The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (38 page)

A month earlier la Voisin had suggested that Lesage had done business with the Duchesse de Vivonne, sister-in-law of Mme de Montespan, and on 14 October Lesage confirmed this. He explained that, having become a client of the divineress Françoise Filastre, Mme de Vivonne had put her name to a pact drawn up by la Filastre, which contained ‘terrifying things’ in some way relating to the King. (He alleged that the Duchesses de Vitry and d’Angoulême had signed the same pact, but since the last named lady was proverbially virtuous, it was deemed inconceivable that this could be so and this part of his evidence was ignored.) Lesage said this had come to his knowledge when the Duchesse de Vivonne had grown anxious that this compromising document had remained in la Filastre’s possession. Desperate to recover it, the Duchesse had gone to Lesage and begged him with tears in her eyes to secure it for her. Lesage had promised he would regain it, though in fact he never managed to do so. Since he had not seen the document, he could not be specific as to its contents, but he said he understood that la Filastre had been promised a payment of 3000 livres if the wishes of those who had signed it were granted.
⁵³

A fortnight later Lesage named further members of the aristocracy who had been involved in questionable activities.
⁵⁴
He disclosed that the Comtesse de Soissons’s younger sister, the Duchesse de Bouillon, had come for a consultation with him when he was lodging at la Voisin’s. Following his well-practised routine, Lesage had invited her to put down her desires on paper and had then pretended to destroy what she had written. As usual, however, he had abstracted the paper and, on inspecting it, had discovered that the Duchesse had requested that her husband should die, leaving her free to marry the Duc de Vendôme. Lesage said that since then the Duchesse had sent to him several times, wanting to know whether he could fulfil her desire. On one occasion she had even tempted him with a bagful of coins but Lesage maintained that he was unwilling to commit himself to so hazardous an undertaking and had rejected her offer.

Lesage next identified the Marquis de Cessac as another of his clients. Cessac had been expelled from court in 1671 for cheating during a game of cards, but had been permitted to return three years later. Lesage reported that some years prior to his disgrace, Cessac had asked him to provide him with a secret means of winning at cards, particularly when playing against the King. A little later Cessac had confided that he was in love with his sister-in-law and, since he wanted to marry her, he asked Lesage to devise a way of killing his brother, the Comte de Clermont. Lesage had promised to effect this through magic and to this end had performed a distasteful ritual in Cessac’s presence. He had sent Cessac’s servant to dig up a bone from a nearby cemetery and then uttered incantations while the servant sewed the relic into the sleeve of a shirt. Cessac had promised Lesage that he would pay him 1000 pistoles upon the death of his brother but since Clermont had remained in good health, Lesage had received no more than twenty écus.

Contrary to la Voisin’s assertion, Lesage declared that the Comtesse du Roure had never been one of his customers, but he did not deny that, before going to the galleys, he had had extensive dealings with the Vicomtesse de Polignac. He recollected that when she had first come to him her demands had been quite modest, for she had merely wanted to be assured of the continuing affection of her current admirers, the Comte du Lude, the Vicomte de Larbouste and M. Doradour. In due course, however, she had grown more ambitious. Having learned that la Voisin had offered to procure the King’s affection for the Comtesse du Roure, Mme de Polignac had asked Lesage to do the same for her and she had also wanted him to arrange for the permanent removal of Louise de La Vallière. For good measure she had requested Lesage to make her husband die, as she desired her freedom.

In order to achieve this Lesage had conducted various ceremonies with Mariette, the priest who at that time was his partner. First there had been a recitation of magic formulas from an ancient book of spells; then, at dead of night, Mme de Polignac had gone by coach with Mariette and Lesage to the Bois de Boulogne, so that two pigeons’ hearts could be buried. The culminating desecration had come when Lesage had accompanied Mme de Polignac to Saint-Germain, so they could observe the King attend chapel. As mass was performed, Mme de Polignac had murmured incantations specially formulated by Lesage, designed to fill the King with slavish adoration for her.

Lesage contended that in doing all this he had performed a valuable service for, by preoccupying Mme de Polignac with these infantile distractions, he had prevented her from doing things that were truly wicked. He congratulated himself on having persuaded her ‘to quit la Voisin and her wicked poisoning ways’, for by this means he had ensured that no harm had come to Louise de La Vallière. It was understandable, however, that when Lesage’s statement was relayed to the King, he took a less sanguine view of the matter.

*   *   *

Lesage’s admissions had caused terrible consternation, but Mme Voisin’s capacity to shock was still equal to his. In a fit of vindictiveness she now sought to damage France’s leading writer who, many years before, had incurred her displeasure. On 21 November she made a solemn declaration to the effect that in December 1668 the playwright Jean Racine had poisoned an actress named Thérèse Du Parc, who at that time was his mistress.

In 1653 the twenty-year-old Thérèse Du Parc had come to Paris with Molière’s troupe of actors, after being spotted performing acrobatics in the market square at Lyon. Later that year she had married a comedian in the company with the stage name of Gros René, but she had attracted many other admirers, including the ageing playwright Corneille, whose advances she had rejected. In 1664 she had danced before the King in a skirt split to the thigh, and the sight of her wonderful legs encased in silk stockings had excited much admiring comment. Following the death of her husband in 1667, she had joined Racine’s theatre company at the Hotel de Bourgogne. Despite the fact that some people considered her an indifferent actress she had become the company’s leading lady, appearing in the title role for the first performance of
Andromaque.
At some point she had also become Racine’s mistress, though he was not the only man to enjoy her favours. In the summer of 1668 there were even unfounded rumours that her aristocratic lover, the Chevalier de Rohan, was contemplating marriage with her. Despite this, when she had died on 11 December 1668, Racine had appeared prostrate with grief, presenting a heart-rending spectacle as he walked behind her coffin.

Before long Racine had found consolation with a new mistress. This was the actress Marie Champmesle, a married woman who, like her predecessor, took other lovers besides Racine. Perhaps he tolerated this because she was a brilliant interpreter of his work, who successively played the leading female roles in
Iphigenia, Britannicus, Bérénice, Mithridrate
and
Phèdre.
However, in 1677 Racine had given up his career as a dramatist, and not merely out of pique at the mixed reception accorded to
Phèdre.
In moralists’ eyes the whole world of the theatre was inherently sinful and Racine, whose values had been shaped by his strict education at the religious community of Port Royal, could never free himself from the sense that his occupation was unworthy and degrading. When he had become a playwright his revered aunt had written deploring his association with people ‘whose name is abominable to all persons who have the slightest piety, and with reason’. Racine’s conscience had also been troubled when the polemicist Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin denounced the authors of verse plays as poisoners of the soul rather than the body, who were guilty of innumerable ‘spiritual homicides’.
⁵⁵

According to his son, Racine ultimately came to accept that playwrights were truly ‘public poisoners’ and that, in view of his exceptional talent, he was ‘the most dangerous of all’. As a result, when the King offered him the well-paid post of Historiographer Royal in September 1677, Racine acclaimed this as a ‘favour from God, who had procured him this important post to detach him entirely from poetry’.
⁵⁶
It was, of course, ironic that Racine believed his new career would bring him spiritual redemption when others saw the court as an even more corrupt environment than the artistic circles in which he had formerly moved, but such was his perception.

Racine now repudiated his past completely. He became an accomplished courtier, adept at delivering polished compliments to the King and the nobles he encountered. Somewhat curiously, he saw nothing wrong with drawing royalties from revivals of his plays but his wife, whom he had married in the spring of 1677, was never permitted to see or even read any of his works. He never deviated from his view that his life at court was far more worthy than the profession he had previously followed and he earned the approval of the Duc de Saint-Simon for having ‘nothing of the poet’ about him.
⁵⁷

Racine had become a figure of the utmost respectability but la Voisin threatened all that when she maintained that the man who acknowledged that his work had poisoned minds was a poisoner in the literal sense. Admittedly, her justification for this was absurdly slight. Having proclaimed herself to have been a great friend of Thérèse Du Parc, la Voisin complained that during the actress’s final illness, Racine had denied her access to the dying woman. La Voisin then alleged that at the time it had been rumoured that Racine had poisoned la Du Parc and that his behaviour had inclined her to believe this. It was her contention that Racine had secretly married la Du Parc, but he had remained ‘jealous of everyone and particularly of her, Voisin’, until this had finally driven him to murder. La Voisin described indignantly how, as Mlle Du Parc lay dying, Racine had hovered at the bedside, ignoring his mistress’s pleas to be allowed to see la Voisin. In support of her claims la Voisin observed that Thérèse Du Parc’s daughters by Gros René had stigmatised Racine as ‘the cause of their misfortune’, though as they had been aged nine and ten at the time of their mother’s death this was not as significant as it might seem. She further alleged that once la Du Parc was dead, Racine stole her jewels.
⁵⁸

The fact that la Voisin stated that Thérèse Du Parc had also vainly begged Racine to summon to her sickbed her chambermaid Manon, who had been trained as a midwife, has given rise to another theory. After Racine’s death his great friend Boileau told a biographer that Mlle Du Parc had died ‘in childbirth’, prompting speculation that, having become pregnant by Racine, she either did not survive labour or, alternatively, suffered fatal complications following an abortion. However, this does not seem very likely. It is, in fact, possible that in May 1668 Thérèse Du Parc had a child by Racine, who was brought up by foster-parents,
⁵⁹
but since she lived for six months more this does not vindicate Boileau’s assertion.

Furthermore, the fact that Mlle Du Parc was accorded a funeral service in the church of Saint-Roch, prior to being buried in the cemetery of a Carmelite convent, militates against the idea that the circumstances surrounding her death were in any way irregular. In seventeenth-century France all those who earned their living on the stage were under such a stigma that the Church refused to administer the last rites to actors unless they promised never to perform again even in the event of their recovery. Those who declined to do so died unshriven and could not be buried in hallowed ground. Years later Racine would be very censorious when he heard that his former leading lady Marie Champmesle was proving reluctant to renounce her stage career, despite being stricken by terminal illness. Sneering that apparently ‘she found it very glorious to die an actress’, he expressed the sanctimonious hope that she would repent once she realised that death was imminent, ‘as most people usually do who put on proud airs when they are feeling well’.
⁶⁰
Clearly Thérèse Du Parc had made a full confession on her deathbed and had been granted absolution, for otherwise no priest would have officiated at her funeral.

The evidence that Racine had been responsible for Thérèse Du Parc’s death could hardly have been more risible. While proof of association with la Voisin might be considered legitimate grounds for suspicion, in Racine’s case it was the fact that he had refused to have anything to do with her that was adduced against him. Nevertheless, la Voisin’s testimony was treated seriously. On 11 January 1680 Louvois told Bezons that if he so desired a warrant for Racine’s arrest would immediately be issued by the King.
⁶¹
In the event, however, good sense prevailed and Racine was never taken into custody.

*   *   *

Mme Voisin had excelled herself by alleging that France’s greatest dramatist was a murderer, but Lesage now effectively trumped her by unveiling claims that were still more disturbing. The names of various priests had already featured peripherally in the inquiry. As more had become known about Mariette’s past activities, orders had been given for the priest’s arrest in September 1679, although he was not actually found until several months later. While the search was still in progress, there had been ominous signs that Mariette had not been alone in defiling his sacerdotal office. When questioned about some other priests, including a pair named Huet and Henault, Lesage had suggested that they too had been involved in dubious activities. However, he did not specify in what way they might have profaned their calling, confining himself to saying that he believed that they had worked with Mariette on ‘matters of consequence’.
⁶²
It was only in late November that Lesage became more explicit, providing the first real intimation that there were several priests in Paris who, far from striving to bring their flock nearer to God, preferred to act as instruments of the devil.