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                         PRINCES AND POISONERS

                  _BY THE SAME AUTHOR AND TRANSLATOR_

LEGENDS OF THE BASTILLE. BY FRANTZ FUNCK-BRENTANO. With an Introduction
by VICTORIEN SARDOU. Translated by GEORGE MAIDMENT. 1899. Crown 8vo.
Cloth, 6_s._

CONTENTS.--I. The Archives; II. History of the Bastille; III. Life in
the Bastille; IV. The Man in the Iron Mask; V. Men of Letters in the
Bastille; VI. Latude; VII. The Fourteenth of July.

LONDON: DOWNEY AND CO., LIMITED.

[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF GABRIEL NICOLAS DE LA REYNIE

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL OF POLICE

(_Engraved by Van Schuppen, after the painting by Mignard_)]




                         Princes and Poisoners

                   STUDIES OF THE COURT OF LOUIS XIV

                                   BY
                         FRANTZ FUNCK-BRENTANO

                             TRANSLATED BY
                            GEORGE MAIDMENT

                        [Illustration: colphon]

                                 LONDON
                          _DUCKWORTH and CO._
                        3 HENRIETTA STREET, W.C.
                                  1901

                     _Second Impression, May 1901_

                         _All rights reserved._




PREFATORY NOTE


Twelve months ago I had the honour of introducing M. Frantz
Funck-Brentano to the English public by my translation of his _Legendes
et Archives de la Bastille_, and in my preface to that book I gave a
rapid sketch of his career which need not be repeated. If history is to
be continually reconstructed, or rather, perhaps, to undergo a process
of destructive distillation, there is no one more competent than M.
Funck-Brentano to perform the feat. We lose our illusions with our
teeth; the fables that charmed our childhood dissolve in the modern
historian's test-tube, and the mysteries that fascinated our forebears
become clear with a few drops of his critical acid.

In his former book, M. Funck-Brentano solved once for all the mystery
of the Man in the Iron Mask, showed up the impostor Latude in his true
colours, and gave us surprising information about the latter days of the
Bastille. In the present volume, the fruit of several years' research
among the archives at the Arsenal Library, he conclusively dispels the
cloud of suspicion that has hung over the sudden death of Charles I's
winsome and ill-fated daughter Henrietta; gives us for the first time
the authentic history of that beautiful poisoner Madame de Brinvilliers;
suggests a very plausible explanation of Racine's hitherto inexplicable
retirement from dramatic writing; and throws a strange light upon the
private history of Madame de Montespan and other fair ladies of Louis
XIV's Court. If it be objected that some of the details of the 'black
mass' and kindred abominations are too gruesome for print, it may be
urged in reply that these details are related with the cold impartial
pen of a serious historian, not coloured or heightened with a view to
melodramatic effect. 'Truth's a dog that must to kennel,' says Lear's
Fool; Louis the Magnificent tried to stifle the damning evidence against
his jealous, passionate mistress; when Time and patient research among
long-forgotten papers have combined to bring the truth to light, it
would ill become us to blame a scholar like M. Funck-Brentano for not
joining the monarch's conspiracy of silence.

G. M.

_November 1900._




CONTENTS


                                                                    PAGE

MARIE MADELEINE DE BRINVILLIERS--

  I. HER LIFE,                                                         1

 II. HER TRIAL,                                                       36

III. HER DEATH,                                                       76

THE POISON DRAMA AT THE COURT OF
LOUIS XIV--

  I. THE SORCERESSES--

         The Dinner of La Vigoreux,                                  117

         Sorcery in the Seventeenth Century,                         121

         The Practices of the Witches,                               128

         The Alchemists,                                             133

         La Voisin,                                                  144

         The Magician Lesage,                                        159

         The 'Chambre Ardente,'                                      163

         Louis XIV and the Poison Affair,                            180

 II. MADAME DE MONTESPAN,                                            187

III. A MAGISTRATE--GABRIEL NICOLAS DE LA REYNIE,                     265

THE DEATH OF '