undergo ordinary and extraordinary torture, in order to know about her accomplices.
At the same time, she will be declared ineligible for her father's, her brothers' and her sister's inheritance from the day of her crimes, and her total fortune should be seized by the authorities, should pay 4 000 Pounds as repentance to the King, 5 000 Pounds to the prison chapel of the Parliament for requiems for the deceased father, her brothers and her sister, 10 000 Pounds damage to Lady Villarceau, the widow of Lord Aubray, and above all, pay all the costs of her trial as well as that of LaChaussée.”
The Marquess who, in the meantime, still hoping to find out a deceit for her judges, has previously denied stubbornly her crimes, confessed them now by herself, after her judgement was already pronounced. Mister Pirot, a doctor from the Sorbonne, to whom she confessed and who accompanied her on the judgement place, gives a very moving tale of the last twenty four hours of her life. She asked to receive the host, but it would be refused to her; it has never been given to criminals condemned to the death sentence. She demanded then only to receive a blessed bread, just like her uncle, Marshall of Marillac, did before his execution. But this would also be refused to her, because the crime of the Marshall, said people to her, by far, was not so abominable as hers; she must repent of her crimes by being deprived not only of the host itself, but even of the symbol of the same host.
The crowd present on her execution day was extraordinary numerous. Not only the execution place, but rather also all the streets through which she would be led, were full of people. The famous painter LeBrun stood at a place where he could observe exactly the scene to draw the expression of fear before a violent death on her face. But he found not what he was looking for. The Marquess observed through a trusted, long exercise with death which she has so often given with her own hands, a hardness which made her insensitive to her own death. She lost so little her presence of mind, that already on the way to the place of execution where she expected a painful death in the most shameful position which a human being can possibly find, she has freed herself totally from anything happening around her, and was completely unafraid of being observed. She threw a fixed look in the eyes of some well born ladies whom curiosity have also led there and said to them really bitterly: “In fact, this is a very beautiful scene for you, my ladies!”
Hence, we also want this execution to be told by Lady Sévigné.
“It is over with Brinvillier,” she says in a letter of July 17th, 1676, the day after the publication of the judgement, “she will ultimately find herself scattered in the air. Her poor, small body would after the beheading be thrown in a great fire and her ashes scattered in the air. We can inhale her now, and who knows with what kind of poisonous moods we will catch from this transfer! Her sentence was pronounced yesterday, people have read it to her today in the morning. People wanted to torture her; she assured, however, that it was not necessary, she wanted to confess everything voluntarily. She has really given an account of her life which is even more frightful than people may ever think, until four o'clock in the morning. She has given poison to her father ten times in a row, before she reached her goal; and ever feigned with him the highest filial tenderness. She demanded still to speak to the General Attorney. He remained one hour with her, people did not know, however, what she had still have to say to him.
“At six o’clock, dressed only with a shirt with a rope around the neck, she would be led to the church of Our Lady to do her repentance to the Church and then be put again on the cart. I saw her at this moment; leaning her back on a pile of straw, in a shirt with a short hood on her head, the spiritual authorities on one side, the judges on the other. All my limbs were trembling at this moment.
Those who have seen the execution, assure that she has ascended on the scaffold with a lot of courage. I, for my part, was with the well-intentioned people on the bridge of Notre Dame. Never have I seen Paris in such a turmoil. If you ask me certainly about what I have seen, hence I must recognize nothing further than the hood. It was a dreadful day. I will hear even more about it today, and so will you tomorrow.
“A couple of words still about Brinvillier”, she says in the following letters. “She has died, as she has lived, with resolution. As people brought her onto the place of execution where she should be tortured, she said by seeing the three buckets of water: I should presumably be drowning, for people cannot expect me to absorb all this. She listened to her sentence without showing any sign of emotion. In the end, she asked the same sentence to be read once again; for she said that since the beginning, the cart was so inappropriate to her that she could not pay attention to what was said. On the way to the execution place, she asked her confessor that she wanted to have the execution judge before her, “so that I”, she added, “do not have to see Corporal Desgrais who has captured me.” Desgrais accompanied the cart on horse. As her confessor showed her this arrangement, she replied: ”Oh God! I ask for your forgiveness! Spare me this strange moment!”
She climbed on the scaffold alone, barefoot. It really took a quarter of an hour for the execution judge to prepare her; hence, the crowd started to be impatient. On the following day, people sought after her remains because they thought that she was a saint. Before her imprisonment, as she confided herself, she had two confessors. “The first one”, she said, “demanded that I must recognize everything, the other one, however, affirmed that I should not do so; and I,” she added with a smile about these contradicting opinions, “hence, can do whatever pleases me.” It was pleasing her not to say a word about her accomplices. Penautier came out even whiter than snow from the whole case. The public was not happy.
“The world is always unfair,” says Lady Sévigné in the following letters, “it was unfair with Brinvillier. Never have people judged a gruesome act so hastily. People have not tortured this criminal; people even made her hope for a grace, and she certainly hoped to come out of the ordeal alive; and yet, on her way to the scaffold, she said: “Now, everything is in order”. In the meantime, her ashes have been dispersed in the air, and her confessor assured that she is a saint.”
The Marquis of Brinvillier would not be embroiled in anything in his wife's trial, and no one knew whatever happened to him after her execution. Madame Sévigné wrote that he has indeed requested grace for his significant other. Presumably, he sought to bury his sorrow in loneliness and to remove from the public memory a name which now was synonymous with the most abominable crime.
The pharmacist Glazer would also be dragged into this trial, because he has delivered to Saint Croix different substances, and it cost him all his efforts not to be accused.
Mister Penautier would be at once interrogated about the letters which Lady Brinvillier has written to him from prison. People knew that he must have had a close relationship with this criminal, and his relationship with Saint Croix was already publicly known. Through the general rumour about Saint Croix's skills in poison preparations, it also came out that a certain Lady Vosser would now be accused of murdering her husband. She conceded that her spouse, Lord Saint-Laurent, general cashier of the clergy, has been poisoned by a servant who was recommended to her by Saint Croix, and affirmed that the poison has been prepared by Saint Croix from a request by Penautier with whom she has already for long agreed to remove her husband from his office forcefully; that Penautier, as Saint Croix's accomplice, has fled from him. She built her accusation mainly on this completely specific interest which Mister Penautier had in killing her husband; through whose death he, at the same time, satisfied his revenge on a hated rival and received one of the most rewarding office. That Saint Croix, however, participated in this poisoning, she sought to prove, above all, from the most narrow relationship which Penautier had with this horrible criminal.
“Saint Croix,” she said, “received from Penautier enough money to maintain servants, waiters, coachmen; in a word, to have a glowing lifestyle. Such expenses, however, people do not easily care to make for another person just out of friendship; another, far more lively interest must be motivating it. What kind of interest could, however, Penautier have in covering Saint Croix with such benevolence, if it were not the rewards for services which he
