The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (50 page)

One of the few compelling reasons to accept Marie’s evidence as truthful is that her revelations damaged her own prospects. Had she been more circumspect there is a good chance that she would ultimately have been discharged, but once she had spoken out that became unthinkable. Perhaps she simply failed to assess the situation correctly and assumed she was in worse trouble than was, in fact, the case. It is unlikely, however, that fear provided the sole motive for her startling declarations. Reading her evidence, it is hard to escape the suspicion that she relished being the centre of attention and enjoyed depicting herself as a person of consequence whom her mother had entrusted with fearful secrets.

It was not, perhaps, surprising that Marie was a far from stable character. La Reynie described her as impulsive and fiery, ‘with a strange cast of mind’, and when first imprisoned she had tried to commit suicide by self-strangulation. Her background could hardly have been more unsettling, for even as a child she had been aware that ‘strange things’ went on in her mother’s house.

At the time, care had been taken to conceal their exact nature, but the sense that things were being kept from her had merely stimulated her inquisitive nature and encouraged her tendency to fantasise. She possessed a vivid imagination as well as being an accomplished liar and by the time she reached adulthood she was – as Colbert put it – ‘cunning and ingenious to an extent that is inconceivable in one of her age and condition’.
³¹

Marie’s mental equilibrium cannot have been aided by the emotional turmoil she had experienced within the past two years. Prior to her mother’s arrest she had become pregnant by a lover who had seduced her on promise of marriage and then abandoned her. Fearful of what her mother might do, Marie had turned for help to the midwife Mme Lepère. The latter had either carried out an abortion or delivered Marie of a child that had failed to survive. In the spring of 1679 the shocking arrest of Marie’s mother (towards whom Marie’s feelings are hard to define) was followed in quick succession by the death of her father and this can hardly have failed to have affected her. It is true that Lesage once indicated that Marie had been aware of her mother’s attempts to poison Montvoisin and he implied she had not minded in the least. On the other hand Marie herself gave the impression she had been fond of her father. According to her, far from conniving at her mother’s attempts to murder him, she had only narrowly avoided dying alongside him. She claimed that she had been poisoned on at least two occasions, once accidentally, when she drank some soup prepared for her father and once after she had displeased her mother by talking too freely.
³²
It is difficult to assess the truth of all this but at the very least it would be fair to say that Marie’s family life had been unusually disturbed. It was particularly unfortunate that La Reynie’s investigation would come to hinge so much on this highly strung and manipulative young woman.

*   *   *

La Reynie hoped that Marie would be able to clarify various matters which had remained unresolved at the time of la Voisin’s execution. It particularly worried him that la Voisin had admitted that at the time of her arrest she had been planning to present a petition to the King. The petition had related to a lover of la Voisin’s named Denis Poculot, Sieur de Blessis. This man, who at one time owned a business that manufactured artificial marble, had met la Voisin in 1676 when she had drawn up his horoscope. After that they had continued to meet secretly at the house of the divineress la Delaporte.
³³

La Reynie believed there was ample evidence that Blessis was an extremely dangerous man. Prior to her execution Marie Bosse had said that he knew how to poison gloves, while Lesage had related that la Voisin’s husband had once burst out that it was ‘that bugger of an apothecary’ Blessis who had taught her to poison shirts and handkerchiefs. La Voisin herself never confirmed that he had such expertise, though under torture she conceded he knew how to make some kinds of poison. She acknowledged, too, that Blessis had once offered to arrange for her husband to be poisoned and recalled that he had once referred to orpiment as ‘the father of poisons’.
³⁴

It is clear, however, that Blessis’s abiding interest was alchemy. He had persuaded la Voisin and others that a dying Italian in Perpignan had given him the formula for a ‘projection powder’, which would enable him to convert base metal into gold. La Voisin became convinced that Blessis would make her fortune after he pulled off the remarkable feat of making silver using goat’s fat, though he was never able to repeat the procedure.
³⁵

Unfortunately, word of Blessis’s prowess soon reached others, with the result that he became a victim of his own propaganda. Hearing that he could convert copper into silver, a cousin of M. de Montespan’s named Roger, Marquis de Termes decided he would exploit Blessis’s knowledge for his own enrichment. In late 1678 Blessis was abducted and detained in Termes’s chateau. Two furnaces had been installed in one of the towers and it was made clear to Blessis that he would not be permitted to leave until he had performed the miracle required of him.

La Voisin had been dismayed to be deprived of her lover, who she had hoped would bring her fabulous riches. After she had consulted with various friends of Blessis, it was agreed she should submit a petition to the King, requesting that he order the Marquis de Termes to release Blessis. Despite the difficulties of gaining access to the King, la Voisin had been determined to present this document personally to Louis.

When people wished to petition the King, the normal procedure was for them to place their written request on a table set up every Monday in the guardroom of whichever palace the King currently occupied. At the beginning of the reign the King himself had sat behind the table as the petitions were laid there, but in recent years he had delegated this task to Louvois. The petitions submitted in this way were generally returned about a week later, marked to indicate whether they would be granted, rejected or given further consideration.
³⁶

On occasion individuals were still able to hand petitions personally to the King, though to do so they had to gain the assistance of someone who could facilitate an approach to him. In 1678 an English visitor to Versailles saw a poor woman present a petition to the King as he sat at dinner and was impressed by the graceful manner in which Louis received it, ‘with abundance of sweetness mixed with majesty’. Two years earlier the Comte d’Armagnac had introduced François Grandet to the King as the latter made his way to mass and Grandet had seized the opportunity to present Louis with a petition from the townspeople of Angers. Their request was subsequently granted though, in fact, this was an unusual outcome. Grandet was later told that petitions presented in this way were generally left in the King’s pocket when he changed his coat and Louis tended to forget all about them.
³⁷

Mme Voisin had never managed to present her petition. Being admitted to the palace had not posed a problem, for anyone suitably attired was permitted to come to court, but gaining access to the King had proved another matter entirely. Realising that she would need the aid of an insider at court to stand any chance of a personal encounter, la Voisin had applied to the Duc de Montausier’s valet. After she had asked him to arrange for her to be advantageously placed, the serving man had done his best to be helpful, but his influence had been too limited to achieve anything. In early March 1679 la Voisin had gone to Saint-Germain on three consecutive days in hopes of presenting her petition, but she never came anywhere near the King. She had intended to try again, but before she could do so she had been arrested.

La Reynie was worried that there had been any prospect of la Voisin having even the briefest contact with the King. He had become still more concerned when la Voisin had mentioned during one interview that Lesage had offered to ‘fit up’ the petition in a manner that would guarantee a successful outcome. La Voisin said melodramatically that she had not known what Lesage had meant by this and had not wanted to find out more.
³⁸
If Lesage had made such an offer (which he denied) in all probability he had merely intended to say an incantation intended to improve the chances of the petition being granted. Unfortunately, a much more frightening explanation took seed in the mind of La Reynie.

*   *   *

Besides his anxiety on this score La Reynie was disturbed by some other things he had learned about la Voisin. Ever since Lesage had declared that he had heard la Voisin boasting she was on the brink of earning 100,000 écus, La Reynie had pondered anxiously what sort of feat could ever have netted the divineress the vast payment. When pressed to offer an explanation, Lesage had answered vaguely that he believed the sum was in some way connected with visits la Voisin had made to Saint-Germain about five years earlier. He alleged that she had gone there to deliver powders but, to the end of her life, la Voisin insisted she had never been to Saint-Germain on such a mission. However, after la Voisin had been executed, La Reynie became convinced she had been lying, for some women who had shared a cell with her testified that she had evinced a terrible dread of being questioned more closely about her visits to Saint-Germain.
³⁹

La Reynie noted that la Voisin had not denied telling people she had golden prospects and that she would soon be in possession of 100,000 écus. When La Reynie had questioned her as to the source, she answered that she had hoped Blessis’s projects would bring her huge profits or, alternatively, that another of her associates, Latour, would show her how to stabilise the ‘spirit of mercury’, which would unlock the secret of the Philosopher’s Stone. During her final interrogation she had declared that the 100,000 écus had been an insubstantial vision, ‘a thing up in the air’, but La Reynie remained convinced there had been more to it than that.
⁴⁰

*   *   *

If La Reynie had hoped that Marie Montvoisin would cast light on these matters, his initial interviews with her proved disappointing. At the end of March 1680 Marie was questioned about her mother’s activities and she replied that though she had realised that odd things took place in her home, she had not witnessed them. ‘Being young, she was always made to retire’ when her mother saw clients, although the smell of sulphur and incense, which often emanated from la Voisin’s cabinet, had left Marie in no doubt that bizarre rituals were being performed within. She recalled that on one occasion Lesage and her mother had despatched her to buy a live white pigeon. When she had brought it back, they had cut its throat and collected its blood in a goblet. However, they had then sent her away, so she did not know what they had done with it.

Marie was then asked what she knew about the petition her mother had tried to present to the King just before her arrest. Marie said the petition had been drawn up by one of Blessis’s friends named Romani and it had been he who had been adamant that la Voisin must hand it to the King in person. Marie remembered that Romani had commented, ‘Provided that the King opened the petition himself it would be enough.’

Marie added that she had heard Romani talk of another scheme. His brother was a priest and he acted as confessor to Mme de Montespan’s former personal maid, Mlle des Oeillets. Romani had wanted to meet Mlle des Oeillets and had announced he would gain access to her by pretending to be a silk merchant with wares to sell. Having secured an introduction in this way, he was confident she would prove a valuable contact.
⁴¹
While there was nothing inherently sinister in this, La Reynie was interested by the possibility that Mlle des Oeillets – who Lesage had claimed was a client of la Voisin’s – had been associated with another member of la Voisin’s circle.

*   *   *

More than three months elapsed before Marie Montvoisin was interviewed again but when she was next questioned on 5 July 1680,
⁴²
she began to hint that there had been some deeper purpose behind la Voisin’s attempts to present the King with a petition. She said la Voisin’s colleague and fellow divineress, Catherine Trianon, had known of la Voisin’s plans and had been fearful of the consequences. On being informed by Marie that la Voisin had been arrested, la Trianon had not appeared surprised. Instead, she had merely commented that she had predicted la Voisin’s visit to Saint-Germain would bring misfortune on her and that she had been engaged in a dangerous business.

Marie also revealed that though her mother had failed to present her petition during her abortive visit to Saint-Germain, she had intended to try again. When la Voisin’s husband had asked her why she was so obsessed about handing over the petition, she had answered excitably that she must achieve her objective or perish in the attempt. ‘What, perish?’ the startled Montvoisin had exclaimed. ‘It’s a bit much for a piece of paper.’

During this interrogation Marie was asked if she had ever met the priest Étienne Guibourg. Later she would declare that she had watched Guibourg perform the most atrocious acts imaginable but for the moment she maintained that she barely knew him. She said she had glimpsed Guibourg on two or three occasions at her mother’s house but had never really become acquainted with him.

Marie seemed taken aback by another question that was put to her in the course of the interview. She was asked whether she had been aware if the petition that had so exercised her mother had been treated in some unspecified fashion. From this Marie deduced there were suspicions that the document had been impregnated with poison. Startled, she blurted out that she did not think one could do something like that to a piece of paper and that, if the petition had really posed a danger, she would not have failed to warn the authorities.