ntelligent men, who understood chemistry,
physics, and nearly all useful sciences, "invisible counsellors but
supreme, without whom the sorcerers and diviners would have been
powerless"; secondly, the visible magicians employing mysterious
processes, complicated rites and terrifying ceremonies; and thirdly, the
crowd of nobles and plebeians who flocked to the doors of the sorcerers
and filled their pockets in return for magic potions, philtres, and, in
certain cases, insidious poisons. Thus La Voisin must be placed in the
second category; "in spite of her luxury, her profits, and her fame,"
she "is only a subaltern agent in this vast organization of criminals.
She depends entirely for her great enterprises on the intellectual
chiefs of the corporation...."[261]

Who were these intellectual chiefs? The man who first initiated Madame
de Brinvilliers' lover Sainte-Croix into the art of poisoning was an
Italian named Exili or Eggidi; but the real initiate from whom Eggidi
and another Italian poisoner had learnt their secrets is said to have
been Glaser, variously described as a German or a Swiss chemist, who
followed the principles of Paracelsus and occupied the post of physician
to the King and the Duc d'Orleans.[262] This man, about whose history
little is known, might thus have been a kind of Rosicrucian. For since,
as has been said, the intellectual chiefs from whom the poisoners
derived their inspiration were men versed in chemistry, in science, in
physics, and the treatment of diseases, and since, further, they
included alchemists and people professing to be in possession of the
Philosopher's Stone, their resemblance with the Rosicrucians is at once
apparent. Indeed, in turning back to the branches of magic enumerated by
the Rosicrucian Robert Fludd, we find not only Natural Magic, "that most
occult and secret department of physics by which the mystical properties
of natural substances are extracted," but also Venefic Magic, which "is
familiar with potions, philtres, and with various preparations of
poisons."

The art of poisoning was therefore known to the Rosicrucians, and,
although there is no reason to suppose it was ever practised by the
heads of the Fraternity, it is possible that the inspirers of the
poisoners may have been perverted Rosicrucians, that is to say, students
of those portions of the Cabala relating to magic both of the
necromantic and venefic varieties, who turned the scientific knowledge
which