but we have
yet to see what hold it took upon the French people at a somewhat earlier
period. So rooted had it become in France between the years 1670 and 1680,
that Madame de Sevigne, in one of her letters, expresses her fear that
Frenchman and poisoner would become synonymous terms.

As in Italy, the first notice the government received of the prevalence of
this crime was given by the clergy, to whom females of high rank, and some
among the middle and lower classes, had avowed in the confessional that
they had poisoned their husbands. In consequence of these disclosures, two
Italians, named Exili and Glaser, were arrested, and thrown into the
Bastille, on the charge of compounding and selling the drugs used for
these murders. Glaser died in prison, but Exili remained without trial for
several months; and there, shortly afterwards, he made the acquaintance of
another prisoner, named Sainte Croix, by whose example the crime was still
further disseminated among the French people.

The most notorious of the poisoners that derived their pernicious
knowledge from this man was Madame de Brinvilliers, a young woman
connected both by birth and marriage with some of the noblest families of
France. She seems, from her very earliest years, to have been heartless
and depraved; and, if we may believe her own confession, was steeped in
wickedness ere she had well entered her teens. She was, however, beautiful
and accomplished; and, in the eye of the world, seemed exemplary and kind.
Guyot de Pitaval, in the _Causes Celebres_, and Madame de Sevigne, in her
letters, represent her as mild and agreeable in her manners, and offering
no traces on her countenance of the evil soul within. She was married in
1651 to the Marquis de Brinvilliers, with whom she lived unhappily for
some years. He was a loose, dissipated character, and was the means of
introducing Sainte Croix to his wife, a man who cast a blight upon her
life, and dragged her on from crime to crime, till her offences became so
great that the mind shudders to dwell upon them. For this man she
conceived a guilty passion, to gratify which she plunged at once into the
gulf of sin. She was drawn to its most loathsome depths ere retribution
overtook her.

She had as yet shewn a fair outside to the world, and found but little
difficulty in effecting a legal separation from her husband, who had not
the art to conceal his vices. The proceeding gave great offence to her
family. She appe