell into a feverish slumber, broken by frightful dreams which lasted far on into the day.

The long reign of Louis XIV., full of glories and misfortunes for France, was marked towards its close by a portentous sign indicative of corrupt manners and a falling state. Among these, the crimes of secret poisoning suddenly attained a magnitude which filled the whole nation with terror and alarm.

Antonio Exili, an Italian, like many other alchemists of that period, had spent years in search of the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. His vain experiments to transmute the baser metals into gold reduced him to poverty and want. His quest after these secrets had led him to study deeply the nature and composition of poisons and their antidotes. He had visited the great universities and other schools of the continent, finishing his scientific studies under a famous German chemist named Glaser. But the terrible secret of the agua tofana and of the poudre de succession, Exili learned from Beatrice Spara, a Sicilian, with whom he had a liaison, one of those inscrutable beings of the gentle sex whose lust for pleasure or power is only equalled by the atrocities they are willing to perpetrate upon all who stand in the way of their desires or their ambition.

To Beatrice Spara, the secret of this subtle preparation had come down like an evil inheritance from the ancient Candidas and Saganas of imperial Rome. In the proud palaces of the Borgias, of the Orsinis, the Scaligers, the Borromeos, the art of poisoning was preserved among the last resorts of Machiavellian statecraft; and not only in palaces, but in streets of Italian cities, in solitary towers and dark recesses of the Apennines, were still to be found the lost children of science, skilful compounders of poisons, at once fatal and subtle in their operation,--poisons which left not the least trace of their presence in the bodies of their victims, but put on the appearance of other and more natural causes of death.

Exili, to escape the vengeance of Beatrice Spara, to whom he had proved a faithless lover, fled from Naples, and brought his deadly knowledge to Paris, where he soon found congenial spirits to work with him in preparing the deadly poudre de succession, and the colorless drops of the aqua tofana.

With all his crafty caution, Exili fell at last under suspicion of the police for tampering in these forbidden arts. He was arrested, and thrown into the Bastile, where he became the occupant of the same cell with Gaudin de St. Croix, a young nobleman of the Court, the lover of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, for an intrigue with whom the Count had been imprisoned. St. Croix learned from Exili, in the Bastile, the secret of the poudre de succession.

The two men were at last liberated for want of proof of the charges against them. St. Croix set up a laboratory in his own house, and at once proceeded to experiment upon the terrible secrets learned from Exili, and which he revealed to his fair, frail mistress, who, mad to make herself his wife, saw in these a means to remove every obstacle out of the way. She poisoned her husband, her father, her brother, and at last, carried away by a mania for murder, administered on all sides the fatal poudre de succession, which brought death to house, palace, and hospital, and filled the capital, nay, the whole kingdom, with suspicion and terror.

This fatal poison history describes as either a light and almost impalpable powder, tasteless, colorless, and inodorous, or a liquid clear as a dewdrop, when in the form of the aqua tofana. It was capable of causing death either instantaneously or by slow and lingering decline at the end of a definite number of days, weeks, or even months, as was desired. Death was not less sure because deferred, and it could be made to assume the appearance of dumb paralysis, wasting atrophy, or burning fever, at the discretion of the compounder of the fatal poison.

The ordinary effect of the aqua tofana was immediate death. The poudre de succession was more slow in killing. It produced in its pure form a burning heat, like that of a fiery furnace in the chest, the flames of which, as they consumed the patient, darted out of his eyes, the only part of the body which seemed to be alive, while the rest was little more than a dead corpse.

Upon the introduction of this terrible poison into France, Death, like an invisible spirit of evil, glided silently about the kingdom, creeping into the closest family circles, seizing everywhere on its helpless victims. The nearest and dearest relationships of life were no longer the safe guardians of the domestic hearth. The man who to-day appeared in the glow of health dropped to-morrow and died the next day. No skill of the physician was able to save him, or to detect the true cause of his death, attributing it usually to the false appearances of disease which it was made to assume.

The victims of the poudre de succession were counted by thousands.

The possession of wealth, a lucrative office, a fair young wife, or a coveted husband, were sufficient reasons for sudden death to cut off the holder of these envied blessings. A terrible mistrust pervaded all classes of society. The husband trembled before his wife, the wife before her husband, father and son, brother and sister,--kindred and friends, of all degrees, looked askance and with suspicious eyes upon one another.

In Paris the terror lasted long. Society was for a while broken up by cruel suspicions. The meat upon the table remained uneaten, the wine undrank, men and women procured their own provisions in the market, and cooked and ate them in their own apartments. Yet was every precaution in vain. The fatal dust scattered upon the pillow, or a bouquet sprinkled with the aqua tofana, looking bright and innocent as God's dew upon the flowers, transmitted death without a warning of danger. Nay, to crown all summit of wickedness, the bread in the hospitals of the sick, the meagre tables of the convent, the consecrated host administered by the priest, and the sacramental wine which he drank himself, all in turn were poisoned, polluted, damned, by the unseen presence of the manna of St. Nicholas, as the populace mockingly called the poudre de succession.

The Court took the alarm when a gilded vial of the aqua tofana was found one day upon the table of the Duchesse de la Valliere, having been placed there by the hand of some secret rival, in order to cast suspicion upon the unhappy Louise, and hasten her fall, already approaching.

The star of Montespan was rising bright in the east, and that of La Valliere was setting in clouds and darkness in the west. But the King never distrusted for a moment the truth of La Valliere, the only woman who ever loved him for his own sake, and he knew it even while he allowed her to be supplanted by another infinitely less worthy--one whose hour of triumph came when she saw the broken-hearted Louise throw aside the velvet and brocade of the Court and put on the sackcloth of the barefooted and repentant Carmelite.

The King burned with indignation at the insult offered to his mistress, and was still more alarmed to find the new mysterious death creeping into the corridors of his palace. He hastily constituted the terrible Chambre Ardente, a court of supreme criminal jurisdiction, and commissioned it to search out, try, and burn, without appeal, all poisoners and secret assassins in the kingdom.

La Regnie, a man of Rhadamanthean justice, as hard of heart as he was subtle and suspicious, was long baffled, and to his unutterable rage, set at naught by the indefatigable poisoners who kept all France awake on its pillows.

History records how Gaudin de St. Croix, the disciple of Exili, while working in his secret laboratory at the sublimation of the deadly poison, accidentally dropped the mask of glass which protected his face.

He inhaled the noxious fumes and fell dead by the side of his crucibles.

This event gave Desgrais, captain of the police of Paris, a clue to the horrors which had so long baffled his pursuit.

The correspondence of St. Croix was seized. His connection with the Marchioness de Brinvilliers and his relations with Exili were discovered. Exili was thrown a second time into the Bastile. The Marchioness was arrested, and put upon her trial before the Chambre Ardente, where, as recorded in the narrative of her confessor, Pirol, her ravishing beauty of feature, blue eyes, snow-white skin, and gentle demeanor won a strong sympathy from the fickle populace of Paris, in whose eyes her charms of person and manner pleaded hard to extenuate her unparalleled crimes.

But no power of beauty or fascination of look could move the stern La Regnie from his judgment. She was pronounced guilty of the death of her husband, and sentenced first to be tortured and then beheaded and her body burnt on the Place de Greve, a sentence which was carried out to the letter. The ashes of the fairest and most wicked dame of the Court of Lous XIV. were scattered to the four corners of the city which had been the scene of her unparalleled crimes. The arch-poisoner Exili was also tried, and condemned to be burnt. The tumbril that bore him to execution was stopped on its way by the furious rabble, and he was torn in pieces by them.

For a short time the kingdom breathed freely in fancied security; but soon the epidemic of sudden as well as lingering deaths from poison broke out again on all sides. The fatal tree of the knowledge of evil, seemingly cut down with Exili and St. Croix, had sprouted afresh, like a upas that could not be destroyed.

The poisoners became more numerous than ever. Following the track of St. Croix and La Brinvilliers, they carried on the war against humanity without relaxation. Chief of these was a reputed witch and fortune-teller named La Voisin, who had studied the infernal secret under Exili and borne a daughter to the false Italian.

With La Voisin were associated two priests, Le Sage and Le Vigoureux, who lived with her, and assisted her in her necromantic exhibitions, which were visited, believed in, and richly rewarded by some of the foremost people of the Court. These necromantic exhibitions were in reality a cover to darker crimes.

It was long the popular belief in France, that Cardinal Bonzy got from La Voisin the means of ridding himself of sundry persons who stood in the way of his ecclesiastical preferment, or to whom he had to pay pensions in his quality of Archbishop of Narbonne. The Duchesse de Bouillon and the Countess of Soissons, mother of the famous Prince Eugene, were also accused of trafficking with that terrible woman, and were banished from the kingdom in consequence, while a royal duke, Francois de Montmorency, was also suspected of dealings with La Voisin.

The Chambre Ardente struck right and left. Desgrais, chief of the police, by a crafty ruse, penetrated into the secret circle of La Voisin, and she, with a crowd of associates, perished in the fires of the Place de Greve. She left an ill-starred daughter, Marie Exili, to the blank charity of the streets of Paris, and the possession of many of the frightful secrets of her mother and of her terrible father.

Marie Exili clung to Paris. She grew up beautiful and profligate; she coined her rare Italian charms, first into gold and velvet, then into silver and brocade, and at last into copper and rags. When her charms faded entirely, she began to practise the forbidden arts of her mother and father, but without their boldness or long impunity.