er and sister,--kindred and
friends, of all degrees, looked askance and with suspicious eyes upon
one another.

In Paris the terror lasted long. Society was for a while broken up by
cruel suspicions. The meat upon the table remained uneaten, the wine
undrank, men and women procured their own provisions in the market, and
cooked and ate them in their own apartments. Yet was every precaution in
vain. The fatal dust scattered upon the pillow, or a bouquet sprinkled
with the aqua tofana, looking bright and innocent as God's dew upon the
flowers, transmitted death without a warning of danger. Nay, to crown
all summit of wickedness, the bread in the hospitals of the sick, the
meagre tables of the convent, the consecrated host administered by the
priest, and the sacramental wine which he drank himself, all in turn
were poisoned, polluted, damned, by the unseen presence of the manna of
St. Nicholas, as the populace mockingly called the poudre de succession.

The Court took the alarm when a gilded vial of the aqua tofana was
found one day upon the table of the Duchesse de la Valliere, having
been placed there by the hand of some secret rival, in order to
cast suspicion upon the unhappy Louise, and hasten her fall, already
approaching.

The star of Montespan was rising bright in the east, and that of La
Valliere was setting in clouds and darkness in the west. But the King
never distrusted for a moment the truth of La Valliere, the only woman
who ever loved him for his own sake, and he knew it even while he
allowed her to be supplanted by another infinitely less worthy--one
whose hour of triumph came when she saw the broken-hearted Louise throw
aside the velvet and brocade of the Court and put on the sackcloth of
the barefooted and repentant Carmelite.

The King burned with indignation at the insult offered to his mistress,
and was still more alarmed to find the new mysterious death creeping
into the corridors of his palace. He hastily constituted the terrible
Chambre Ardente, a court of supreme criminal jurisdiction, and
commissioned it to search out, try, and burn, without appeal, all
poisoners and secret assassins in the kingdom.

La Regnie, a man of Rhadamanthean justice, as hard of heart as he was
subtle and suspicious, was long baffled, and to his unutterable rage,
set at naught by the indefatigable poisoners who kept all France awake
on its pillows.

History records how Gaudin de St. Croix, the disciple of Exili, whi