terrible catastrophe, it is impossible
to describe; but it suffices to state, that the Comte de Villeroi was
impeached for, and fully committed for trial on the charge of having
feloniously aided and abetted Victorine de Villeroi, (late Montespan,)
in wilfully and maliciously causing the death of her late liege husband,
Herbert de Montespan, by thrusting a long pin, or bodkin of gold into
his right ear, well knowing that the same entering into his brain, would
cause his instantaneous dissolution. Master Nicolais, it appeared,
in sawing open the skull of the deceased with anatomical science and
precision, had found a pin or Golden Bodkin like that described in the
indictment, and like what were at this period much used by ladies in
fastening up their hair, bearing the initials, V.M. which he perceived
had been violently thrust through the orifice of the ear, into the brain
of the unfortunate victim. This inference as to the fiendish murderer
was inevitable, and just; and the horror-struck practitioner scrupled
not to incite the relations of the late marquess to summon witnesses,
and lay a criminal information against Victorine de Villeroi as
principal in, and Armand de Villeroi as accessary to, this abominable
transaction. Upon trial, the innocence of the Comte, as to the slightest
knowledge of his wife's secret and heinous crime, was so apparent that
it ensured him an honourable acquittal; but the guilt of that wretched
woman being established beyond all doubt by the evidence of the
goldsmith who had made for her, and engraved her initials upon, the
Golden Bodkin, of the domestics who had seen her when their master
fell asleep during the vespers at St. Genevieve, put her hand beneath
his head as if with the intent of waking, and raising him up, and
subsequently by her own confession, her guilt was thus incontrovertibly
established. She suffered those extreme penalties of the law which the
heinous nature of her crime demanded, and fully justified.

This historiette, in the leading incidents of which, every Frenchman
at all acquainted with the _Causes Celebres_ of his country, will
detect matters of fact, we have "made a prief of in our notebook," as
one of those interesting cases, (not less remarkable because of rather
frequent occurrence) which incontestably prove, that under the just
government of the Omniscient, who hath willed that "Whosoever sheddeth
the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed."--Murder will ou