st be, should yet be so criminal as she was proved to be
by the parricide to which she confessed before her judges. She had
nothing in her face that would indicate such evil. She had very abundant
chestnut hair, a rounded, well-shaped face, blue eyes very pretty and
gentle, extraordinarily white skin, good nose, and no disagreeable
feature. Still, there was nothing unusually attractive in the face:
already she was a little wrinkled, and looked older than her age.
Something made me ask at our first interview how old she was.
'Monsieur,' she said, 'if I were to live till Sainte-Madeleine's day I
should be forty-six. On her day I came into the world, and I bear her
name. I was christened Marie-Madeleine. But near to the day as we now
are, I shall not live so long: I must end to-day, or at latest to-morrow,
and it will be a favour to give me the one day. For this kindness I rely
on your word.' Anyone would have thought she was quite forty-eight.
Though her face as a rule looked so gentle, whenever an unhappy thought
crossed her mind she showed it by a contortion that frightened one at
first, and from time to time I saw her face twitching with anger, scorn,
or ill-will. I forgot to say that she was very little and thin. Such is,
roughly given, a description of her body and mind, which I very soon came
to know, taking pains from the first to observe her, so as to lose no
time in acting on what I discovered."

As she was giving a first brief sketch of her life to her confessor, the
marquise remembered that he had not yet said mass, and reminded him
herself that it was time to do so, pointing out to him the chapel of the
Conciergerie. She begged him to say a mass for her and in honour of Our
Lady, so that she might gain the intercession of the Virgin at the throne
of God. The Virgin she had always taken for her patron saint, and in the
midst of her crimes and disorderly life had never ceased in her peculiar
devotion. As she could not go with the priest, she promised to be with
him at least in the spirit. He left her at half-past ten in the morning,
and after four hours spent alone together, she had been induced by his
piety and gentleness to make confessions that could not be wrung from her
by the threats of the judges or the fear of the question. The holy and
devout priest said his mass, praying the Lord's help for confessor and
penitent alike. After mass, as he returned, he learned from a librarian
called Seney,