rom her suit until
her daughter's death was avenged. M. Catalan began the examination at
once, and the first interrogation to which he submitted the marquis
lasted eleven hours. Then soon afterwards he and the other persons
accused were conveyed from the prisons of Montpellier to those of
Toulouse. A crushing memorial by Madame de Rossan followed them, in
which she demonstrated with absolute clearness that the marquis had
participated in the crime of his two brothers, if not in act, in
thought, desire, and intention.

The marquis's defence was very simple: it was his misfortune to have had
two villains for brothers, who had made attempts first upon the honour
and then upon the life of a wife whom he loved tenderly; they had
destroyed her by a most atrocious death, and to crown his evil fortune,
he, the innocent, was accused of having had a hand in that death. And,
indeed, the examinations in the trial did not succeed in bringing
any evidence against the marquis beyond moral presumptions, which, it
appears, were insufficient to induce his judges to award a sentence of
death.

A verdict was consequently given, upon the 21st of August, 1667, which
sentenced the abbe and the chevalier de Ganges to be broken alive on the
wheel, the Marquis de Ganges to perpetual banishment from the kingdom,
his property to be confiscated to the king, and himself to lose his
nobility and to become incapable of succeeding to the property of his
children. As for the priest Perette, he was sentenced to the galleys for
life, after having previously been degraded from his clerical orders by
the ecclesiastical authorities.

This sentence made as great a stir as the murder had done, and gave
rise, in that period when "extenuating circumstances" had not been
invented, to long and angry discussions. Indeed, the marquis either was
guilty of complicity or was not: if he was not, the punishment was too
cruel; if he was, the sentence was too light. Such was the opinion of
Louis XIV., who remembered the beauty of the Marquis de Ganges; for,
some time afterwards, when he was believed to have forgotten this
unhappy affair, and when he was asked to pardon the Marquis de la Douze,
who was accused of having poisoned his wife, the king answered, "There
is no need for a pardon, since he belongs to the Parliament of Toulouse,
and the Marquis de Ganges did very well without one."

It may easily be supposed that this melancholy event did not pass
without inciti