CHAPTER VIII

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The Poisoners—The Marchioness of Brinvilliers—Penautier—La Voisin and her accomplices and dupes—The “Chambre Ardente”—The Countess of Soissons—The Duchess of Bouillon—The Duke of Luxembourg—Stephen de Bray—The Abbé Primi—Andrew Morell—Madame Guyon—Courtils de Sandraz—Constantine de Renneville—The Man with the Iron Mask—Jansenists—Tiron, Veillant, and Lebrun Desmarets—The Count de Bucquoy—The Duke de Richelieu—Miscellaneous Prisoners.

In the year 1676, the Bastile received a criminal, whose guilt was of the blackest dye, and who was soon followed by a crowd of imitators, more profoundly wicked, if possible, than she herself was. Poisoning was their crime, and the practice of it became so common, that Madame de Sévigné expresses a fear that, in foreign countries, the words Frenchman and poisoner would be considered as synonymous.

Foremost in the dark catalogue stands the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, the daughter of Dreux d’Aubrai, the Civil Lieutenant. She was beautiful, reserved in her manners, and apparently devout; but her heart was corrupted to the core. From her own confession, it appears, that when she was only seven years old, she had already lost her maiden innocence, and had also set fire to a house. Her later years were worthy of this beginning. Between 1666 and 1670, she poisoned her father, two brothers, a sister, and many of her acquaintance. She is said to have administered poison to her husband, though without effect; and also, with fatal success, to the poor, and the sick in the hospitals, to whom she gave biscuits, in which deadly drugs were mixed. The latter facts are denied by Voltaire; they are, however, positively affirmed by Madame de Sévigné.

The diabolical art which she so widely practised was learned from St. Croix, a young officer, who was her paramour. He was a friend of her husband, who, in opposition to her real or feigned remonstrances, made him an inmate of his house. A criminal intimacy soon took place between the wife and the friend. The husband, a man of dissipated habits, seems to have been regardless of their intrigue; but her father was so disgusted by its shameless publicity that he obtained a lettre-de-cachet, and St. Croix was lodged in the Bastile, where he continued for twelve months. There St. Croix was placed in the same apartment with Exili, an Italian, who was confined on suspicion of being, as he really was, a compounder and vender of poisons. Exili taught St. Croix all his detestable secrets, and the latter communicated them to the marchioness, who was a willing scholar.

St. Croix died suddenly in 1672, and, as he had no relatives, the government took possession of his effects. Among them was a small box, which was importunately claimed by the marchioness. It was opened, and found to contain a note, desiring that it might be delivered, without the contents being disturbed, to Madame de Brinvilliers. The box was filled with poisons of all kinds, some of the marchioness’s letters to him, and a note of hand to him, for 30,000 livres, bearing her signature.

Disappointed in all attempts to gain possession of the box, and finding that suspicion began to fall heavily upon her, Brinvilliers took flight. After having visited England, she fixed her residence at Liege. Fresh presumptions of her guilt having arisen, it was resolved to arrest her. Desgrais, the exempt of police, was accordingly despatched to Liege. He disguised himself as an Abbé, pretended to be enamoured of her, insinuated himself into her good graces, and ultimately succeeded in seizing the lady and her papers, and conveying them to Paris.

Brinvilliers now disavowed all knowledge of the box; but it was too late. For a little while her spirits deserted her, and she made an ineffectual attempt at suicide. She, however, soon rallied them, and preserved her courage to the last. Among her papers was found a written confession of the numerous crimes which she had committed. To extort an oral confession, it was resolved to put her to the ordinary question, which consisted in forcing down the throat of the culprit an immense quantity of water. When she saw three buckets in the torture room, she coolly observed, “This must be for the purpose of drowning me, for they can never expect to make a woman of my size drink it all.” She was saved from the trial, by making a full avowal of her misdeeds. Her sentence she heard with an unaltered countenance. In the last twenty-four hours of her existence she is said to have manifested sincere penitence. She was beheaded, and her remains were burned, on the 16th of July, 1676. It will perhaps scarcely be believed that, on the morrow, the besotted populace collected her ashes; assigning as their reason for so doing, that she was a saint!

With Brinvilliers was implicated Penautier, who held the lucrative offices of treasurer-general of the clergy, and of the states of Languedoc. He was known to be her intimate friend, and was believed, apparently with reason, to be one of her favoured lovers. It is asserted, that in the box which was left by St. Croix, there was a packet of poison, addressed to Penautier. That the receiver-general had the reputation of making use of such packets is certain, and was a subject of public jest. Cardinal de Bonzi, archbishop of Narbonne, who was his strenuous protector, used to say laughingly, “None of those who have pensions on my benefices are long-lived, for my star is fatal to them all.” The caustic Abbé Fouquet one day saw the prelate and Penautier in a carriage together, and he told everybody that he had just met Cardinal de Bonzi and his star. Penautier was imprisoned, and appears to have been in imminent danger; from which he is said to have been extricated only by the most powerful influence, and the sacrifice of half his riches.

Instead of operating as a warning, the execution of the marchioness would rather seem to have stimulated others to the commission of the horrible species of crime for which she suffered. After her death, poisoning is said to have become prevalent to an extraordinary degree. Loud complaints arose from numbers of families, members of which were supposed to have been taken off secretly by their enemies, or by those who were eager to inherit their riches. It was with reference to the latter motive that the name of “powder of succession” was given to the drug administered. We may believe that the complaints were not unfrequently groundless—for it has always been the practice of weak minds to ascribe sudden death to poison—but still, it is certain that there were very many cases in which the suspicion was borne out by facts.

So general did the clamour become, that, in January, 1660, the king issued an ordinance, naming commissioners, who were to hold their sittings at the Arsenal, for the purpose of trying poisoners and magicians! This commission is known by the name of _la Chambre Ardente_. It has been supposed, that it derived this appellation from its being established to take cognizance of crimes which were punishable by fire. This appears to be a mistake; the name having, in old times, been given to the hall in which criminals of high birth were tried, and which was so called because it was hung with black, and lighted with torches. The same title was, however, borne by a sort of committee, which Francis II. instituted in each parliament, for the trial of protestants, and which mercilessly condemned them to the flames.

The principal distributor of the poisons, a widow, by the name of Monvoisin, but who was known under the appellation of La Voisin, was already in the Bastile, with about forty persons charged as her accomplices. The most prominent of these subordinate culprits were, a female, named La Vigoureux, and her brother, and Cœuvrit, a priest, who was called Lesage. La Voisin was a midwife; but her profession not proving lucrative, she deserted it for the more profitable speculation of turning to account the credulity, the folly, and at last the vices, of mankind. The most innocent part of her employment consisted in telling fortunes on the cards, discovering stolen goods, casting nativities, and selling charms and spells, to render women beautiful and beloved, and men invulnerable and fortunate! Her pretensions to supernatural skill did not stop here; for she boldly undertook to show spirits, and even the devil himself, to her dupes. Such is the cullibility of the crowd, whether of high or low degree, that the number of her visitors, the majority of whom were people of rank, soon enabled her to remove from a mean lodging into a splendid mansion, and keep an equipage and a train of attendants. That her house was made a convenience for the purposes of seduction, and for carrying on illicit connexions, there can be no doubt; many of those who frequented it, of both sexes, being notorious profligates. The round of La Voisin’s occupations was completed by the sale of poisons to those who were desirous of destroying the proof of incontinence, taking vengeance on a rival or an enemy, or getting rid of superannuated husbands and long-lived relatives.

The newly-established tribunal found the whole of the prisoners guilty. All but La Voisin were condemned to punishments short of death; to imprisonment, exile, or the galleys. She alone was sentenced to be burned alive on the Place de Grêve, and her ashes scattered to the winds. The narrative of her last hours proves that, to a considerable portion of brutal courage, or rather insensibility, she added the most disgusting sensuality, vulgarity, and impiety. When she was informed of her doom, she invited her guards to have a midnight revel with her, at which she drank largely of wine, and sang twenty bacchanalian songs. The next evening, after having undergone the question, she repeated the revel; and when she was told that she had better think on God, and sing hymns, she sang two hymns in a burlesque style. On the morning of her execution, she was enraged at being refused any other food than soup. Before she was placed in the sledge, she was advised to confess; but she obstinately refused, and thrust away from her the confessor and the cross. At Nôtre Dame, it was impossible to make her repeat the amende honorable, and when she reached the Grêve she struggled furiously against the officers, and it was not without using force that they could take her from the vehicle, bind her, and place her on the pile. Consistent to the last, she several times kicked off the straw, poured forth a volley of oaths, and did not cease her violence till the flames deprived her of the power of motion and speech.

Either with the hope of obtaining impunity, by implicating the great and powerful in her crimes, or, which her character renders more probable, that she might enjoy the malignant delight of involving them in her ruin, La Voisin disclosed the names of many of the noblest personages of the court, who had consulted her; and she stated circumstances which gave rise to terrible suspicions against them. Among those whom she thus dragged into public view, were the Countess of Soissons and the Duchess of Bouillon, nieces of Cardinal Mazarin, the Princess de Tingri, Madame de Polignac, and the Duke of Luxembourg. Against some of the suspected or accused individuals, the Chamber issued warrants; others it summoned to appear, and answer interrogatories.

The Countess of Soissons, mother of the celebrated Prince Eugene, was a woman whose reputation was already sullied by the stains of political and amorous intrigue. Among the crimes which were attributed to her, was the death of her husband, who died suddenly in 1673. In her early years, before he became enamoured of her sister Mary, Louis had paid her some attentions. It was probably the remembrance of his transient flame that induced him to send to the countess a message, that if she were innocent he advised her to enter the Bastile, in which case he would befriend her, but that, if she were guilty, she might retire wherever she pleased. She replied that she was blameless, but that she could not endure imprisonment. The countess immediately set off for Brussels, and she never returned to France. It would, however, be doing her injustice to conceal, that she offered to come back and justify herself, on condition that she should not be confined while the trial was pending. The condition was not granted, and she died in exile, in 1708.

The Duchess of Bouillon, her sister, passed through the ordeal more triumphantly. There is something amusing in the flippant contempt with which she treated her judges. The carriages of nine dukes went in procession with her to the Chambre Ardente, into which she was handed by her husband and the Duke of Vendôme. Before she would take notice of any question that was put to her, she ordered the clerk to minute down, “that she came there solely out of respect to the king’s orders, and not at all to the Chamber, which she would not recognize, because she would not derogate from the privilege of the ducal class.” She then answered, but with no small disdain, the various questions, some of which were, in truth, ridiculous enough. Her reason for going to La Voisin’s house was, she said, that she wished to see the Sibyls, which that female had promised to show her. La Reynie, one of the judges, being absurd enough to ask if she had seen the devil, she replied that she saw him at that moment, that he was very ugly and filthy, and was disguised in the garb of a counsellor of state. As she quitted the court, she said aloud, that she had never before heard so many foolish speeches so gravely uttered. There being nothing more to urge against her than that she had been credulous and sillily curious, no further proceedings were taken by the court, but, angry at her having made laughing-stocks of his magistrates, Louis sent her in exile to Nerac, in the distant province of Guienne.

If in France military talents of the highest order, and important services rendered to the state, had possessed any protecting influence, Francis Henry de Montmorenci, Duke of Luxembourg, would not have been made a prisoner, and nearly a victim, by an implacable and unprincipled minister. Luxembourg was the posthumous son of that Bouteville whom, in a preceding chapter, we have seen consigned to the scaffold for the crime of duelling. He was warmly patronised by the Princess of Condé, who placed him as aide-de-camp to her son. The young Condé soon became attached to him. At the battle of Lens, Bouteville distinguished himself so greatly, that, though he was not more than twenty, Anne of Austria made him a major-general.

During the war of the Fronde, Bouteville followed the fortunes of Condé; he joined the Spaniards with him, acquired in numerous encounters a well-merited reputation, and, finally, returned to his allegiance along with his friend. There is an anecdote recorded of him, on the latter occasion, which is much to his honour. After Bouteville had ceased to bear arms against France, the Spanish monarch sent him 60,000 crowns, as a reward for his services. He refused to take the money: “I never,” said he, “considered myself in the service of Spain, and will receive favours only from my own sovereign.” Soon after this, he married the heiress of the house of Luxembourg, by which union he gained a dukedom, and a splendid fortune. If we may believe St. Simon, rank and riches were all that the husband derived from this match, the lady being “frightfully ugly, both in figure and face,” and not at all atoning for her personal defects by intellectual qualities. As far as regarded beauty, the pair had no right to reproach each other; for Luxembourg himself had repulsive features, a prominence on his chest, and another behind.

Between 1667 and 1679, Luxembourg, sometimes commander-in-chief, sometimes as second to the great Condé and the Duke of Orleans, displayed, in Franche Comté, Holland, and Flanders, a degree of skill which gave him a conspicuous place in the first class of generals: in fact, Turenne having fallen, and Condé retired, Luxembourg had no equal in France. The marshal’s staff was conferred on him in 1675.

But neither the ancient descent, nor the high rank, nor the still higher renown, of Luxembourg, were sufficient to shield him from the malice of his potent enemy. That enemy was Louvois,—Louvois, the perpetual inciter of Louis to war, the director of the horrible crimes committed by the French troops in Holland, and the incendiary of the Palatinate. He was, at one time, the friend of Luxembourg, but they quarrelled; and he thenceforth hated him, with even a more deadly hatred than he had cherished against Turenne. The affair of the poisoners seemed to afford him an opportunity, which he eagerly seized, of disgracing, and perhaps destroying, the duke.

It was by a credulous belief in the power of pretended sorcerers, that Luxembourg was brought into peril. Bonnard, clerk to one of his lawyers, had lost some papers, which were indispensable to the success of a lawsuit instituted by the duke. To recover them, he applied to Lesage, one of the confederates of La Voisin. Lesage required 2,000 crowns, and the performance of certain mummeries by Bonnard; and his demand was granted. The papers were then found to be in the hands of a girl named Dupin, who refused to give them up. A power of attorney was now obtained from the duke, by Bonnard, authorizing steps to be taken against Dupin, to compel her to resign the papers. This he gave to Lesage, who, between the body of the document and the signature, inserted two lines, containing a transfer of the duke’s soul to his Satanic majesty. Luckily, the clumsy forger had written these lines in a hand writing quite different from that of the instrument itself. This compact with the devil formed the main proof against Luxembourg. He appears, indeed, to have afforded a further pretext for suspicion, by his weakness in applying to Lesage for the horoscopes of various individuals.

It was on this slender foundation that the plot against him was built. When his name began to be called in question, he is said to have been insidiously counselled by Louvois, to save himself by flight. The brave Cavoie, who was his friend, proved himself to be so, by advising him to surrender himself voluntarily to the Bastile; and this advice was wisely followed by the duke. On his arrival there, he was placed in a comfortable chamber, and, on the second day, he underwent a preliminary interrogation. But it was not the intention of the minister who had driven him into a prison, that he should enjoy any comfort there; and accordingly, on the third day, he was removed to one of the filthiest of dungeons, not more than six feet and a half in diameter, and no further notice was taken of him for five weeks. He claimed his privilege, as a peer, of being tried by the Parliament, but no attention was paid to his claim, and he was obliged to be contented with protesting against this denial of justice. It was afterwards made a subject of reproach to him, by some of the peers, that he had not stood up with sufficient boldness for the rights of the peerage.

Luxembourg remained for fourteen months in the noisome den into which Louvois had thrown him. The fetid atmosphere which he breathed, the want of exercise, and the disturbed state of his mind, brought on a fit of illness, and so much injured his constitution that he never thoroughly recovered. It must have been no small aggravation of his sufferings, that he was occasionally drawn forth, to be confronted with the profligate Lesage, and others of the same class, and to hear them impudently charge him with the foulest crimes. Lesage maintained, that the duke had entered into the compact with Satan for the purpose of procuring the death of Dupin; his accomplices added, that by his order they had murdered her, cut the body into quarters, and thrown it into the river. Besides this improbable story, they told another, equally improbable, that he had given poisoned wine to a brother of Dupin, and to a mistress whom that brother kept, and had endeavoured to destroy several persons by means of sorcery. Their depositions may, indeed, contest the palm of absurdity and falsehood with those of Titus Oates and his perjured associates.

This, however, was not all. It would seem, from their evidence, that the duke had driven a hard bargain with the prince of darkness, for they asserted that the compact was designed not only to bring about the murder of Dupin, but also to obtain the government of a province or a fortress, and the marriage of his son with the daughter of Louvois. In a letter to a friend, Luxembourg has left on record his dignified answer to the last of these stupid calumnies. After treating with ridicule the idea that he would sell his soul for a government, he says, with respect to the remainder, “I replied that when the villain (Lesage) told such an untruth, he did not know that I was of a family which did not purchase alliances by crimes; that it would have been a great honour to me had my son married Mdlle. de Louvois, but that I would not have adopted for the purpose any means which would have subjected me to self-reproach; and that when Matthew de Montmorenci espoused a queen of France, the mother of a minor king, he did not give himself to the devil for this marriage, since the thing was done by a resolution of the States General, who declared that, to gain for the monarch the services of the lords of Montmorenci, it was necessary to form this union. It was even out of delicacy that I used the word _services_, for I believe that, in the declaration, the word _protection_ is used.”

Such testimony as was produced against Luxembourg was not deemed by his judges sufficient to warrant his conviction, even though a minister of state was eager for his ruin. He was, in consequence, set free on the 14th of May, 1680. Notwithstanding the duke’s acquittal, Louis banished him from the court, and he remained in exile till the summer of 1681, when he was recalled, and resumed his duties as captain of the body-guards. It is somewhat remarkable, that Louis never made the slightest allusion to what had passed.

For ten years, Luxembourg remained without a command. In 1690, however, Louis himself placed him at the head of the army in Flanders. Luxembourg had scarcely taken the field, before he gained the splendid victory of Fleurus. The fall of Namur, or of Charleroi, would probably have been the result of this success, had he not been thwarted by the malignant Louvois, who forbade his besieging either of those fortresses, and deprived him of the best part of his army, to reinforce Boufflers. In the succeeding campaigns, Luxembourg pursued his triumphant progress, and won the battles of Leuze, Steenkirk, and Neerwinden. Such a number of standards were taken, and sent to be hung up in the cathedral of Nôtre Dame, at Paris, that the Prince of Conti wittily denominated him “the tapestry-hanger of Nôtre Dame.” Irritated by his defeats, William III. is said to have exclaimed, “Am I never to beat that hunchback?” “Hunchback!” said the duke, when he was told of this speech, “what does he know about it? He has never seen my back!” The career of Luxembourg was abruptly closed, by an illness of only five days, on the 4th of January, 1695.

Several persons of distinction were censured by the “Chambre Ardente,” and were, in consequence, forbidden the court, or sent into exile. Among the latter was Madame de Polignac. The monarch was so decidedly hostile to her, that, five years afterwards, he spoke of her with unmeasured severity, and interfered to prevent the marriage of her son with Mdlle. de Rambures. It was said, that she had once formed the scheme of giving him a philtre, to inspire him with a passion for her.

One of the humbler class of culprits who was imprisoned in the Bastile, and who finally suffered the extreme sentence of the law, was Stephen de Bray, described as the accomplice of James Dechaux and Jane Chanfrain, who were perhaps rivals of La Voisin and her confederates in their detestable trade. The crimes alleged against him were blasphemy, sacrilege, and poisoning, and he was burned at the Grêve.

From poisoners, and mercenary pretenders to sorcery, we turn to an adventurer of a less noxious species. The Abbé Primi was a native of Bologna, in which city his father was a cap-maker. He had acuteness, wit, and a pleasing person, and with these mental and corporeal qualities he hoped to make his way at Paris. On his journey thither he became acquainted with a man of talent, named Duval. One of the travellers in the coach smelt so offensively that the others were anxious to get rid of him; and accordingly Duval and Primi secretly concerted a scheme for that purpose. Primi was to pretend to the gift of foretelling, from only seeing a person’s handwriting, what had happened, and would happen, to him. Primi, being questioned by Duval on this head, gave him elaborate answers, which the latter admitted to be correct. Specimens of the penmanship of the rest of the travellers, who were in the plot, were then handed to Primi, and, of course, they were satisfied with the result. The obnoxious passenger at length begged the oracular Italian to do for him the same favour that he had done for the rest. When Primi looked at the paper, he pretended to be shocked, and hastily gave it back, declining to say more than that “he hoped he was mistaken.” The applicant, however, solicited so earnestly to know his fate, that Primi told him he was destined to be assassinated at Paris, if he went thither. This startling intelligence produced the designed effect; the strong-scented querist took the first opportunity to discontinue his journey, and return to his home.

When they reached Paris, Duval presented Primi to the Abbé de la Baume, who was afterwards archbishop of Embrun; and the abbé introduced him to the Duke of Vendôme, and his brother, the Grand Prior. The trick played off in the stage was talked over, and it was agreed that a repetition of it in the French capital would be productive of infinite amusement. Primi was therefore kept carefully secluded, for nearly two months, till he had learned by heart the genealogy and the secret history of most of the persons about the court. When he had obtained a thorough knowledge of their connexions, amours, rivalships, enmities, and presumed motives, his skill in his novel kind of divination was spread about by his employers, and all the rank and fashion of France soon flocked to consult him. Among the distinguished females who patronized him, were the Countess of Soissons and the Duchess of Orleans; the latter of whom Primi firmly convinced of his powers, by mentioning many circumstances relative to her correspondence with the Count de Guiche. The duchess prevailed on Louis XIV. to let her show his handwriting to the Italian. To her utter astonishment, Primi no sooner saw it than he declared it to be written by a miserly curmudgeon, who was not possessed of a single good quality. When she returned the paper to Louis, and told him what Primi had said, the king was no less astonished than she was. The paper was indeed written by a man of whom his enemies spoke in the same manner as Primi. It was the handwriting of Rose, the king’s cabinet secretary, who wrote exactly like Louis, and whom he often employed to answer letters, that he might himself avoid trouble. To get at the bottom of this mystery, the king ordered Primi to be brought into his cabinet. “Primi,” said the monarch, “I have only two words to say—disclose to me your secret, for which I will pay you with a pension of two thousand livres—or else make up your mind to be hanged.” There was no resisting the bribe and the threat, and Primi consequently related his own history, and all that had come to his knowledge since he had lived in the capital. On going into the queen’s apartment, Louis mentioned, before the courtiers, that he had admitted Primi to an interview, and he added, “I must acknowledge that he told me things which no being of his kind has ever before revealed to any one.” This strong testimony to the merit of Primi contributed not a little to enhance his reputation.

The pension granted to him by Louis placed Primi above the necessity of resorting to deception for a livelihood; nor, indeed, was the part which he had been playing one which could be carried on for any length of time. He married the daughter of Frederic Leonard, an eminent Parisian printer, and sought to gain reputation by chronicling the actions of the French monarch. In an Italian narrative, which he wrote, of the Dutch campaign of Louis, he divulged the secret of the private treaty between that monarch and our Charles II. For this he was sent to the Bastile; but he was soon released, and received an ample present. The publication is believed to have, in fact, been authorized by the king, to punish the defection of Charles; the imprisonment of the author being merely a blind, to prevent his master from being suspected.

Louvois, who will for ever be infamously remembered for his outrages upon humanity, was the tyrant who twice consigned to the Bastile the celebrated medallist, Andrew Morell. Berne was the native place of Morell, who was born in 1646. He was remarkable for his memory and acuteness. The study of history led him to that of numismatics, in which he made an almost unequalled progress; and he learned drawing, in order to render his medallic knowledge more perfect and available. Charles Patin, the son of Guy, then an exile from France, who was himself no mean numismatist, became acquainted with Morell, and aided him by his counsel and purse. It was probably by his advice that, in 1680, Morell visited Paris, where he met with a warm reception from the most distinguished men of learning and science. Encouraged by them, he undertook the laborious task of publishing a description of all the antique medals which were contained in the numerous cabinets of Europe. As a prelude, he gave a specimen to the world. But his scheme was interrupted, for the moment, by a circumstance which would ultimately have benefited it, had he not been ungenerously treated. He was appointed coadjutor of Rainssart, the keeper of the king’s medals. In assiduously arranging and reducing to order the vast collection which was placed under his care, he spent several years. When he claimed his promised reward it was withheld, and, on his venturing to resent this breach of faith, he was committed to the Bastile, in 1688, by Louvois. His friends obtained his release; but, in little more than twelve months, he was again immured in that prison, probably for the same reason as before. Yet, while he was thus persecuted by an arrogant minister, he continued to enjoy the esteem of Louis XIV.; a curious fact, which proves how strong was the influence of Louvois over his master. While he was in the Bastile, his colleague died, and he was offered the vacant place of sole keeper of the king’s cabinet, on condition that he would change his religion. Morell, however, rejected the offer.

It was not till 1691, nor till the government of Berne had interfered in his behalf, that Morell was set free. Disgusted with the treatment which he had experienced, he returned to his native country. His subsequent existence was embittered by severe bodily suffering. His health was so much injured by confinement, and by vexation at his favourite project being frustrated, that palsy deprived him of the use of one side, and rendered him incapable of handling pen or pencil. He was somewhat recovered, and had acquired the patronage of the Count of Schwartzenburg-Armstadt, a lover of medals, when he was overturned in a carriage, and one of his shoulders dislocated. This accident brought on another attack of palsy, to which he fell a victim in 1703. The materials for his unfinished work were arranged and published, by Havercamp, in 1734, with the title of “Thesaurus Morellianus.” Another of his works, a “Numismatic History of the Twelve Emperors,” was given to the public, in 1753, by Havercamp, Schlegel, and Gori, who overlaid it with a ponderous mass of confused and discordant commentaries.

The doctrines of Quietism, the origin of which may be traced to oriental climes, but of which a Spanish monk, Michael Molinos, was the European apostle, and finally the victim, were espoused by one of the most amiable of French enthusiasts, and they brought on her, as they had brought on him, calumny, persecution, and imprisonment. Madam Guyon, whose maiden name was Bouvier de la Motte, was born at Montargis, in 1648. Even in very early youth she had a strong tendency to mysticism, and would have adopted a monastic life, had her parents not prevented her. At sixteen she was married; at eight-and-twenty she became a widow. The visionary ideas which she had cherished before marriage now resumed their empire, and a powerful stimulus was given to them by her confessor, and by the titular bishop of Geneva, and other ecclesiastics, all of whom laboured to fill her with the belief that Heaven had destined her to play an extraordinary part for the advancement of religion. “Left a widow when she was still tolerably young,” says Voltaire, “with riches, beauty, and a mind fitted for society, she became infatuated with what is called _spiritualism_. A monk of Anneci, near Geneva, named Lacombe, was her director. This man, characterized by a not uncommon mixture of passions and religion, and who died mad, plunged the mind of his penitent into the mystic reveries by which it was already affected. The longing desire to be a French St. Theresa did not allow her to perceive how different the French character is from the Spanish, and made her go much further than St. Theresa. The ambition of having disciples, which is perhaps the strongest of all the kinds of ambition, took entire possession of her heart.” In ascribing such a motive to Madame Guyon, Voltaire does her wrong, there not being a shadow of a reason for supposing that she was actuated by any thing but a sincere though erroneous belief, that she was fulfilling a solemn duty. He is more correct in the description which he gives of her doctrines. “She taught a complete renunciation of self, the silence of the soul, the annihilation of all its faculties, internal worship, and the pure and disinterested love of God, which is neither degraded by fear, nor animated by the hope of reward.” It must be owned that, both in language and ideas, she often fell into enormous absurdity, in her efforts to explain and enforce these doctrines.

For five years Madame Guyon wandered through Piedmont, Dauphiny, and the adjacent provinces, spreading her opinions by the press as well as by oral Communication. As was to be expected, she made many ardent proselytes, and not a few enemies. In 1686 she returned to Paris, and continued her labours, and was left unmolested for two years. At length she attracted the notice of the archbishop of Paris, who affected to be shocked at the resemblance which her tenets bore to those of Molinos. The see of Paris was at that time filled by Harlay de Chamvallon, an individual infamously celebrated for his profligate debauchery. This prelate, who certainly was not likely to comprehend a pure and disinterested love of God, or of man or woman either, procured Lacombe to be sent to the Bastile as a seducer, and Madame Guyon to the Visitandines convent. At the Visitandines she was generally beloved, and made several converts. She was soon after snatched from the clutches of Harlay by Madame de Maintenon, who admitted her at St. Cyr, and became much attached to her. It was at St. Cyr that she was also introduced to Fenelon; a friendship took place between them which nothing could ever shake.

But though Fenelon continued true to his friend, Madame de Maintenon ultimately deserted her. This desertion was the work of Godet-Desmarais, bishop of Chartres, who was the religious director of St. Cyr and of Madame de Maintenon. The mind of the king was also poisoned against her; and she was exposed to a long series of persecutions, not the least painful of which was a slanderous attack on her character, made in the form of a letter from Lacombe, exhorting her to repent of their criminal intimacy. Lacombe was then insane. So irreproachable, however, was her conduct, that her innocence was universally acknowledged.

In 1695 she was sent to Vincennes, whence she was removed to the Bastile; but she was released through the intervention of Noailles, who had succeeded the shameless Harlay in the archbishopric of Paris. In 1698 she was again immured in the Bastile, and was not liberated till 1702. After her liberation, she was exiled to Blois, where, for fifteen years, her patience, piety, and charity, were admired by every one. She died in 1717, at the age of sixty-nine.

Influenced by prejudice, Voltaire has been unjust to Madame Guyon; he denies that she possessed talent, and sneeringly says, that “she wrote verses like Cotin, and prose like Punchinello.” This is not the first time that truth has been sacrificed, for the sake of giving an epigrammatic turn to a sentence. To the opinion of Voltaire may be opposed that of the shrewd Duke of St. Simon, which is very different. Nor is it probable that Fenelon would have held in high estimation a mere senseless enthusiast. That in her writings, which extend to nine-and-thirty volumes, much erroneous reasoning, mystic jargon, and even nonsense, may be found, admits of no dispute; but they also contain many fine sentiments strikingly expressed. That she was endowed with a prevailing eloquence appears to be undeniable. There is an anecdote recorded of her which proves, likewise, that in the common business of life, she was possessed of a large share of penetration and sound sense. She was chosen as sole umpire in a cause in which she and twenty-two of her relations were interested. After thirty days’ close investigation of the documents and claims, she drew up an award, which received the prompt and full approbation of all the contending parties. It may be doubted, whether there have been many arbitrators who have given such universal satisfaction as Madame Guyon.

About the time that Madame Guyon was released from the Bastile, that prison became the abode of Gatien de Courtils de Sandraz, a fertile writer, but whose productions are, for the most part, of a class which merits censure rather than praise. This author, a Parisian, born in 1644, must be reckoned among those who poison the sources of history. “He was,” says Voltaire, “one of the most culpable writers of this kind. He inundated Europe with fictions under the name of histories.” Many of those fictions profess to be written by persons who, during the reigns of Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., had borne a part in affairs of state and court intrigues. More than forty volumes of memoirs of this sort, biographies, romances, and political tracts, were produced by his indefatigable pen. He was originally a captain in the regiment of Champagne, but went to Holland in 1683, and staid in that country for five years. It was while he was there that he gave some of his earliest works to the press. In 1689, the partiality which he manifested on the side of France occasioned him to be sent out of the Dutch territory, and he went to Paris, where he continued till 1694. He then returned to Holland, where he continued for eight years. In 1702, he went back to his native land, but his reception was calculated to make him regret having done so. He was immediately sent to the Bastile, where he languished for nine years, during the first three of which he was very harshly treated. His offence is not known; but his Annals of Paris and the court, in which he attacked the character of some powerful personages, are conjectured to have been the cause of his imprisonment. His decease took place in 1712.

Of those who suffered in the Bastile very few indeed revealed to the world the secrets of the prison-house. The first who disclosed them was René Augustus Constantine de Renneville, a Norman gentleman, who was born at Caen, in 1650. De Renneville was the youngest of ten brothers, seven of whom fell in the service of their country. After having borne arms in, and retired from, the mousquetaires, he was patronised by Chamillart, one of the ministers, who employed him in various confidential affairs, and rewarded him by a respectable and lucrative office in Normandy. De Renneville passed several years in his native province, filling up by literary pursuits his intervals of leisure from his official duties. The persecution of the protestants, of whom he was one, drove him, in 1699, into Holland. Being, however, unable to find there a satisfactory establishment for his family, he yielded to the solicitations of Chamillart, and returned, in 1702, to France. The minister received him with open arms, gave him a pension, and promised him the first place that might become vacant in his own department. But the scene soon changed. Envy was excited by the reception which he had met with, and it quickly found or made the means of crushing him. Some years before, in a splenetic mood, he had written some _bouts rimés_, which were by no means complimentary to France. As, however, this would hardly authorize a heavy punishment, he was accused of being a spy, and of keeping up a correspondence with foreign powers. In consequence of this he was sent to the Bastile, in May 1702. He was placed in a wretched chamber, dirty, gloomy, and swarming with fleas, and his bed was overrun with vermin of a more disgusting kind. He was nevertheless tolerably well treated by his jailers till after the escape of Count de Bucquoy, in which he was supposed to have assisted. On this supposition he was thrown into one of the worst dungeons of the fortress, where he remained till life was nearly extinct. He tells us that his only sustenance was bread and water, and that his sleeping place was the bare ground, where, without straw, or even a stone to lay his head on, he lay stretched in the mire, and the slaver of the toads. His situation when he was taken out was pitiable. “My eyes,” says he, “were almost out of my head, my nose was as large as a middling-sized cucumber, more than half my teeth, which previously were very good, had fallen out by scurvy, my mouth was swelled, and entirely covered with an eruption, and my bones came through my skin in more than twenty places.” His captivity lasted for some years after his removal from the dungeon, and as though he was not again reduced to the same degree of misery, he was treated with much harshness. He bore his misfortune with courage, and solaced his lonely hours by reading and composition. His pen was a small bone, his ink was lampblack mixed with wine, and he wrote between the lines, and on the margins, of books which he had concealed. Under these disadvantages, he composed several works of considerable length. Among these works was a “Treatise on the Duties of a faithful Christian.” They were taken away from him by his persecutors, and he deeply regretted the loss of them. After having been confined for eleven years, he was set at liberty; but was ordered to quit France for ever. It would have been strange had he wished to remain there. De Renneville sought an asylum in England, where George I. gave him a pension; and in 1715 he published his “French Inquisition, or the History of the Bastile,” which went through three or four editions, and was translated into various languages. It was probably at the instigation of those who were branded in this book, that he was attacked in the street by three cut-throats, whom, however, he bravely repulsed. De Renneville was living in 1724; but the time and place of his decease are not known. Among his works is a Collection of Voyages for the establishment, &c., of the Dutch East India Company.

The next prisoner comes before us wrapped in such a mysterious cloud, that he scarcely seems to wear the aspect of a being of this world. His birth, his name, his country, his crime, are all unknown; all that we really know of him is, that he was long a captive, and that he died. It cannot be necessary to say, that the problematical individual alluded to is the personage who is distinguished by the appellation of “The Man with the Iron Mask.”

There appears to have been in France, during the first forty years of the 18th century, a sort of indistinct tradition respecting a masked prisoner, who had been in various state prisons. It was not, however, till 1745 that any attempt was made to lift the veil which covered the subject. In that year came out “Mémoires secrets pour servir à l’histoire de Perse,” in which French characters were described under oriental names. In these memoirs, which have been ascribed to several writers, among whom is Voltaire, some particulars are given relative to the masked man, and he is asserted to have been the Count de Vermandois, natural son of Louis XIV., confined by his father for having struck the dauphin.

The Memoirs gave rise to a controversy, and to an extravagant romance by the Chevalier de Mouhy; but nothing definite was brought forward till 1751, when Voltaire published, under a feigned name, the first edition of his “Age of Louis XIV.” Here he threw a ray of light on a part of the question, leaving, however, the rest in as much darkness as ever.

“Some months after the decease of this minister (Mazarin) there happened,” says he, “an event which has no parallel, and what is no less singular is, that all the historians have been ignorant of it. There was sent, with the utmost secrecy, to the castle of the isle of St. Margaret, on the coast of Provence, an unknown prisoner, above the common stature, young, and of a most handsome and noble figure. During the journey, this prisoner wore a mask, the lower half of which had steel springs, which allowed him to eat while the mask was on his face. Orders were given to kill him if he uncovered himself. He remained in the isle till a confidential officer, of the name of St. Marc, governor of Pignerol, having been made governor of the Bastile in 1690, went to the isle of St. Margaret to fetch him, and conducted him to the Bastile, always masked. The Marquis de Louvois went to see him in that isle before his removal, and spoke to him standing, and with a deference which bordered on respect. This unknown personage was taken to the Bastile, where he was lodged as comfortably as it was possible to be in that fortress. Nothing that he asked for was refused. His predominant taste was for linen of extreme fineness, and for lace. He played on the guitar. His table was profusely served, and the governor rarely took a seat in his presence. An old physician of the Bastile, who had often attended this singular man when he was ill, said that he had never seen his face, though he had frequently examined his tongue, and the rest of his person. He was admirably made, said this physician; his skin was rather brown; he excited an interest by the mere tone of his voice, but never complained of his situation, nor gave any hint of who he was. This unknown individual died in 1703, and was buried at night in the parish of St. Paul’s.

“What renders these circumstances doubly astonishing is, that at the time when he was sent to the isle of St. Margaret no eminent personage disappeared in Europe. Yet that the prisoner was one is beyond all doubt, for the following event took place during an early period of his residence in the isle. The governor himself put the dishes on the table, and then withdrew, after having locked him in. The prisoner one day wrote with his knife on a silver plate, and threw the plate out of the window, towards a boat, which was near the shore, almost at the foot of the tower. A fisherman, to whom the boat belonged, picked up the plate, and took it to the governor. Greatly astonished, the latter asked the fisherman, ‘Have you read what is written on this plate, or has anybody seen you with it?’—‘I cannot read,’ replied the fisherman, ‘I have only just found it, and nobody has seen it,’ This countryman was detained till the governor was thoroughly convinced that he could not read, and that no one had seen the plate. ‘You may go now,’ said he, ‘and think yourself lucky that you know not how to read.’ Of the persons who had a direct knowledge of this fact there is one, of undoubted veracity, who is still living. M. de Chamillart was the last minister who was intrusted with this strange secret. The second Marshal de Feuillade, his son-in-law, told me that, when his father-in-law was on his death-bed, he begged him on his knees to tell him who was the man who was never known by any other name than that of the man with the iron mask. Chamillart replied that it was a state secret, and that he had taken an oath never to reveal it. There are, besides, others of my contemporaries who can testify to my statement, and I know no fact which is more extraordinary or more firmly established.”

At a later period, Voltaire, in the “Philosophical Dictionary,” corrected some trifling errors which he had made in his account of the masked prisoner. He states that the captive was first confined at Pignerol, whence he was removed to the isle of St. Margaret, and that, a few days before his death, he said that he believed himself to be about sixty. Voltaire then controverts various guesses which had been hazarded as to the name of the individual, and then adds, that the concealment of his face must have been occasioned by “the fear that a too striking resemblance might be recognised in his features.” In conclusion, he hints, that he is well informed on the subject, but that he will not communicate his knowledge. It would seem, however, that, after the lapse of a few years, he changed his mind,—for, in another edition of the Dictionary, there was inserted an article, ostensibly by the editor, but which is generally supposed to be written by Voltaire himself. It is there roundly asserted that the masked captive was an elder brother of Louis XIV., illegitimate, and brought up in secrecy, whom for obvious reasons of state the reigning monarch was obliged to hold in durance. In the original account by Voltaire, his pointed mention of the prisoner’s fondness for fine linen and lace, which was also characteristic of Anne of Austria, appears to indicate that he believed her to be the mother of the mysterious individual.

There is in the human mind a restless longing, and perpetual struggle, to penetrate into every thing that is shrouded in mystery. Ever since the man with the iron mask was first mentioned, he has been a subject of inquiry and controversy; dissertations and volumes innumerable have been written to dispel the Egyptian darkness which surrounds him. With the exception perhaps of Junius, there is probably no personage who has been the cause of so many books and theories; and in both cases no approach to certainty has been made. It is not improbable that Junius may yet be unveiled; but, with respect to the masked captive, so long a time has gone by, so much care was taken after his decease to destroy all traces of his existence, and it is so likely that the remaining documents, if any there were, perished during the French revolution, that there is not a chance of the world being enabled to say, “_This_ is certainly the man.”

At least twelve or thirteen candidates have been brought forward for the melancholy honour of being the personage in question. Two of them are English—the Duke of Monmouth and Henry Cromwell. Of the latter it is only necessary to state that he lived a quiet country life after the restoration, and died in Huntingdonshire in 1679. The Duke of Monmouth is supposed, by M. de St. Foix, to have found some one obliging enough to mount the scaffold in his stead, and to have been sent to France, to be kept in safe custody. This ineffably absurd theory is demolished by the fact, that, when Monmouth was executed, the man with the mask had been for twenty years in prison. Equally baseless is the system of the Chevalier de Taulès, who made a claim for Ardewicks, the patriarch of the Armenians at Constantinople, who was kidnapped, taken to France, and lodged in the Bastile by the Jesuits, to whom he had given offence. But Ardewicks was not carried off till 1699 or 1700, and he is known to have embraced catholicism, recovered his liberty, and died at Paris. A recent French writer, of very considerable talent and research, has revived the idea that Fouquet was the prisoner, and has supported his argument with great skill; but it is impossible to reconcile his supposition with the story told by Voltaire. With respect to Fouquet the precautions and deference, which Voltaire mentions, would not have been deemed necessary. We have seen that the author of the “Secret Memoirs on Persia” asserts the Count of Vermandois to have been the unknown captive. Voltaire contemptuously denies the truth of this assertion; which is, indeed, sufficiently refuted by the well-ascertained fact, that the count died, of small-pox, at the army in Flanders, in 1683, and was buried at Arras; his death was notorious to numbers of persons. The Duke of Beaufort has been invested with the mask on no better authority. There can be no doubt that he was slain, in a sally, at the siege of Candia, in 1669. But, say those who adopt him as their hero, his body was never found. It certainly was not recognised; and for this plain reason, that the Turks stripped it, and cut off the head. The next asserted owner of the mask is backed by no less than four champions, Dutens, Roux-Fazillac, Delort, and the late Lord Dover, and his cause has been ably supported by them all. The claimant for whom they contend is Matthioli, secretary of the Duke of Mantua, who, for having outwitted Louis in a negotiation respecting the cession of Casal, was seized by order of the monarch, and imprisoned at Pignerol and other places. There are, however, circumstances which seem decisive against his being the man with the iron mask. It will perhaps suffice to mention that, instead of meeting with respect and indulgence, he was treated with the utmost harshness, and even cruelty. It has been argued, as a presumption on his side, that his name bears a resemblance to that of Marchiali, under which the unknown captive was buried. The resemblance, I think, is not a whit closer than that which Fluellin so ingeniously discovers between Macedon and Monmouth, and is a sorry basis on which to build an argument. Another supposition gives the mask to Don John de Gonzaga, a natural brother of the Duke of Mantua, who is imagined to have accompanied Matthioli in disguise to the conference at which he was seized. This supposition is rendered untenable, by irrefragable proof that Matthioli was alone.

We have now arrived at the only remaining name which has been mentioned as that of the mysterious prisoner. Voltaire, as we have seen, affirms that he was a son of Anne of Austria. This assertion seems to receive support from the language which is said to have been held by Louis XV. Laborde, the head valet-de-chambre of that monarch, who enjoyed much of his confidence, once endeavoured to obtain from him the long-concealed secret. He did not succeed. “I pity him,” replied the king, “but his detention was injurious only to himself, and _averted great misfortunes_. Thou must not know the secret.” It is manifest that such a speech could not be made with reference to any of the persons who have been enumerated. It is equally manifest that, as Voltaire has intimated, the mask could have been worn for no other purpose than to prevent a striking likeness from being recognised.

Various conjectures have been made as to the paternity of the unknown child, to which Anne of Austria is thought to have given birth. By some the Duke of Buckingham has been assigned as its father, others have attributed it to a French nobleman; some have imagined that it was the fruit of a legitimate union with Cardinal Mazarin, a kind of union which, however, could not take place; and others, with more tenderness for the character of the queen, have represented it to be a twin brother of Louis XIV. The theory of his royal birth may, perhaps, be as erroneous as all the rest; but it appears to me to be the only one by which we can account for the close and perpetual imprisonment, the pains taken to confine the secret to as few persons as possible, the carefully concealed features, and the respect and indulgence which are asserted to have been uniformly shown to the unfortunate captive[8].

We must now turn our attention from the victim of state policy to some of the victims of religious persecution.

To enumerate all whom Jansenism led to the Bastile would be a tedious labour, and no less uninteresting than tedious, as little more than a dry list of names would be the result. Among the Jansenists who towards the close of Louis XIV.’s reign were sent to the Bastile, we find Tiron, a Benedictine, who was prior of Meulan; Germain Veillant, an author; and Lebrun-Desmarets, a man of much theological erudition. Tiron was committed “for different writings, on matters of religion and state, and against the king and the Jesuits.” The coupling together of the king and the disciples of Loyola, as though they were coequal powers, is a striking proof of the vast influence which the Society of Jesus had acquired. Veillant’s offence was his being “a violent Jansenist, in connexion with Father Quesnel, and having got his works printed, and managed his affairs at Paris.” He was examined eighty-nine times, and was probably treated with more than common harshness, for he fell ill on the day that he was released, and died in the course of a few days.

Lebrun-Desmarets, a native of Rouen, who entered the Bastile in 1707, two years previous to the destruction of Port-Royal monastery, was of a family which was strongly attached to that persecuted establishment. His father, a bookseller of Rouen, was condemned to the galleys, for having printed books in vindication of it. The son was partly educated in the convent, and never ceased to regard its inmates with affection and reverence. In 1707, when they were involved in a harassing lawsuit by their enemies, Lebrun espoused their cause so ardently that he was imprisoned. He was held in durance for five years, and was treated with great severity. After he recovered his liberty, he took up his abode at Orleans, where he died, in 1731, at the age of eighty. On Palm Sunday, the day before his death, fearing that a priest would refuse to administer the sacrament to him, he dragged his enfeebled frame to the church, that he might not quit the world without the consolation of having participated in the rites of religion. Lebrun’s principal work is a “Liturgical Journey in France,” in which he gives an account of the most remarkable customs and ceremonies of the various churches.

We now revert once more to prisoners whose sins were political. Count John Albert de Bucquoy, the next individual who comes under our notice, was of the family of the celebrated Spanish and Imperial general, who bore the same name and title. He was a native of Champagne, in which province he was born about 1650. A line in Dryden’s severe description of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, will partly characterize Bucquoy; he

“Was every thing by starts, and nothing long.”

The circumstances of his having been left an orphan at the age of four years, and having received a very imperfect education, may, perhaps, account for some of his eccentricities. He embraced the military life; but when he had served for five years, an escape from danger, which he considered as miraculous, induced him to make a vow to withdraw from all worldly pursuits. The rules of the Carthusian monks not being strict enough to satisfy him, he entered at La Trappe, where he so much injured his health by supererogatory austerities that the Abbé de Rancé, the superior of the convent, was obliged to dismiss him. Bucquoy then abruptly resumed his warlike attire; but soon after, with equal abruptness, again cast it off, to dress himself in rags, and become a hermit. Flying from the temptations of Paris, he next settled at Rouen, where, under the name of La Mort, he for two years kept a school, to give gratuitous instruction to the poor. The Jesuits of that city admired his talents and his humble demeanour, and fruitlessly endeavoured to enrol him in their fraternity. Having been accidentally recognised by a person who had been a brother officer, he could no longer preserve his incognito, and he therefore quitted Rouen, and bent his way to Paris. There he formed the plan of founding a new monastic order, destined to prove to unbelievers the truth of the Christian religion. It appears to have been about this time that he assumed the garb and title of an abbé. But while he was thus planning the demolition of incredulity, he so bewildered himself in his theological speculations and reasonings, that he became a sceptic. One thing which contributed much to produce the change in him was, that, notwithstanding his self-inflicted severities, he had failed to obtain the power of working miracles. This alone would suffice to prove that his intellects were disordered. At this period, his relatives, who had long believed him dead, were made acquainted with his being in existence, and they procured for him a benefice. Bucquoy, however, had got rid of his religious schemes, and had relapsed into a taste for the profession of a soldier. His wish was now to raise a regiment. But while he was indulging this new freak, he attracted the attention of the government by his invectives against despotism and the abuse of power. He was mistaken for the Abbé de la Bourlie, who afterwards became notorious in England under the name of Guiscard, and was arrested. When the mistake was discovered, he would have been set free, had not his indiscreet language and conduct caused him to be detained. He was committed to Fort-l’Evêque, from whence, however, he contrived to escape. After having been at large for a considerable time, he was caught and shut up in the Bastile, with a strict charge to the keepers, that he should be closely watched, as being an enterprising and dangerous person. The officers of that prison were seldom slack in executing such orders, yet, in spite of all their vigilance, Bucquoy took his measures so skilfully, and carried them into effect with so much secrecy, that, in May 1709, after having been confined for two years, he left his jailors in the lurch, and made good his retreat to Switzerland. As soon as he was in safety, he began to negotiate with the French ministers for his return to France, and the restoration of his property. Failing in this, he journeyed to Holland, and submitted to the allies a project for converting France into a republic, and annihilating arbitrary power. This scheme, too, fell to the ground. It was, nevertheless, beneficial to him, as it gained for him the friendship of General Schulemburg, who, in 1714, introduced him, at Hanover, to George I. The monarch was pleased with his conversation, admitted him to his table, and gave him a pension. Bucquoy lived to nearly the age of ninety. In his latter days, he wholly neglected his dress, suffered his beard to grow, and might well have been mistaken for a squalid mendicant.

There was perhaps a spice of madness in Bucquoy, which sufficiently accounts for his eccentric conduct. For the faults, or rather crimes, of the personage who now comes under our notice there was no such excuse. Throughout the whole of his existence, which, like that of Bucquoy, was protracted far beyond the period usually allotted to man, the Marshal Duke of Richelieu displayed as few virtues, and as many vices, as any courtier on record. He had superficial talents, some wit, polished manners, a handsome person, and much bravery; and this is all that can be said for him. On the other hand, he was wholly without honour, morals, and religion; a supporter and adulator of despotism, a political intriguer, who could stoop to use the basest means for the accomplishment of his purposes, a reckless duellist, and a systematic and heartless seducer; he was, in fact, an impersonation of the profligacy and corruption which distinguished the courts of the regent Duke of Orleans and the fifteenth Louis.

Richelieu, who, in his early years, was known as the Duke of Fronsac, was born in 1696. He was a seven months’ child, whom after his birth it was necessary to keep in a box filled with cotton, and the preservation of whose existence was long doubtful. When his health was established, he was put under able preceptors; but he derived little benefit from their instructions, and he never could spell with tolerable correctness. He acquired, however, those showy graces which, undoubtedly, are an ornament to virtue, but which, when the possessor has no virtue, can captivate only persons of frivolous minds. He was introduced to the court at the early age of fourteen, and soon, as St. Simon tells us, became its darling. The female portion of it was in raptures with him, and seems to have expressed its feelings without any regard to decorum. Fronsac, whose passions were uncommonly precocious, met the forward with equal ardour, and spared no pains to ensnare the few who were more timid or more modest. He went to such a length that censure began to fall heavily on the Duchess of Burgundy, and his own father deemed it prudent to request a lettre-de-cachet against him, under which he was for fourteen months confined in the Bastile. During his seclusion, Fronsac was attended by a preceptor; and he consequently came out of prison with some knowledge of Latin, and some addition to his scanty stock of useful information; but, as far as concerned dignity of mind and purity of heart, no improvement whatever had taken place.

The licentious career of Richelieu was suspended for a while, by his serving as a volunteer in the army. He was present at the battle of Denain, and at the sieges of the fortresses which were recovered by Villars in consequence of his victory; and he distinguished himself so much, that he was made aide-de-camp to the marshal, and was chosen by him to convey to Paris the news of the surrender of Friburg. In 1715, he succeeded to the title of Richelieu. On this occasion he performed an action which merits praise; the property which was available for the debts of his father was far from sufficient to cover them, he generously paid to the creditors the full amount of their claims.

Again all the faculties of Richelieu were devoted to licentious pleasures, which were now and then interrupted by a duel. In 1716 he had a desperate encounter with the Count de Gacé, for which the regent committed both parties to the Bastile, where they remained from March till August. This imprisonment was, however, less severe than that which he had to endure two years afterwards. In the spring of 1719, he was sent, for the third time, to the Bastile, but, in this instance, he went with the brand of traitor upon him, and was treated accordingly. He was concerned in the Cellamare conspiracy, and had promised to deliver up Bayonne to the Spaniards, and to join in exciting the south of France to revolt. “If the Duke of Richelieu had four heads,” said the regent, “I have proof enough against him to deprive him of them all.” On his first arrival at the Bastile, the duke was placed in a dungeon; but female influence soon obtained his removal to more comfortable quarters, and permission for him to walk daily on the ramparts of the fortress. His walks gave rise to an occurrence, which speaks volumes as to the unblushing depravity of the high-born dames of France. During the hour that he was walking, a string of elegant carriages, filled with women who notoriously were or had been his mistresses, passed slowly backward and forward in front of the spot where he was, and an intercourse of signs was kept up between the prisoner and these unscrupulous ladies. It was by the intercession of two princesses, who were enamoured of him, that his release was obtained, after he had suffered a captivity of five months.

The danger to which Richelieu had been exposed on this occasion, though it did not render him less vicious, rendered him, at least in one respect, more prudent; he did not again put his head in the way of being brought to the block. Thenceforward he limited his political intrigues, in France, to acquiring benefits for himself, circumventing his rivals, providing mistresses for the king, and making those mistresses the instruments of his designs; and by these arts he became a thriving courtier. Honours of all kinds, military and civil, were showered upon him. At the age of twenty-four, without any literary pretensions whatever, he was unanimously chosen a member of the French Academy; and, in 1734, he was nominated an honorary member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres. In the army he rose to the rank of marshal; but his titles as a soldier were not unearned. At Kehl, Philipsburg, Dettingen, Friburg, Fontenoy, Laufeldt, Genoa, and Minorca, they were fairly won. In his last campaign, however, that of Hanover, in 1757, he sullied his laurels by the most infamous conduct. His rapacity and extortion were a scorpion scourge to the country which France had subdued; and, as though he feared that his own endless exactions would not suffice to make him hated, he allowed, if not encouraged, his troops to be guilty of marauding, and of various other enormities. The subsequent defeats of the French army were the righteous result of these dishonourable proceedings. As a negotiator, Richelieu manifested considerable skill. He was twice employed in that capacity; at Vienna, from 1725 to 1729, and at Dresden, in 1746. In both instances he fully accomplished the purpose of his mission, and in both he displayed a degree of ostentatious magnificence which had seldom been equalled. When he entered Vienna, his train consisted of seventy-five carriages; and his horses, and those of his officers, were shod with silver, the shoes being slightly fastened, that they might fall off and be left for the populace. In the state employments which he held, there appears to have been but a solitary instance in which he was entitled to praise. As lieutenant-general of the king in Languedoc, he once deviated into the right path; by a judicious mixture of firmness and mildness, he averted the disturbances which were about to arise from the persecution of the protestants. But it was not in his nature to be permanently good. At a later period, his harshness, in the same country, was rewarded by his being appointed governor of Guienne and Gascony; and his pride and tyranny very soon rendered him an object of detestation in both of these provinces. At court, his influence and his example had a baneful effect. He for more than a quarter of a century possessed the friendship of Louis XV., and he foully abused it; he pandered to the monarch’s lusts, and strained every nerve, with too much success, to prevent the misguided sovereign from carrying into effect his occasional resolves, to lead in future a life more suitable to his years, and to the lofty station which he filled. He was the Mephistopheles of his royal master.

Richelieu was so fortunate as not to be exposed to the revolutionary tempest; his disgraceful career was brought to a close in August, 1788, when he had attained the age of ninety-two.

Of prisoners less known, or less important, during the period to which this chapter refers, it will suffice to give a scanty specimen. Religious intolerance contributed largely to people the jails. To enumerate all who expiated in dungeons the crime of being protestants, would be an endless task; in 1686 a hundred and forty-seven persons, and in 1689 sixty-one, were sent to the Bastile alone, almost all of whom were hugonots. To unite in marriage the members of that proscribed class was a heinous offence; a priest, named John de Pardieu, was doomed to the Bastile for committing it. Whole families were immured for endeavouring to leave the kingdom. Some of the victims were driven to despair by the manner in which they were treated. Such was the case with the Sieur Braconneau, who, as the register specifies, was “imprisoned on account of religion, and died of a wound which he gave to himself with a knife.” The protestants were, however, not the sole sufferers; the Jansenists, too, came in for an ample share of persecution.

Real or pretended plots and evil speaking against the king were another fruitful source of commitments. The following are a few instances: Don Thomas Crisafi “suspected of intrigues with the Spanish ambassador against the interests of the king.” Joseph Jurin, a footman, for having said, “Who can prevent me from killing the king?” The Sieur Beranger de Berliere, “for a plot against the king’s person.” The Count de Morlot, accused of “detestable purposes against the king’s life.” Desvallons, “for speaking insolently of the king.” Laurence Lemierre, shoemaker, and his wife, for dangerous discourse about the king; and Francis Brindjoug for the same offence. The Sieur Cardel, “for important reasons, regarding the safety of the king’s person.” Jonas de Lamas, a baker, “for execrations against the king.” This man was twenty years in the Bastile, and was then removed to the Bicêtre. The Sieur de la Perche, a fencing-master, accused of having said that “the king oppressed his subjects, and thought only of amusing himself with his old woman; that he would soon be a king of beggars; that his officers were starving; that he had ruined the kingdom by driving away the hugonots; and that he cared not a pin for his people.” The last article of the Sieur de la Perche’s charge against the sovereign was made in language which is too vulgar to be translated.

Under the head of miscellaneous offences may be mentioned the following: Pierre His, “for having assisted several persons to go clandestinely to America.” Those persons were probably hugonots. The Sieur Marini, envoy from Genoa. This commitment, for which no reason is assigned, took place in 1684, the year in which Louis XIV. made his disgraceful attack on Genoa. Besnoit, called Arnonville, “an evil-minded woman, who held improper discourse.” Charles Combon, called Count de Longueval, “a maker of horoscopes, a fortune-teller, and vender of drugs to procure abortion.” The Abbé Dubois, “a wicked and troublesome person.” Papillard, “a bad catholic.” Saint Vigor, “affecting to be a hermit, but a man of licentious manners.” John Blondeau, a hermit, “a suspected person.” Peter John Mere, professing himself a physician, “for selling improper drugs.” After having been thirty years in the Bastile, Mere was sent to the Bedlam at Charenton. Bailly, a hatter, “for a design to establish a hat manufactory in a foreign country.” Louisa Simon, a widow, “pretends to tell fortunes, to have secrets for inspiring love, and to be able to make marriages.” John Galembert, of the gens-d’armes, “a great traveller, suspected of corresponding with the enemies of the state.” He was subsequently exiled to Languedoc, his native province, within the limits of which he was ordered to remain. The Prince de Riccia, “one of the party at Naples that is against the French succession.” Nicholas Buissen, “for insolent letters against Samuel Bernard (the court banker), with an intention to hurt his credit.” The Sieur de Soulange, formerly a captain of infantry in the Orleannois regiment, “a rogue, and spy on both sides.”

It will be seen that, in some of those instances, the individuals deserved legal punishment; that, in others, the charges were trivial, or vague, or ridiculous; and that in at least one case the French monarch displayed gross contempt of the law of nations. His imprisonment of Marini, the Genoese envoy, can only be paralleled by the manner in which the Turks used to treat Christian ambassadors on the breaking out of hostilities. But it was of a piece with the rest of his conduct towards the Genoese republic. It was retributive justice that he, the wanton disturber and insulter of Europe, should himself live to have his pride trodden into the dust, and to dread the approach of a hostile army to the walls of his own capital.

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