the potency of the
draught, she procured an antidote from Sainte Croix, and all doubts being
removed, commenced operations upon her grey-headed father. She
administered the first dose with her own hands, in his chocolate. The
poison worked well. The old man was taken ill, and his daughter,
apparently full of tenderness and anxiety, watched by his bedside. The
next day she gave him some broth, which she recommended as highly
nourishing. This also was poisoned. In this manner she gradually wore out
his frame, and in less than ten days he was a corpse! His death seemed so
much the result of disease, that no suspicions were excited.

[39] This is denied by Voltaire in his _Age of Louis XIV._; but he
does not state for what reason. His words are, "Il est faux
qu'elle eut essaye ses poisons dans les hopitaux, comme le
disait le peuple, et comme il est ecrit dans les _Causes
Celebres_, ouvrage d'un avocat sans cause et fait pour le
peuple."

When the two brothers arrived from the provinces to render the last sad
duties to their sire, they found their sister as grieved, to all outward
appearance, as even filial affection could desire: but the young men only
came to perish. They stood between Sainte Croix and the already
half-clutched gold, and their doom was sealed. A man, named La Chaussee,
was hired by Sainte Croix to aid in administering the poisons; and, in
less than six weeks time, they had both gone to their long home.

Suspicion was now excited; but so cautiously had all been done, that it
found no one upon whom to attach itself. The marquise had a sister, and
she was entitled, by the death of her relatives, to half the property.
Less than the whole would not satisfy Sainte Croix, and he determined that
she should die the same death as her father and brothers. She was too
distrustful, however; and, by quitting Paris, she escaped the destruction
that was lurking for her.

The marquise had undertaken these murders to please her lover. She was now
anxious to perpetrate another on her own account. She wished to marry
Sainte Croix; but, though separated from her husband, she was not
divorced. She thought it would be easier to poison him than to apply to
the tribunals for a divorce, which might, perhaps, be refused. But Sainte
Croix had no longer any love for his guilty instrument. Bad men do not
admire others who are as bad as themselves. Though a villain himself, he
had n