第6章

The day after they arrived in the country there was a pigeon-pie for dinner: seven persons who had eaten it felt indisposed after the meal, and the three who had not taken it were perfectly well.Those on whom the poisonous substance had chiefly acted were the lieutenant, the councillor, and the commandant of the watch.He may have eaten more, or possibly the poison he had tasted on the former occasion helped, but at any rate the lieutenant was the first to be attacked with vomiting two hours later, the councillor showed the same symptoms; the commandant and the others were a prey for several hours to frightful internal pains; but from the beginning their condition was not nearly so grave as that of the two brothers.This time again, as usual, the help of doctors was useless.On the 12th of April, five days after they had been poisoned, the lieutenant and his brother returned to Paris so changed that anyone would have thought they had both suffered a long and cruel illness.Madame de Brinvilliers was in the country at the time, and did not come back during the whole time that her brothers were ill.From the very first consultation in the lieutenant's case the doctors entertained no hope.The symptoms were the same as those to which his father had succumbed, and they supposed it was an unknown disease in the family.

They gave up all hope of recovery.Indeed, his state grew worse and worse; he felt an unconquerable aversion for every kind of food, and the vomiting was incessant.The last three days of his life he complained that a fire was burning in his breast, and the flames that burned within seemed to blaze forth at his eyes, the only part of his body that appeared to live, so like a corpse was all the rest of him.

On the 17th of June 1670 he died: the poison had taken seventy-two days to complete its work.Suspicion began to dawn: the lieutenant's body was opened, and a formal report was drawn up.The operation was performed in the presence of the surgeons Dupre and Durant, and Gavart, the apothecary, by M.Bachot, the brothers' private physician.They found the stomach and duodenum to be black and falling to pieces, the liver burnt and gangrened.They said that this state of things must have been produced by poison, but as the presence of certain bodily humours sometimes produces similar appearances, they durst not declare that the lieutenant's death could not have come about by natural causes, and he was buried without further inquiry.

It was as his private physician that Dr.Bachot had asked for the autopsy of his patient's brother.For the younger brother seemed to have been attacked by the same complaint, and the doctor hoped to find from the death of the one some means for preserving the life of the other.The councillor was in a violent fever, agitated unceasingly both in body and mind: he could not bear any position of any kind for more than a few minutes at a time.Bed was a place of torture; but if he got up, he cried for it again, at least for a change of suffering.At the end of three months he died.His stomach, duodenum, and liver were all in the same corrupt state as his brother's, and more than that, the surface of his body was burnt away.This, said the doctors; was no dubious sign of poisoning;although, they added, it sometimes happened that a 'cacochyme'

produced the same effect.Lachaussee was so far from being suspected, that the councillor, in recognition of the care he had bestowed on him in his last illness, left him in his will a legacy of a hundred crowns; moreover, he received a thousand francs from Sainte-Croix and the marquise.

So great a disaster in one family, however, was not only sad but alarming.Death knows no hatred: death is deaf and blind, nothing more, and astonishment was felt at this ruthless destruction of all who bore one name.Still nobody suspected the true culprits, search was fruitless, inquiries led nowhere: the marquise put on mourning for her brothers, Sainte-Croix continued in his path of folly, and all things went on as before.Meanwhile Sainte-Croix had made the acquaintance of the Sieur de Saint Laurent, the same man from whom Penautier had asked for a post without success, and had made friends with him.Penautier had meanwhile become the heir of his father-in-law, the Sieur Lesecq, whose death had most unexpectedly occurred; he had thereby gained a second post in Languedoc and an immense property: still, he coveted the place of receiver of the clergy.

Chance now once more helped him: a few days after taking over from Sainte-Croix a man-servant named George, M.de Saint-Laurent fell sick, and his illness showed symptoms similar to those observed in the case of the d'Aubrays, father and sons; but it was more rapid, lasting only twenty-four hours.Like them, M.de Saint-Laurent died a prey to frightful tortures.The same day an officer from the sovereign's court came to see him, heard every detail connected with his friend's death, and when told of the symptoms said before the servants to Sainfray the notary that it would be necessary to examine the body.An hour later George disappeared, saying nothing to anybody, and not even asking for his wages.Suspicions were excited;but again they remained vague.The autopsy showed a state of things not precisely to be called peculiar to poisoning cases the intestines, which the fatal poison had not had time to burn as in the case of the d'Aubrays, were marked with reddish spots like flea-bites.In June Penautier obtained the post that had been held by the Sieur de Saint-Laurent.