e or question the supernatural origin of their cult, it would
be idle to deny that the cult itself existed.

Moreover, towards the end of the century it assumed in France a very
tangible form in the series of mysterious dramas known as the "Affaire
des Poisons," of which the first act took place in 1666, when the
celebrated Marquise de Brinvilliers embarked on her amazing career of
crime in collaboration with her lover Sainte-Croix. This extraordinary
woman, who for ten years made a hobby of trying the effects of various
slow poisons on her nearest relations, thereby causing the death of her
father and brothers, might appear to have been merely an isolated
criminal of the abnormal type but for the sequel to her exploits in the
epidemic of poisoning which followed and during twenty years kept Paris
in a state of terror. The investigations of the police finally led to
the discovery of a whole band of magicians and alchemists--"a vast
ramification of malefactors covering all France"--who specialized in
the art of poisoning without fear of detection.

Concerning all these sorcerers, alchemists, compounders of magical
powders and philtres, frightful rumours circulated, "pacts with the
devil were talked of, sacrifices of new-born babies, incantations,
sacrilegious Masses and other practices as disquieting as they were
lugubrious."[259] Even the King's mistress, Madame de Montespan, is
said to have had recourse to black Masses in order to retain the royal
favour through the agency of the celebrated sorceress La Voisin, with
whom she was later implicated in an accusation of having attempted the
life of the King.

All the extraordinary details of these events have recently been
described in the book of Madame Latour, where the intimate connexion
between the poisoners and the magicians is shown. In the opinion of
contemporaries, these were not isolated individuals:

"Their methods were too certain, their execution of crime too
skilful and too easy for them not to have belonged, either directly
or indirectly, to a whole organization of criminals who prepared
the way, and studied the method of giving to crime the appearance
of illness, of forming, in a word, a school."[260]

The author of the work here quoted draws an interesting parallel between
this organization and the modern traffic in cocaine, and goes on to
describe the three degrees into which it was divided: firstly, the
Heads, cultivated and i