Frederick Schiller - The Pitaval Casebook

People sent a Corporal from the mounted police, named Desgrais, to Lüttich, accompanied by some justice officers with a royal letter to the Council of the Sixty itself, in which the monarch demanded that the Marquess be delivered to him to allow the pertaining punishments to be executed upon her. The Council to which Desgrais presented the letter with an excerpt of the legal act, did not have any hesitation to give him immediately permission to arrest Lady Brinvillier.

Desgrais who heard that she has hidden in a cloister, kept it not for advisable to arrest her with force in this free zone. He could easily fail his whole goal. It was to be feared that a forceful capture in the cloister could be seen as desecration of a saintly place and could cause a riot in the city, and may snatch away from his hands his captive.

He found, hence, an outcome in a malice. Disguised as an Abbot, he called for the Marquess. He would be a French man, he said, and did not want to travel through Lüttich without visiting a Lady who equally aroused a general interest through her unfortunate destiny as a general admiration through her beauty. He played his role so well that he soon came to talk to her about love. He found a hearing by the Marquess. A cloister is a very uncomfortable place for the reliable encounters of two lovers. Desgrais proposed, hence, a trip in the countryside. His proposition would be accepted. Hardly were they, however, outside the city that the beloved Abbot suddenly transformed himself into a terrible Corporal of the mounted police, and gave her into the hands of his men who have waited her already there.

Vested with an order from the Council, which secured him a free entry, he went then immediately into the cloister and searched everything that he found in the Marquess' room. The Marquess was most worried by a coffer which he found under her bed. She asked very pressingly that people should give it back to her. But Desgrais was deaf enough to all her requests. Finally, she demanded only to have, at least, the papers which she called her confessions; but this would be denied her too. Even for the respect which people otherwise care to show for everything relating to the sacrament of confession, the Corporal could not determine himself to give back to her her handwritten papers. He held it for his rigorous officer's duty not only the criminal, but rather also everything that could serve to her conviction, to deliver to the hands of Justice.

The Marquess attempted, in the meantime, another means to save herself, or at least her coffer. She offered money to one of the guards to undertake a commission for her, and as this one was willing, hence she gave him a letter for a certain Theria with whom she has lived during her stay in Lüttich in very intimate company. In this letter, she asked him to come to help her most hurriedly and to save her from the hands of Desgrais; and in a second letter, she told him that her whole guard consist only of eight soldiers whom five resolved men can easily overcome. In a third letter, finally, she wrote to the beloved Theria that if he could not save her using force publicly; hence, he should at least come to stab to death some of her coach's horses, and take hold of the coffer, because otherwise it would be unmistakably lost.

None of these letters landed into Theria’s hands, because the guard betrayed her commission. It is only fortuitously that he found himself in Maastricht, when she would be brought to this city and made an attempt to corrupt her guards. He raised his rewards up to 1 000 Pistols, if they would make the Marquess escape. But they remained unmoved. As all hope for salvation seemed lost, the Marquess wanted, out of despair, to take her own life, and to this end, wanted to swallow a needle. One of her guards would, however, guess her intention and prevented her from executing it.

In the meantime, the Parliament received the order to send Member of Parliament Palluau to go to Rocroi and to hear immediately the Marquess. The goal of this order was either to hinder her from unravelling a cabal to her advantage, as she was almost in relationship with the whole Parliament, or not to give her time to think about her answers and to regain force, through making up skillful subterfuges, with other Members of Parliament. The commission would be correctly executed.

As soon as the Marquess arrived in Paris and was brought for custody in the Parliament prison, she turned to Mister Penautier who, as main cashier of the regular and spiritual authorities of Languedoc, disposed of a great income and had permission to keep an opulent table. Through these two advantages, he enjoyed overall respect and could, in fact, grant protection. He found himself, however, dragged into this story, but needed for himself his whole credibility.

A letter which the Marquess wrote to him from the Parliament prison, would be delivered and brought to him to his great embarrassment. She told him really frankly in this letter about the danger which was menacing her, of losing her life on the scaffold, and about the conduct which she was resolved to observe during her hearing. She has undertaken, she wrote, to deny everything and to confess nothing. She asked him, finally, still for an advice and sought his friends' influence to make prevail for her.

In line with this resolution, she has, in fact, already in the hearing in Rocroi, observed this behaviour and has denied everything stubbornly. She would know nothing about the letters which she has written after her imprisonment; and she would also not know of Saint Croix's little coffer which people showed to her. About the promissory note of 30 000 Pounds, she said that she has shown it to Saint Croix so that he could show it to her creditors, and this could be used as guarantee for the future expenses and collateral against the trials which people have set up against her. For that reason, he has given her a receipt which she, however, has lost in the meantime.

In prison, she affected a mental calmness which was totally foreign to her heart. She knew her crimes, and she also realized that her judges know all about them too. Unceasingly, the image of death which she expected, surrounded her, and in the moment when she seemed to play with an apparent calm a party of piquet, her unique thought was about committing suicide. She chose for this goal a means which she hoped, would curtail the attention of her guards most easily. She has fabricated a sharp tool with a very long tube and intended to use it without any outside help. She sought, so far, to introduce it in her body and pierce her own organs, resolved to remove herself, through the torments of such death, from the humiliation which the hands of Justice has prepared for her. People discovered, however, her plan and she would be prevented from achieving it.

The most important among the proofs existing against her, was her written confession in which information about the most secret details of her life would be kept. There is almost not any crime which she is not recognizing in those writings. Immediately in the introduction, she declared herself to be a murderer, and recognized that she has put fire in a house and has acquainted herself with excesses of all sorts, has indulged herself into all the disorders of voluptuousness and drunkenness without any restraint. “Lady Brinvillier told us in her confession,” wrote Lady Sévigné in her 269th letter and in fact, it is really true what she wrote about it, if otherwise what has been said about the case, was not always true, “that she ceased to be a virgin already in her seventh year, and has behaved all along in equal manner. She has poisoned her father, her brothers and once her children, and has even taken poison herself to find out an antidote against it. Medea herself would not have gone so far.

She has recognized among other confessions, her handwriting, a move which is not so intelligent; however, she affirmed that she has written these notes while experiencing the most violent fever, that they only constitute a series of senseless, clumsy discourse which people could not even read without laughing.” In the following letters, she added still: “People speak, now, of nothing else but Brinvillier. About what she said, what she did, how she behaved. Her parricide, she has presumably written in her confession in order not to forget it to her confessor. People must in fact confess that her littlest scruples about fearing to forget something, are laudable.”