CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE END OF LACHAUSSÉE

Whilst all this turmoil had been going on, Paris was no less a scene of excitement; indeed, it was greater, inasmuch as it affected a larger number of persons. The awful death of Sainte-Croix, and the discoveries which had arisen from the unexpected revelation of the casket, furnished sufficient matter for conversation to all the gossips of the good city. Maître Glazer’s shop was more than ever besieged by the curious _bourgeoisie_, as he was supposed to be better acquainted than any one else, not even excepting the commissary of police, with the circumstances of the event. But it was remarked that Philippe preserved a perfect silence respecting the share which the Marchioness of Brinvilliers was known to have had in the transactions of the newly-discovered poisoners. He always avoided the most distant allusion to the catastrophe, and even when Maître Picard wished to push his questions very closely--half in his capacity of public functionary, half as a private gossip--the young student generally cut all his queries so very short, that Picard almost imagined he must have been one of the parties implicated.

‘For, look you, messieurs,’ the little _chapelier_ would say, when he got out of Philippe’s ear-shot, and was traversing the Place Maubert, ‘Madame de Brinvilliers had as many accomplices as our good King Louis--whom Montespan preserve!--has sweethearts. Else, whence came the powerful armed force which unhorsed me on the road to Le Bourget?’

‘She had dealings with the sorcerers,’ observed a neighbour.

‘I believe it,’ replied M. Picard. ‘I heard of her with Exili, who is about to suffer at the gibbet of Montfaucon, the night M. de Sainte-Croix died. And the exempt’s guards, who returned to Paris, have affirmed that she flew past them on a whirlwind whilst they halted at Le Bourget. She will never be taken--no: the devil would save her from the centre of the Chambre Ardente itself, even if M. La Reynie had the care of her. _Allons! buvons!_ it is a wicked world!’

And then the little bourgeois and his neighbours turned into the nearest tavern, and, whatever might be the time of day at their entrance, never appeared until after curfew had sounded, when Maître Picard was usually conducted home to the Rue de la Harpe by the Gascon, Jean Blacquart, whose unwillingness to engage in personal encounter was scarcely sufficient to keep the _chapelier_ from pot-valiantly embroiling himself with everybody unarmed that he chanced to meet. Our business is not, however, so much with these personages just at present; but with those of whom we have not heard for some little time.

Night was closing round the gloomy precincts of the Cimetière des Innocents--mysterious, cold, cheerless. The snow lay upon the burial-ground, and clung to the decaying wreaths and garlands that rotted on the iron crosses which started up from the earth. The solemn and dreary place was doubly desolate in the wintry trance of nature. In the centre of the cemetery a tall obelisk arose, and on the summit of this, some fifteen feet from the ground, was a large lantern, from which a pale light gleamed over the abodes of the dead, throwing its rays sufficiently far to reveal a ghastly procession of corpses, of all ages and professions, painted on the walls and covered charnels in which the wealthier classes were interred who chose to carry their exclusiveness into the very grave. This _danse macabre_, or dance of death, was then rapidly becoming invisible at different stages of its march. At various parts of the enclosure small lamps struggled with the wind, as they hung before images of the Virgin placed in niches of the walls and tombs, and lights were visible in the higher windows of the crowded, and not unpicturesque, buildings that enclosed the cemetery; but elsewhere everything was dark, and the place was untenanted but by the dead.

One figure, however, might have been seen kneeling at a fresh grave for some time, in spite of the inclemency of the weather. And about this the snow had been cleared away; the chaplets on the small cross were fresh, and a few dark evergreens were planted at the head and foot. A scroll in the ironwork bore the inscription, ‘_Cy giste Gaudin de Sainte-Croix, qui trépassa, la vingt-neuvième année de son âge_.’ It was the tomb of the guilty lover of the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, and the solitary mourner was Louise Gauthier.

Of all with whom Sainte-Croix had been on terms of intimacy, not one had cared to make inquiry after him, when the report of his death was first promulgated, but the Languedocian. But Louise, assisted by Benoit (with whom she had returned to live, since the evening at the Hôtel de Cluny, when she again fell in with him), had seen the body taken from the dismal vault below the Palais des Thermes to his old abode in the Rue des Bernardins. She had been the solitary mourner when his body was rudely consigned to that part of the ground allotted to those for whom no consecrated rites were offered; and her own hands afterwards had adorned the grave--the only one thus distinguished in this division of the cemetery--with the humble tributes that were about it. All this she had done without one tear or expression of the wretchedness that was breaking her heart; but when it was accomplished, she gave full vent to her pent-up feelings, and was accustomed to seek the cemetery every evening, weeping and praying in the terrible solitude of the burial-place, over the grave whose narrow limits comprised her world.

It was past the time of curfew; but the city of Paris had not the air of quietude which it usually bore at this period of the night. The murmur of a distant multitude could be heard mingling with the occasional solemn tolling of some hoarse and deep-mouthed bell, and now and then the roll of drums calling troops together. Louise had been some hours in the cemetery, when she was surprised by the appearance of Benoit and his wife, who had come to seek her, alarmed at her unusual stay from home, although they were aware of the locality in which she was most likely to be found. The honest couple had started off together to bring her back; and now, assisting her to rise, had persuaded her to return with them.

As they got into the Rue des Lombards, on their way towards the river, a sudden rush of people in great numbers separated them from one another, and they were obliged to fall in with the stream, which, increasing at every corner of a fresh thoroughfare, almost carried them off their legs. Louise addressed a few questions to some that she came in contact with, but no answer was returned; all appeared too anxious to hurry onward. Soon the crowd became more dense in the narrow streets, and the confusion and jostling was increased by the mounted guard who pressed on through the people, almost riding them down, amidst the screams of the women and curses of the men, who only received a few blows in return. She was now entirely borne onward by the multitude, and in the dense mass of people could scarcely look up to see in what direction she was being impelled, until she found herself close to the Grand Châtelet.

The whole of the _carrefour_ was lined with troops carrying cressets, so that it was light as day; and in the centre a scaffold was erected, on which one or two figures were standing. One of these was a priest, the others were masked, and held what appeared in the distance to be long staves in their hands. Louise’s heart sickened as she foresaw that she was about to be present at an execution, and one of the most terrible kind. There was no headsman’s block on the platform; but some apparatus could be seen upon the floor, but a few inches in height. A wretch was about to be broken on the wheel.

Suddenly the murmurs of the people ceased; lights moved in slow procession from the Châtelet, and the voices of monks could be heard chaunting a requiem. They advanced between lines of troops towards the scaffold, and then the criminal could be distinctly seen. He was not walking, however, between them, nor was he dragged on a sledge, but borne on a species of bier, raised on the shoulders of some of the soldiery; from which the spectators knew that the question had been undergone, and the rack had left its victim crippled, with dislocated limbs. By the men in masks he was lifted on to the platform, and then a yell from the vast multitude assembled broke the silence that had just reigned. It was a terrible cry of ferocity and denunciation.

Louise could scarcely speak; but she asked a female who was close to her the name of the criminal.

‘One of the poisoners,’ replied the woman; ‘his name is Lachaussée. He will make up for Sainte-Croix’s cheating us out of his execution. And the Marchioness of Brinvilliers will follow, when she is caught. Oh! these are brave times! I should like to have seen Sainte-Croix broken. They say he was handsome; and that he would have held out to the last. Hist!’

The noise of the multitude ceased as the priest advanced to the edge of the scaffold and addressed them. His words could only be heard by the few around him; but they were carried from one to the other, and were to the effect that the criminal had refused to confess, after having undergone the question both ordinary and extraordinary; that his own guilt had been sufficiently proved; but that none of his accomplices had been named, except his master and instructor, Monsieur Gaudin de Sainte-Croix, upon whom a just retribution had fallen. The last judgment of the law would now be carried into effect, but the _coup de grace_ would be withheld until the criminal had confessed all that he was known to be acquainted with respecting his presumed accomplice, the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, now in sanctuary, as it was supposed, at a convent beyond the frontier.

There was an awful silence. The wretched man was seized by the other figures on the scaffold and placed upon the wheel, and the next minute the staff in the hands of one of the executioners was raised. It descended with a dull, heavy sound, distinctly audible at every part of the square, as was the sharp cry of agony that burst from the lips of the culprit. The priest stooped down, and appeared to commune with him; but in a few seconds he rose again, and the blow was repeated, followed by the same scream, but less piercing than before. Another and another followed, and then a conversation of greater length took place between the criminal and his confessor. The monk advanced again to the front of the scaffold, and waving his hand, stopped the murmur that was rising from the crowd as they commented on the proceedings.

‘The criminal Lachaussée has confessed,’ he said. ‘He acknowledges his guilt, and also that of Madame Marie-Marguerite d’Aubray, Marchioness of Brinvilliers, hitherto suspected, from whom he owns to have received the poisons with which her two brothers were murdered. The _coup de grace_ may now be given.’

He held up a crucifix in sight of the writhing object of his speech, and directed the chief executioner to despatch his victim. The man again raised the bar, and it descended upon the breast of Lachaussée, crushing all before it. No cry followed the blow this time: the death of the wretched man was instantaneous.

The multitude remained silent for a few seconds, as if they were listening for another cry. But voices were at length heard, first one and then another, gradually spreading, until the murmur broke forth into one savage roar of exultation, when they knew that the criminal had ceased to exist. A clue had been found to the mystery in which the deaths by poison had long been involved; and now that one of the participators in the horrible deeds, that had so long baffled the keenest vigilance of the authorities, had expiated his offence before their eyes, their satisfaction knew no bounds. And when they had thus vented their approval of the sight they had just witnessed, they turned away from the _carrefour_, and began to leave the spot by the different outlets.

Louise, who had been scarcely able to sustain herself through the ghastly scene, was hurried on by the breaking up of the crowd, until she contrived to get within a _porte-cochère_, meaning to let them pass. But she had not been there an instant before she was recognised by a man in the throng, who had been a servant of François d’Aubray.

‘Ho!’ cried the fellow, as he saw her by the light of a cresset, ‘here is another of them. I saw her with Madame de Brinvilliers the night that her brothers were murdered. She is an _empoisonneuse_. To prison with the witch!’

He advanced towards the poor girl as he spoke, whilst the crowd stopped in their passage. But as he approached her he was seized by a powerful arm, and, having been twisted round, was flung with some violence upon the ground.