The Historical Nights' Entertainment, Rafael Sabatini [freenovel24 .txt] 📗

windows of the chapel

and the ante-room, as if the legions of hell had flung themselves

against the walls of the chateau. There was a rush and clatter in

the chimney of the ante-room’s vast, empty fireplace, and through

the din Marguerite, as her failing limbs sank under her and she

slithered down in a heap against the chapel door, seemed to hear a

burst of exultantly cruel satanic laughter. With chattering teeth

and burning eyes she sat huddled, listening in terror. The child

began to cry again, more violently, more piteously; then, quite

suddenly, there was a little choking cough, a gurgle, the chink of

metal against earthenware, and silence.

 

When some moments later the squat figure of La Voisin emerged from

the chapel, Marguerite was back in the shadows, hunched on the

settle to which she had crawled. She saw that her mother now

carried a basin under her arm, and she did not need the evidence

of her eyes to inform her of the dreadful contents that the witch

was bearing away in it.

 

Meanwhile in the chapel the ineffably blasphemous rites proceeded.

To the warm human blood which had been caught in the consecrated

chalice, Guibourg had added, among other foulnesses, powdered

cantharides, the dust of desiccated moles, and the blood of bats.

By the addition of flour he had wrought the ingredients into an

ineffable paste, and over this, through the door, which La Voisin

had left ajar, Marguerite heard his voice pronouncing the dread

words of Transubstantiation.

 

Marguerite’s horror mounted until it threatened to suffocate her.

It was as if some hellish miasma, released by Guibourg’s monstrous

incantations, crept through to permeate and poison the air she

breathed.

 

It would be a half-hour later when Madame de Montespan at last came

out. She was of a ghastly pallor, her limbs shook and trembled

under her as she stepped forth, and there was a wild horror in her

staring eyes. Yet she contrived to carry herself almost defiantly

erect, and she spoke sharply to the half-swooning Desceillets, who

staggered after her.

 

She took her departure from that unholy place bearing with her the

host compounded of devilish ingredients which when dried and reduced

to powder was to be administered to the King to ensure the renewal

of his failing affection for her.

 

The Marchioness contrived that a creature of her own, an officer of

the buttery in her pay, should introduce it into the royal soup.

The immediate and not unnatural result was that the King was taken

violently ill, and Madame de Montespan’s anxiety and suspense were

increased thereby. On his recovery, however, it would seem that

the demoniac sacrament - thrice repeated by then - had not been in

vain.

 

The sequel, indeed, appeared to justify Madame de Montespan’s faith

in sorcery, and to compensate her for all the horror to which in

her despair she had submitted. Madame de Ludres found herself coldly

regarded by the convalescent King. Very soon she was discarded, the

Widow Scarron neglected, and the fickle monarch was once more at the

feet of the lovely marchioness, her utter and devoted slave.

 

Thus was Madame de Montespan “thunderously triumphant” once more,

and established as firmly as ‘ever in the SunKing’s favour. Madame

de Sevigne, in speaking of this phase of their relations, dilates

upon the completeness of the reconciliation, and tells us that the

ardour of the first years seemed now to have returned. And for two

whole years it continued thus. Never before had Madame de

Montespan’s sway been more absolute, no shadow came to trouble, the

serenity of her rule.

 

But it proved, after all, to be no more than the last flare of an

expiring fire that was definitely quenched at last, in 1679, by

Mademoiselle de Fontanges. A maid of honour to madame, she was a

child of not more than eighteen years, fair and flaxen, with pink

cheeks and large, childish eyes; and it was for this doll that the

regal Montespan now found herself discarded.

 

Honours rained upon the new favourite. Louis made her a duchess

with an income of twenty thousand livres, and deeply though this

may have disgusted his subjects, it disgusted Madame de Montespan

still more. Blinded by rage she openly abused the new duchess, and

provoked a fairly public scene with Louis, in which she gave him

her true opinion of him with a disturbing frankness.

 

“You dishonour yourself,” she informed him among other things. “And

you betray your taste when you make love to a pink-and-white doll,

a little fool that has no more wit nor manners than if she were

painted on canvas!” Then, with an increase of scorn, she delivered

herself of an unpardonable apostrophe: “You, a king, to accept the

inheritance of that chit’s rustic lovers! “

 

He flushed and scowled upon her.

 

“That is an infamous falsehood!” he exclaimed. “Madame, you are

unbearable!” He was very angry, and it infuriated him the more that

she should stand so coldly mocking before an anger that could bow

the proudest heads in France. “You have the pride of Satan, your

greed is insatiable, your domineering spirit utterly insufferable,

and you have the most false and poisonous tongue in the world!”

 

Her brutal answer bludgeoned that high divinity to earth.

 

“With all my imperfections,” she sneered, “at least I do not smell

as badly as you do!”

 

It was an answer that extinguished her last chance. It was fatal

to the dignity, to the “terrible majesty” of Louis. It stripped

him of all divinity, and revealed him authoritatively as intensely

and even unpleasantly human. It was beyond hope of pardon.

 

His face turned the colour of wax. A glacial silence hung over the

agonized witnesses of that royal humiliation. Then, without a word,

in a vain attempt to rescue the dignity she had so cruelly mauled,

he turned, his red heels clicked rapidly and unsteadily across the

polished floor, and he was gone.

 

When Madame de Montespan realized exactly what she had done, nothing

but rage remained to her - rage and its offspring, vindictiveness.

The Duchess of Fontanges must not enjoy her victory, nor must Louis

escape punishment for his faithlessness. La Voisin should afford

her the means to accomplish this. And so she goes once more to the

Rue de la Tannerie.

 

Now, the matter of Madame de Montespan’s present needs was one in

which the witches were particularIy expert. Were you troubled with

a rival, did your husband persist in surviving your affection for him,

did those from whom you had expectations cling obstinately and

inconsiderately to life, the witches by incantations and the use of

powders - in which arsenic was the dominant charm - could usually

put the matter right for you. Indeed, so wide and general was the

practice of poisoning become, that the authorities, lately aroused

to the fact by the sensational revelations of the Marchioness de

Brinvilliers, had set up in this year 1670 the tribunal known as

the Chambre Ardente to inquire into the matter, and to conduct

prosecutions.

 

La Voisin promised help to the Marchioness. She called in another

witch of horrible repute, named La Filastre, her coadjutor Lesage,

and two expert poisoners, Romani and Bertrand, who devised an

ingenious plot for the murder of the Duchess of Fontanges. They

were to visit her, Romani as a cloth merchant, and Bertrand as his

servant, to offer her their wares, including some Grenoble gloves,

which were the most beautiful gloves in the world and unfailingly

irresistible to ladies. These gloves they prepared in accordance

with certain magical recipes in such a way that the Duchess, after

wearing them, must die a lingering death in which there could be no

suspicion of poisoning.

 

The King was to be dealt with by means of a petition steeped in

similar powders, and should receive his death by taking it into his

hands. La Voisin herself was to go to Saint-Germain to present

this petition on Monday, March 13th, one of those days on which,

according to ancient custom, all comers were admitted to the royal

presence.

 

Thus they disposed. But Fate was already silently stalking La

Voisin.

 

It is to the fact that an obscure and vulgar woman had drunk one

glass of wine too many three months earlier that the King owed his

escape.

 

If you are interested in the almost grotesque disparity that can

lie between cause and effect, here is a subject for you. Three

months earlier a tailor named Vigoureux, whose wife secretly

practised magic, had entertained a few friends to dinner, amongst

whom was an intimate of his wife’s, named Marie Bosse. This Marie

Bosse it was who drank that excessive glass of wine which, drowning

prudence, led her to boast of the famous trade she drove as a

fortuneteller to the nobility, and even to hint of something

further.

 

“Another three poisonings,” she chuckled, “and I shall retire with

my fortune made!”

 

An attorney who was present pricked up his ears, bethought him of

the tales that were afloat, and gave information to the police.

The police set a trap for Marie Bosse, and she betrayed herself.

Later, under torture, she betrayed La Vigoureux. La Vigoureux

betrayed others, and these others again.

 

The arrest of Marie Bosse was like knocking down the first of a row

of ninepins, but none could have suspected that the last of these

stood in the royal apartments.

 

On the day before she was to repair to Saint-Germain, La Voisin,

betrayed in her turn, received a surprise visit from the police -

who, of course, had no knowledge of the regicide their action was

thwarting - and she was carried off to the Chatelet. Put to the

question, she revealed a great deal; but her terror of the horrible

punishment reserved for regicides prevented her to the day of her

death at the stake - in February of 1680 from saying a word of her

association with Madame de Montespan.

 

But there were others whom she betrayed under torture, and whose

arrest followed quickly upon her own, who had not her strength of

character. Among these were La Filastre and the magician Lesage.

When it was found that these two corroborated each other in the

incredible things which they related, the Chambre Ardente took

fright. La Reynie, who presided over it, laid the matter before

the King, and the King, horror-stricken by the discovery of the

revolting practices in which the mother of his children had been

engaged, suspended the sittings of the Chambre Ardente, and

commanded that no further proceedings should be taken against Lesage

and La Filastre, and none initiated against Romani, Bertrand, the

Abbe Guibourg, and the scores of other poisoners and magicians who

had been arrested, and who were acquainted with Madame de Montespan’s

unholy traffic.

 

But it was not out of any desire to spare Madame de Montespan that

the King proceeded in this manner; he was concerned only to spare

himself and his royal dignity. He feared above all things the

scandal and ridicule which must touch him as a result of publicity,

and because he feared it so much, he could impose no punishment

upon Madame de Montespan.

 

This he made known to her at the interview between them procured by

his minister Louvois, at about the time that the sittings of the

Chambre Ardente were suspended.

 

To this interview that proud, domineering woman came in dread, and

in tears and humility for once. The King’s bearing was cold and

hard. Cold and hard were the words in which he declared the extent

of his knowledge of her infamy, words which revealed the loathing

and disgust this knowledge brought him. If at first she was

terror-stricken, crushed under the indictment,