hat supported her. Madame de Sevigne says, that when on the
hurdle, on her way to the scaffold, she entreated her confessor to
exert his influence with the executioner to place himself next to her,
that his body might hide from her view "that scoundrel, Desgrais, who
had entrapped her." She also asked the ladies, who had been drawn to
their windows to witness the procession, what they were looking at?
adding, "a pretty sight you have come to see, truly!" She laughed when
on the scaffold, dying as she had lived, impenitent and heartless. On
the morrow, the populace came in crowds to collect her ashes, to
preserve them as relics. She was regarded as a martyred saint, and her
ashes were supposed to be endowed, by Divine grace, with the power of
curing all diseases. Popular folly has often canonised persons whose
pretensions to sanctity were extremely equivocal; but the disgusting
folly of the multitude, in this instance, has never been surpassed.

Before her death, proceedings were instituted against M. de Penautier,
treasurer of the province of Languedoc, and Receiver-general for the
clergy, who was accused by a lady, named St. Laurent, of having
poisoned her husband, the late Receiver-general, in order to obtain his
appointment. The circumstances of this case were never divulged, and
the greatest influence was exerted to prevent it from going to trial.
He was known to have been intimate with Sainte Croix and Madame de
Brinvilliers, and was thought to have procured his poisons from them.
The latter, however, refused to say anything which might implicate him.
The inquiry was eventually stifled, after Penautier had been several
months in the Bastille.

The Cardinal de Bonzy was accused by the gossips of the day of being an
accomplice of Penautier. The Cardinal's estates were burthened with the
payment of several heavy annuities; but, about the time that poisoning
became so fashionable, all the annuitants died off, one after the
other. The Cardinal, in talking of these annuitants, afterwards used to
say, "Thanks to my star, I have outlived them all!" A wit, seeing him
and Penautier riding in the same carriage, cried out, in allusion to
this expression, "There go the Cardinal de Bonzy and his star!"

It was now that the mania for poisoning began to take hold of the
popular mind. From this time until the year 1682, the prisons of France
teemed with persons accused of this crime; and it is very singular,
that other offences