The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV

by Anne Somerset

  At the time it is true that no one seems to have shown any interest in this statement, for no steps were taken against those named as customers by Mariette and Lesage. The two men were both found guilty, but there was a wide disparity in their punishments. Mariette was a cousin of the magistrate who had first investigated the case7 and this family connection ensured that when sentence was passed he was condemned only to nine years’ banishment. Even this was not properly enforced, for after a short spell in a corrective institute for wayward priests he left without permission and then withdrew to the country. Lesage fared much worse. Lacking Mariette’s influence with the judges, he was sentenced to the galleys in perpetuity.

  Serving in the galleys was a dreadful fate imposed on many convicts at a time when the expansion of the navy and the demands of war had created an insatiable demand for slaves to man the Mediterranean fleet. Because of the high mortality rate caused by harsh conditions and overwork, vacancies had constantly to be replenished and orders had been sent out that perpetrators of offences such as bigamy, which previously had incurred a mandatory death sentence, should instead be punished by being forced to man the galleys. Life in the galleys was deemed such an appalling prospect that some prisoners preferred to incapacitate themselves by mutilating limbs. In a bid to stamp out this vexatious practice a royal decree was issued in 1677 declaring that in future anyone who adopted this ‘easy method’ of evading service would be put to death.8

  Even when offenders were sentenced to a fixed term in the galleys, it was common practice not to free them at the end of their time and they usually remained chained to their oar until death released them from enslavement. Most untypically, however, Lesage was freed after serving only a few years in the Mediterranean. This caused great puzzlement when he again came to the notice of the authorities. It was conjectured that an influential client of his must have interceded on his behalf, securing his early release. In 1679 Mme Leféron was asked if it had been she who had performed this feat, but she denied this, and other enquiries by Louvois failed to reveal who was responsible. There has been speculation that, in fact, it was Mme de Montespan who exerted herself to free Lesage, so that she could resume her consultations with him, but this now seems unlikely. Research by Jean-Christian Petitfils has shown that in June 1673 the Minister for the Marine sent instructions to the Intendant of the galleys to free fifteen French galley slaves who had distinguished themselves in an action against the Genoese. Lesage was probably among this contingent.9

  Lesage (as he now called himself) promptly returned to Paris and, apparently undeterred by the frightful punishment he had received, resumed his former line of business. He soon re-established himself as ‘a very great magician’ who was held in the highest repute by others who practised his trade. Despite their earlier disagreement, Mme Voisin had missed him during his absence and had regretfully told one client that it was unfortunate he was not on hand to aid her.10 Upon his return she settled her differences with him and was soon offering him fresh employment.

  Lesage was nothing if not versatile. He dabbled in alchemy, hinting that he knew how to convert silver into gold and that he had found a way of solidifying mercury. He also sold skin preparations and beauty aids, making lotions to his own recipe. As he modestly put it, he also ‘knew something about the stars’ and drew up a chart for one client trying to select an auspicious day on which to undertake an important enterprise.11 These, however, were the sort of skills which numerous other members of the Paris underworld were ready to offer their clients, whereas Lesage had additional talents that made him unique.

  Lesage set out to convince his clients that he could communicate with the spirit world and could mediate on their behalf with its inhabitants. In order to promote this illusion he had perfected a conjuring trick of his own invention, which he performed – as he himself proudly noted – with incomparable ‘subtlety and skill’. No one else in Paris knew how he did this and Lesage jealously guarded the secret, being careful to leave no clues that might reveal his technique. When clients came to him he would ask them to set down their desires in writing, then to fold and seal the list without showing it to him. Having embedded the paper in a wax ball, Lesage would cast this into the fire. As soon as it touched the flames the ball would explode with a resounding noise, disintegrating so completely that not even tiny fragments could be retrieved. In fact, however, Lesage had cleverly substituted the original ball with another, filled beforehand with saltpetre so that it would detonate on contact with fire. He then took the first ball away so he could extract the paper and, having read what his clients had written, he decided how to proceed. Sometimes he returned the paper to the clients, who were invariably amazed that a document they had seen destroyed before their very eyes should be restored intact and undamaged. Lesage would then tell them that their wishes had been made known to the spirits and that, if he was suitably rewarded, there was a good chance their desires would be granted. Alternatively, if Lesage saw that the client had written something compromising, he would indicate that he now had the paper in his possession and that they must pay him generously if they did not want its contents revealed.12

  Lesage was considered to be unrivalled when it came to concluding marriages. He claimed he could invoke supernatural forces to bring about events he desired and if la Voisin had a case that was proving particularly intractable she was apt to enlist his aid. For instance, when a well-to-do widow named Mme Desmaretz came to la Voisin in a panic after being impregnated by her lover, M. Gontier, la Voisin assured her that Lesage would have no difficulty ensuring that Gontier honoured his earlier promise of marriage. Sure enough, Lesage’s intervention proved decisive. He began by pronouncing orisons in Mme Desmaretz’s bedchamber and followed this up with a variety of unconventional procedures. Chanting ‘Per Deum Vivum, Per Deum Verum, Per Deum Sanctum’, Lesage repeatedly tapped a hazel wand on the bed the couple had shared, assuring Mme Desmaretz that this would have the effect of unleashing Gontier’s love for her. On another occasion when la Voisin was present Lesage enacted a more sinister ritual with overtones of Satanism. He had instructed Mme Desmaretz to provide him with a pot of Gontier’s urine and to this he added pigeon’s blood and the heart of a sheep. Then, as Mme Desmaretz knelt before him, he again flourished his wand and called on Lucifer, Beelzebub and Astaroth to help her. Having done this he assured Mme Desmaretz that if she deposited the pot with its stinking contents in her cellar, Gontier would not enjoy a moment’s repose until he had pledged himself to her’.13

  All went according to plan, for shortly afterwards Gontier had taken Mme Desmaretz as his wife. Following Lesage’s arrest, however, the methods she had used to ensnare her husband were exposed to humiliating scrutiny. In late August 1679 Mme Desmaretz was summoned before the Chambre Ardente to give an account of her actions. Presumably it came as an unpleasant shock to M. Gontier to learn of the manner in which he had been manoeuvred into marriage, but the commissioners were not too hard on her and let her off with a modest fine for profanity.

  Mme Brissart was another of la Voisin’s clients whose romantic aspirations were furthered by Lesage. She yearned for an army officer named Captain Rubantel who, before going on campaign, had happily spent her money to fit himself out with military accoutrements, but since then had treated her coldly. Once again Lesage resolved the situation by performing a solemn ceremony. Having struck the ground with his wand, he called on Rubantel, in the name of the ‘all-powerful one’ to cease neglecting Mme Brissart, who henceforth would possess his heart and body. This, too, yielded results, for Rubantel soon became more attentive, though Lesage himself would later give a prosaic reason for his success. He explained that Mme Brissart had initially wearied her lover by showing herself too eager, but when she followed Lesage’s advice and became more distant, Rubantel’s interest was reawakened.14

  Matters relating to love and marriage formed a fair part of Lesage’s business, but for him death, too, was a saleable commodity. Admittedly, when
people came to him in the hope that he could arrange for a death to take place, he never sought to facilitate crude acts of homicide. Mme Voisin herself would ultimately exonerate him of this, for her final words on Lesage were that while he had proved to be ‘no friend of hers’, she did not believe he had ever been involved in any form of poisoning.15 Instead, Lesage convinced his clients that he could procure deaths by casting spells and that this was an infinitely more sensible way to proceed than resorting to poison, with its inherent risk of detection.

  It was not until some months after his arrest that details of all this began to emerge. Lesage had doubtless hoped that such matters could be kept hidden but gradually it became plain that they had taken up much of his time. He admitted, for example, that the Comte de Gassilly, a former client of Marie Bosse and Mme Vigoreux, had come to him because he wanted his uncle to die. Lesage had instructed the Comte to furnish him with some human bones and had then performed some ‘monkey tricks’ with them, which satisfied Gassilly that his uncle would not live much longer. On another occasion a cook named David and his friend Chaix had informed Lesage that they wanted to murder M. Poncet, a Conseiller d’état. Lesage then performed a series of spells featuring arsenic, telling them that this obviated the need of actually administering the poison to Poncet.16

  Lesage did his best to make out that his conduct was not worthy of serious censure. Unlike other members of his profession, he did not really believe in magic and had merely cynically imposed on the credulous in order to make money. While he could hardly deny that his activities had been fraudulent, he sought to portray them as essentially harmless. He even argued that he had actually saved lives by luring clients away from the likes of la Bosse, la Voisin and la Vigoreux, for they would have advocated the use of poison to resolve difficulties, to which he was resolutely opposed. He therefore deserved credit for having persuaded ‘Gassilly and the others to abandon the route of poison’ by convincing them that he could help them attain their wishes with complete safety. Citing another case where he had persuaded the divineress Mme Chapelain to enlist his aid rather than kill someone through her own efforts, he noted proudly that ‘by his monkey tricks he persuaded her he knew much more about poisoning people through magic’ than she could achieve with more conventional methods. He claimed that there had been many times when, by ‘similar contrivances’ he had ‘prevented … pernicious designs’ from being executed.17

  Despite his efforts to present his actions in a favourable light, Lesage had better reason than anyone to be aware that they were liable to incur savage retribution. Nevertheless, he clung to the hope that if he furthered the inquiry without incriminating himself too much he would be shown mercy, and he did everything he could to achieve this result. He had no qualms about denouncing others, overwhelming them with a torrent of accusations, which he steadfastly maintained in the face of their shrill denials. As a practised and polished liar who was accustomed to living on his wits, Lesage had no difficulty mingling truth and falsehood in the most plausible fashion, and he was determined that through his adroit manipulation of the evidence he would manoeuvre himself into a much more advantageous position.

  * * *

  Lesage’s relations with la Voisin had by no means always been harmonious but they had acknowledged each other as masters in their field and la Voisin had never quite overcome her fascination for him. It appears that following his return from the galleys, she had continued to be strongly attracted to him, though Lesage had not reciprocated her feelings as warmly as she would have liked. At one point la Voisin had tried to remedy this by paying her neighbour, la Pelletier, to perform a Novena on her behalf in the hope that this would make Lesage fall in love with her. When this had failed, la Voisin had tried another tactic, telling Lesage that she had given birth to his child and that he must support it. However, since Lesage suspected – rightly, as it turned out – that the child was supposititious, he refused to acknowledge it as his own. He told her he considered her too old to conceive a baby and that unless he received independent evidence that she had given birth – such as proof that she was lactating – he would not contribute a sou to the child’s upkeep.18

  Now, however, that both were in custody there was no question that memories of their past affection would make them try to protect each other. La Voisin herself recognised well enough that she could expect no loyalty whatever from Lesage. When they were brought together for a confrontation on 19 May she commented bitterly ‘that he had always betrayed her’ to which Lesage retorted that, on the contrary, it was she who had always cheated him. Certainly, on his arrest Lesage had wasted little time heaping calumny on his former lover. During his very first interrogation on 22 March he had described la Voisin as ‘a wicked woman whom God will punish’, and he would later refer to her as ‘a veteran poisoner’.19

  In the months after his arrest Lesage would testify that la Voisin had on more than one occasion tried to poison her own husband. He even claimed that after a quarrel between them he himself had come close to being poisoned by her. Hearing that he was ill, la Voisin had sent the herbalist Maître Pierre to his bedside but Lesage said that the supposedly therapeutic plasters that Maître Pierre had applied had made him so ill that he would have died had he not promptly removed them.20 However, his allegations against la Voisin were far more extensive than this, for he accused her of multiple murders, which no one else attributed to her and for which she never admitted responsibility.

  Among those whom Lesage listed as victims of la Voisin was a M. Le Roule, whose wife had supposedly sought la Voisin’s help in eliminating him and who had been killed with poisons supplied by Maître Pierre. According to Lesage, la Voisin was also behind the death of the Comte d’Argenton. His widow had subsequently remarried but had then taken against her second husband and had approached la Voisin to see if he, too, could be poisoned. In addition, a man called Nesle had given la Voisin a pearl necklace because he wanted to poison somebody. When la Voisin was told of this accusation against her, she agreed that Nesle had been a client of hers but said he had come to her simply because he wanted her to further a marriage for him.21

  Lesage further alleged that a woman called Mme Yvon had prevailed upon la Voisin to poison her husband. Some years after his death Mme Yvon had asked la Voisin to provide the same service for a daughter of hers named Mme Leroy, whose marriage was unhappy. On being challenged about this during a confrontation with Lesage, la Voisin protested that she had had nothing to do with Yvon’s death and had never even met with Mme Yvon in the lifetime of her husband. It was true that Mme Yvon had later brought her daughter to see her but this was simply because they wanted la Voisin to devise a way of arranging that M. Leroy’s niece should leave his household.22

  Lesage supplemented this by accusing la Voisin of having enabled Mme de Montmort to kill her husband. When this was put to la Voisin she was adamant that Mme de Montmort had only wanted her assistance to recover a lost casket. Another person who had allegedly sought la Voisin’s assistance in a murder was the German Mlle de Bribach, who had wanted to marry a man named M. de Montauban. Fearing that Montauban’s sister would obstruct the union, she had sent a servant to obtain a liquid from la Voisin to resolve the matter. Lesage admitted he did not know whether the intended victim had lived or died, whereas la Voisin denied that murder had ever been contemplated. She admitted that Mlle de Bribach had hoped to marry M. de Montauban but said that all she had done for her was to provide her with a love potion made from the dried corpse of a mole.23

  * * *

  La Voisin was by no means the only person against whom Lesage testified, for he proved eager to blacken a significant number of his former associates. At his very first interrogation he had been scathing about Marie Bosse (‘She’s the worst, that one,’ was his comment) but he followed this up with attacks on numerous other denizens of the Paris underworld who had hitherto escaped suspicion. It was he who first named the herbalist Maître Pierre as an accomplished poisoner, clai
ming that he was an expert on preparing deadly enemas and toxic infusions. He said la Voisin purchased many of her poisons from him, but la Bosse, la Trianon and la Delaporte were also his devoted customers. Blessis and Latour, two other men who were much in la Voisin’s company, were ‘very wicked persons’. Blessis, who was one of Mme Voisin’s lovers, was not only a forger but was probably the person who had taught her how to poison linen and perfumes. For good measure Lesage added that he understood a man called Boucher, whom he had never actually met, had not only poisoned his own wife but had worked in conjunction with the divineress Mme Chapelain. Together they had practised magic and made poisons, and he believed them to have been guilty of ‘great abominations’.24