by George Hogarth.
Originally published in Bentley's Miscellany (Richard Bentley) vol.3 (1838).
Among the assassinations committed by means of poison during the period when that crime was so prevalent throughout Europe, was that of Henrietta of England, Duchess of Orleans. That she thus perished seems beyond a doubt; though the causes of her murder, and its perpetrators, are involved in some degree of mystery, which cannot now be entirely cleared up. Her death, however, was attended with circumstances which afford room for strong presumptions on the subject.
The Princess Henrietta Anne of England was the daughter of Charles the First and his queen Henrietta Maria. She was the child of adversity from her very cradle. In the desperate fortunes of her father, when he was driven from place to place by the forces of the Parliament, his queen accompanied him in all his perils and wanderings with heroic courage and devoted affection. Finding the time of her confinement approaching, she was forced to leave her husband, and take refuge in the loyal city of Exeter. They parted after a tender farewell, which proved to be their last. In Exeter the queen was reduced to such extremity, that, had it not been for the assistance of the Queen of France, she would have wanted the common necessaries required in her situation. On the 16th of June 1644, her daughter Henrietta was born. The Earl of Essex was advancing to Exeter at the head of a parliamentary army, and the poor queen was obliged to fly before she had recovered from her accouchement. Seventeen days afterwards, leaving her infant daughter to the care of the Countess of Morton, she found means to reach the seaside, escaping with difficulty the vigilance of the hostile soldiers; and got on board of a small vessel, which was pursued and cannonaded to the very coast of France.
On her arrival at Paris, she was at first received with the honours due to the daughter of Henry the Fourth, and with the appearance of affection to which she was entitled from the royal family of France, her near relations. Soon afterwards the troubles of the Fronde broke out, and the popular party were besieged in Paris by the royal forces. During this time she was not only insulted by the populace, as a member of the royal family of France; but reduced to such want, that she was constrained, as she said herself, to ask charity from the parliament to enable her barely to subsist. In this melancholy situation she received the overwhelming tidings of the tragical death of her husband; and, after having in some measure recovered from the shock, she retired to a convent. In this retirement she spent her time in the education of her children; her daughter Henrietta having been some time before brought to her by her faithful governess, Lady Morton. Her retreat, however, did not protect her from the fury of the insurgent populace, and she returned for safety to her former residence in the Louvre. The young king and the royal family had been forced to retire from the capital, which in consequence of the civil war was suffering from dearth; and in this deserted and unprotected state the Queen of England was reduced to such a state of destitution, that Cardinal de Retz, in paying her a visit, found her sitting in her daughter's room and the young princess in bed. "You see," said the queen, "that I am keeping Henrietta company here; for the poor child cannot get up to-day for want of a fire."—"Posterity," says the cardinal, "will scarcely believe that the grand-daughter of Henry the Fourth, in the palace of the Louvre, could have been in want of a faggot to warm her in the month of January!" This unhappy queen's sorrows ended only with her life. She lived to see the restoration of her son, but his conduct in various respects was a source of grief and mortification to her; and, after having resided for some time in England, she resolved to finish her days in her peaceful convent near Paris, where she died in the year 1669, at the age of fifty.
The young princess of England, brought up in great retirement, and educated in the school of adversity, gave indications of a character not often met with in the highest sphere of human life. She was remarkable for the sweetness of her temper, and the unaffected humility of her disposition. Her youthful grace and beauty, her cheerful and affable manners, and elegant accomplishments made her the ornament of the court, and recalled the remembrance of her unhappy ancestress, Mary Stuart. It is said that her mother and Anne of Austria, the mother of Louis the Fourteenth, desired that the young king should marry her, but that he objected to the arrangement because the princess was not old enough. Soon afterwards the queen-mother proposed to the Queen of England that the princess should marry her second son, Philip Duke of Orleans. The marriage was agreed on; and, on the 31st of March 1661, the young pair were united in the chapel of the Palais Royal.
Before the marriage, the duke treated his betrothed with all manner of gallantry and empressement, and his attentions, says Madame de la Fayette, were wanting in nothing but love; "but," she adds, "the miracle of inspiring the heart of this prince with love was beyond the power of any woman in the world."
United to a husband of this disposition, a degree of circumspection and knowledge of the world were necessary, which the secluded education of the young duchess had not given her the means of acquiring. Gay, inexperienced, and confiding, she fell into imprudences which exposed her to suspicion, and became involved in the intrigues of the corrupt and selfish courtiers of both sexes by whom she was surrounded, and by whom she was led into some actions which cannot be quite reconciled to the general character which is given of her by every contemporary authority.
A young nobleman of the court, the Count de Guiche, was at this time high in the good graces of the Duke of Orleans, by whom he was introduced to the duchess, and particularly recommended to her favour and attention. The count was very handsome, remarkably elegant in his manners and dress, and an adept in the amorous jargon which made up the polite conversation of the day. A young gallant of that time borrowed his language from the romances of Calprenede and Scuderi, and held it essential to his character as a man of fashion to entertain a lady with the exaggerated compliments and elaborate conceits so abundantly supplied by those superfine productions. It was a tone of conversation similar to that which, under the name of euphuism, prevailed among the wits and courtiers of our Queen Elizabeth's days, and is ridiculed by Scott in his character of Sir Percy Shafton. The duchess took great pleasure in the society of this accomplished cavalier, while he appears to have become seriously enamoured of the young and fascinating creature with whom he was permitted to enjoy such unreserved intercourse. His deportment and language, at first full of the devoted gallantry required by the manners of the age, gradually gave indications of warmer but less respectful feelings; and the state of his mind, though unperceived by the inexperienced object of his wishes, discovered itself to the more practised eyes of Mademoiselle de Montalais, one of her attendants. The count, however, found means to gain this lady's good graces; and, in place of putting her mistress on her guard against him, she favoured his designs, and even undertook to prevail on the duchess to receive his letters. This she at first refused to do; but, overcome by the artful entreaties of her cunning attendant, she was persuaded, not only to receive the count's letters, but to answer them, and even carried her imprudence so far as to admit him to several private interviews.
Of one of these stolen meetings we find an account in the very curious fragments of original letters of Charlotte Elizabeth of Bavaria, the second wife of the Duke of Orleans. "One day," says this lady, "Madame (the duchess), either for the purpose of seeing her children, or of conversing more freely with the Count de Guiche, went to the apartment of Madame de Ch--. She had a valet-de-chambre called Launois, who was left on the staircase to give notice in case the duke should make his appearance. Launois suddenly ran in, saying 'The duke is coming down stairs, and close at hand.' The count could no longer make his escape through the antechamber, as the duke's attendants were there already. 'There is only one way of getting out,' said Launois to the count; 'go near the door.' Launois then ran to meet the duke, and struck him with his head so violently on the face that he made his nose bleed. 'My lord,' he cried, in great apparent confusion, 'I humbly beg your forgiveness. I did not think you were so near, and was running as fast as I could to open the door for you.' Madame and the governess came forward in great alarm with handkerchiefs, which they applied to the duke's face, covering his eyes as well as his nose, and kept about him till the count got to the staircase. The duke thought it was Launois who had run out of the room."
This story is awkward and suspicious enough; and yet the second Duchess of Orleans, who tells it, does not put upon it the unfavourable construction which it would bear. "I have always been much inclined," she says, "to believe poor Madame more unfortunate than culpable. She had such bad people about her!" This celebrated letter-writer is anything but averse to scandal, and far from charitable in her judgments; and it seems difficult, therefore, to discover whether she is sincere in this exculpatory phrase, or whether, like Mrs. Candour, she believed that the effect of a scandalous story is by no means done away by the addition of a good-natured expression of belief that, after all, there might be no harm in it.
This story rests on the authority of these Letters, at least we have not found it anywhere else. It may therefore be untrue or exaggerated; but the levity and imprudence of the duchess's conduct in her intercourse with the Count de Guiche appear to be undeniable. Their familiarity at last roused the suspicion and jealousy of the duke, who obtained an order from the king, exiling De Guiche to Poland; and Mademoiselle de Montalais was dismissed.
Soon after their marriage, the Duke and Duchess of Orleans had joined the court at Fontainebleau. The king was captivated by the beauty and graces of his sister-in-law, and, it has been said, repented of his precipitancy in declining the proposition of marrying her. She, on the other hand, was pleased with the attentions of a young and amiable monarch; and her intimacy with him, like that with the Count de Guiche, gave rise to a great deal of contemporary scandal. Anne of Austria, afraid of the umbrage which it might give to the queen, remonstrated with her son on the subject; and it violently irritated the jealous temper of the Duke of Orleans. Whatever feelings, however, the king may have entertained towards the duchess, they were soon dissipated by the attractions of Mademoiselle de la Valliere; and indeed there is no reason for believing that there ever was anything more between them than that confidential intercourse which was produced by mutual regard, and sanctioned by near relationship.
A great intimacy had arisen between the duchess and the Countess of Soissons, the celebrated Olimpia Mancini, niece of Cardinal Mazarin, This woman, with the genius for intrigue which distinguished her family, wished to use Mademoiselle de la Valliere as the means of increasing her own influence with the king; and she contrived to persuade the duchess to enter into her views in this respect. Poor La Valliere, however, was a stranger to the arts and intrigues of a court, and could make no use of them either for the sake of her own advancement or that of anybody else. Provoked at this, the Countess de Soissons resolved to ruin her with the king; and it is unfortunately true that she had address enough to draw the duchess into this conspiracy. Their plan was to get La Valliere supplanted in the king's affections by another court beauty, Mademoiselle de la Mothe-Haudancourt, in whom, when she became the royal favourite, they hoped to find a more docile and convenient disposition. It was through the persuasion of the Count de Guiche that the duchess was induced to join in this base plot; and the Marquis de Vardes, a lover of the Countess de Soissons, assisted in carrying it on. They forged a letter to the Queen of France from her father, the King of Spain, informing her of the liaison of her husband with La Valliere. This letter had its natural effect on the mind of the queen. It was put into the king's hands; and he having spoken of it, and the annoyance it caused him, to some of the gentlemen about his person, Vardes, who was one of them, contrived to throw his suspicions on the Duchess of Navailles, a lady of austere virtue, as having given the queen's father the information which occasioned the letter. Madame de Navailles was disgraced, and the trick remained for some years undiscovered.
The Count de Guiche, on his exile, recommended the Marquis de Vardes to the duchess's favour, in order that his friend might serve him in his absence by keeping alive her feelings of regard for him. Admitted to the confidence of the duchess, Vardes conceived the project of supplanting him in her good graces, and of getting her into his power by obtaining possession of the correspondence between her and the count. This dangerous correspondence had been entrusted to the care of Mademoiselle de Montalais, the confidante whom the duke's jealousy had dismissed from his wife's service. Vardes represented to the duchess the extreme importance of reclaiming this deposit, and destroying the letters. He was authorized accordingly to receive them from Mademoiselle de Montalais; but, having got possession of them, he refused to give them up. The disputes and negotiations on the subject of these letters gave occasion to private interviews between the duchess and Vardes, which roused the jealousy of the Countess de Soissons. She believed that the duchess had designs upon her lover, and was heard to speak of her in language dictated by resentment and hatred.
Her vindictive feelings were heightened by a circumstance which happened at this time. The Chevalier de Lorraine, from his rank and personal advantages, was one of the most distinguished young men at the French court. Happening one day to meet the Marquis de Vardes, they fell into conversation in the fashionable tone of the day, complimenting each other on the elegance and good taste of their dress, and laughing over their bonnes fortunes. De Vardes acknowledged that he was getting rather too old to be so successful with the fair as he once had been; "but as to you," he added, "at your age, you may do what you will. Only throw the handkerchief, and there is not a lady at court who will not take it up." The Chevalier de Lorraine repeated this conversation to one of his companions, the Marquis de Villeroy, an enemy of Vardes, who immediately hastened to the Duchess of Orleans, and told her that Vardes had said to the chevalier that "he was wrong to occupy himself with the maid, and that he had better try the mistress. He would find as little difficulty in the one quarter as the other." The duchess, indignant at an insult which she conceived to be levelled at herself, complained to the king, and Vardes was sent to the Bastile. Enraged at the injury done her lover, the Countess de Soissons used the most violent language against the duchess; and carried her animosity so far as to inform the king of the secret correspondence that had taken place between the duchess and the Count de Guiche. Thus driven to extremity, the duchess frankly confessed her errors to her brother-in-law; but at the same time she revealed to him the dangerous secret of the fabricated letter from the King of Spain, in which the Countess de Soissons and Vardes were chiefly implicated. The king, furious at having been grossly imposed on by a man whom he had admitted to his confidence, sent Vardes as a prisoner to the citadel of Montpellier; and the Count de Soissons was exiled, along with his wife, to his government in Champagne.
The unfortunate princess was thus inextricably involved in the intrigues of this profligate court. Her own conduct appears to have been unguarded in the extreme; but some excuse for it is to be found in her youth, inexperience, and trying situation. "She was designedly surrounded," says the second Duchess of Orleans, whom her husband married after her death, "with the most unprincipled women of the court, who were all of them the mistresses of her enemies, and used every means to fill up the measure of her misfortunes by making a breach between her and her husband." In this design they soon were successful.
The Chevalier de Lorraine had succeeded the Count de Guiche in the favour of the Duke of Orleans, and obtained an absolute ascendency over his weak mind; an ascendency of which all the household, not excepting the duchess herself, daily felt the effects. The Chevalier de Lorraine had a mistress, whose name is only given to us as Madame de C--; and this lady had contrived also to gain the affections of the celebrated Marshal Turenne. She was one of the confidential friends of the duchess, who was so imprudent as to tell her English secrets of state, and these she immediately conveyed to her two lovers. The Chevalier de Lorraine took occasion from this to prejudice the duke against his wife. He told him that the duchess made him pass with the king for a weak-minded man, who repeated to everybody the most important matters which she communicated to him; and that the king, under the impression that he was incapable of keeping a secret, had no longer any confidence in him: and he persuaded him that, if this went on, his wife would deprive him of all concern in state affairs, and reduce him to a mere cipher. The duke, upon this, required his wife to communicate to him what she knew of English affairs; but she positively refused to reveal to him the secrets of her brother, the King of England. A violent quarrel was the consequence. The duchess was then at the height of her favour with her brother-in-law the king. She complained to him of the arrogant conduct of Lorraine, his interference with her household, and his attempts to create dissension between her husband and herself; and the effect of her complaints was, that the Chevalier de Lorraine received an order to depart from France. Such is substantially the account given by the second Duchess of Orleans of the circumstances which led to the exile of the Chevalier de Lorraine through the influence of her predecessor; and she adds, "it cost the princess her life."
The Duke of Orleans, like other weak men, was inconsolable for the loss of his favourite. "On receiving the news of Lorraine's banishment," says the Duke de St. Simon, "Monsieur fainted; he then burst into tears, and went to throw himself at the king's feet, beseeching him to recall an order which reduced him to despair." Unable to succeed, he threw himself into a passion and retired to the country, after having used the most outrageous language against the king and the duchess, who always protested that she had no hand in the matter. The king, however, soothed him by means of presents, compliments, and attentions: he returned to court, though his heart yet swelled with resentment, and by degrees lived as before with the duchess, whom, from that time, he treated with studied neglect and unkindness.
It was about this time that the king discovered, by the duchess's own confession, the share she had had in the attempt of the Countess de Soissons to undermine Mademoiselle de la Valliere; a discovery which created a great coolness towards her on the king's part. But while she was thus neglected by her husband, out of favour with the king, and deserted by the court, a great object of political interest was the means of restoring her influence. In 1670 Louis meditated the ruin of Holland, and therefore wished to detach Charles II. from the triple alliance between that power, England, and Sweden. An ambassador had been sent to London with this view, but he had not been able to bring matters to a conclusion. Louis, knowing the friendship which subsisted between the Duchess of Orleans and her brother, conceived the idea of turning it to account for the accomplishment of this object. He began to treat her with his former kindness, and prevailed on her to undertake a mission to the King of England. An excursion of the court to Flanders was announced, under the pretext of showing the queen the cities which had been hers by birthright, and which Louis had recently annexed to France. When the court was at Calais, the Duchess of Orleans crossed privately to England, and met her brother Charles at Dover, "where," says Hume, "they passed ten days together in great mirth and festivity. By her artifices and caresses she prevailed on Charles to relinquish the most settled maxims of honour and policy, and to finish his engagements with Louis for the destruction of Holland, as well as for the subsequent change of religion in England." At the end of that time she returned in triumph, having accomplished the object of her mission, and bringing with her a treaty affecting the interests of half the countries of Europe. Tantâ sapientiâ regitur mundus! thus slightly and frivolously have the potentates of the earth disposed of the destinies of millions upon millions of their fellow-creatures!
"The confidence of two such great monarchs," says Bossuet, the celebrated court-preacher, "had raised her to the height of greatness and glory," when, on Sunday the 29th of June 1670, the court, then at St. Cloud, was suddenly alarmed by the outcry that "Madame was dying." The duchess had been complaining of a pain in her side and her stomach. At seven in the evening she called for a glass of succory-water, which she had been taking for some days. She had scarcely swallowed it, when an excruciating pain in her side made her utter the most piercing cries; and, in her agony, she constantly exclaimed that she was poisoned. The scene which followed is graphically described by Mademoiselle de Montpensier, who occupies so prominent a place in the private history of the court of Louis the Fourteenth.
"Being told that the queen was going out, I was running down in order not to keep her waiting, when the Count d'Ayen said to me, 'Madame is dying, and the king has ordered me to find M. Valot, and to bring him to St. Cloud immediately.' When I was in the carriage, the queen said, 'Madame is in extremity; and, what is dreadful, she believes she has been poisoned.' I expressed my horror, and asked how it was. The queen said, that Madame was in the saloon at St. Cloud in perfect health ; that she had asked for some succory-water, which was given her by her apothecary; that when she had drunk it she cried out that her stomach was burning, and had screamed incessantly ever since; and that, a message had come for the king and for M. Valot. A gentleman who had been sent by the queen to make inquiries now arrived, and told her that Madame had charged him to say that she was dying, and that, if her majesty wished to see her alive, she must come to her without a moment's delay. We went to the king's apartment, and found him at supper. The queen was advised not to go. While she was undecided, I begged her to allow me to go immediately; and the king said he was going, and offered to take me in his carriage. The Countess de Soissons was of the party. When we had got half-way, we met M. Valot returning; he told the king that Madame's illness was merely a colic, and not at all dangerous. When we got to St. Cloud, nobody seemed afflicted; but Monsieur had an air of astonishment. Madame was laid upon a little couch, with her hair in disorder, her chemise open at the collar and sleeves, her face pale, and her features distorted. Her whole appearance was death-like. She said, when we entered, "You see the state I am in!" We wept in silence. Madame de Montespan and Madame La Valliere came in, and, as well as Monsieur himself, who was at the duchess's bedside, behaved with great composure. It seemed to give her pain to see the people about her so very tranquil, while she was in a state which ought to have excited the utmost pity. She spoke to the king for a few moments in a low voice. I came forward and took her hand. She pressed mine tenderly, and said, 'You are losing an affectionate friend, who was beginning to know you well, and love you very dearly.' I could answer only with my tears. She asked for an emetic; the physician said it was unnecessary, as these kinds of colic sometimes lasted nine or ten hours, but never exceeded four-and-twenty. The king began to argue with them, and they did not know how to answer him. He said, 'Who ever heard of allowing a woman to die without giving her any assistance?' They looked at each other, and said not a word. Meanwhile, the people in the room were talking, going up and down, and laughing, as if nothing had been the matter. 1 went into a corner to speak with Madame d'Epernon, who seemed shocked with the scene. I said to her that I was astonished that nobody had put Madame in mind of God, and that it was shameful to all of us. She said that Madame had asked for a confessor, and that the Curé of St. Cloud had come; but that, not knowing him, she had only spoken to him for a moment. Monsieur came to us; I told him I did not think Madame was prepared to die, and that she ought to be spoken to about religion. He said I was right; and added, that her confessor was a Capuchin, who was good for nothing but showing himself along with her in her carriage, in order that the public might see that she had a confessor; but that another sort of man was necessary to attend her on her deathbed. 'Whom,' he asked, 'can we find, whose name may sound well in the gazette as having assisted Madame in her devotions?' I answered, that the best recommendation for a confessor at such a moment was, that he should be a good and devout man. 'Ah,' said he, 'I have it,—the Abbé Bossuet,[1] who has just been made Bishop of Condom; Madame used sometimes to converse with him: he is the man.' He went to propose the abbé to the king, who told him that he ought to have thought of it sooner, and that Madame ought to have received the sacrament before that time. Madame was replaced in her bed; the king embraced her, and bade her farewell. She spoke to him, as well as the queen, with great tenderness: for me, I was at the foot of the bed drowned in tears, and unable to approach her. We returned to Versailles; and the queen went to supper. M. de Lauzun arrived as we were rising from table; I went up to him and said, 'Here is an incident which will disconcert me sadly.'—'Yes,' he said; 'I am persuaded it will derange all your plans.'" And this court lady, overwhelmed with grief for her dying friend, immediately proceeds to discuss the probable effect of that friend's death on her own matrimonial projects.
When the king was gone, M. Feuillet, Canon of St. Cloud, was called in, and, after exhorting the duchess to prepare for death, in a tone of austerity and harshness which might have been spared, administered to her the sacrament and extreme unction. She had sent for the English ambassador, to whom, on his coming in, she spoke in English. The priest, hearing the ambassador ask her if she believed that she had been poisoned, interposed by saying, "Madame, accuse nobody, and offer your death as a sacrifice to God." She was thus prevented from answering the ambassador's question. Soon afterwards Bossuet arrived from Paris; but by this time she was speechless, and apparently insensible. About three in the morning she expired.
Thus perished this poor young woman, at the age of six-and-twenty, a victim to the intrigues and diabolical hatred of her enemies. That she died by poison, has never been doubted; but it remains a question who were the perpetrators of the crime.
That she was poisoned, was the universal belief at the time. The letters of the English ambassador, written immediately after the catastrophe, show this to be the case. He thus wrote to Lord Arlington, the English minister for foreign affairs: "According to your lordship's orders, I send you the ring which the Duchess of Orleans had on her finger when she died, which you will have the goodness to deliver to the king. I have taken the liberty to give an account to the king himself of some things which Madame had charged me to communicate to him. Since her death, as you may imagine in such a case, there have been many rumours. The general opinion is, 'that she has been poisoned, which renders the king and his ministers uneasy in the extreme."—In his next letter he said: "1 write at present to mention to your lordship a circumstance which you are perhaps already aware of; it is, that the Chevalier de Lorraine has been permitted to come to court, and to serve in the army as a Maréchal-de-camp." This passage was written in cipher; and the letter goes on: "If Madame has been poisoned, as almost everybody believes, all France looks upon him as her murderer; and is surprised, with good reason, that the King of France has had so little consideration for the king, our master, as to allow him to return to court, considering, too, the insolent manner in which he always behaved to the princess during her life." In the ambassador's letter to the king, giving an account of his conversation with the dying princess, he says: "She spoke to me in English. I took the liberty to ask her if she did not believe that she had been poisoned? Her confessor, who stood by, and heard my question, said to her, 'Madame, accuse nobody, and offer up your death as a sacrifice to God.' This prevented her from answering me; and, though I repeated the question several times, she only shook her head. I asked for the casket which contained her letters, that I might send them to your majesty; and she desired me to ask them of Madame de la Borde: but that lady was so overwhelmed with grief, that she fell into one fainting-fit after another, and, before she came to herself, Monsieur had laid hold of the casket and carried it off."
The princess's body was opened in presence of the physicians and surgeons of the court, and the English ambassador's physician; and their report was, that her death was natural, as the lungs were diseased, while the stomach and heart were sound. But Mademoiselle de Montpensier says, in her Memoirs, that a separate writing was drawn up by the English physician, and sent to England, to the great displeasure of the Duke of Orleans. And, it will be observed, it was after this examination that the English ambassador, in the letters already quoted, so strongly expressed his belief that she had been poisoned. The duke's second wife, too, who had gathered all the circumstances belonging to this tragedy which were known at court, says positively that the princess was poisoned; and that, when her body was opened, three holes were found in her stomach. The evidence of court physicians, in such a case, cannot go for much. The French court had the greatest interest in making it appear that she had died a natural death. A rupture with Charles the Second was a thing to be greatly feared; and it is easy to imagine how these political considerations may have influenced the report of the physicians.
There can be no doubt, then, that the crime was committed: but who was the criminal? Some suspicion fell at first upon the Duke of Orleans, but it appears to have been speedily dissipated. The contemporary writers concur in acquitting the duke, and in accusing the Chevalier de Lorraine. This man, after the duchess had been the means of his exile, retired to Rome, where he bore his disgrace with great impatience. He had in the duke's household two friends, or rather companions of his debaucheries, the Marquis d'Effiat and the Count de Beuvron; men who eagerly desired his return, from the services he could do them with the duke. The duchess being the sole obstacle to his being allowed to return to Paris, he seems to have used their assistance in putting her out of the way; and this, it appears, was accomplished by means of a subtle poison, which he sent them by an Italian agent of his villany, of the name of Morelli.
This may almost be said to be proved by the facts stated by the Duke de St. Simon, and the second Duchess of Orleans.
The duchess had been for some time in the habit of taking a cup of succory-water, by way of medicine, every evening at seven o'clock. A servant of her chamber had the care of making it; and, having done so, he put it in a cupboard in the antechamber, with a cup to drink it from; and, along with the china pot in which it was made, he put another containing pure water, with which the duchess might mix it if she found it too bitter. The Marquis d'Effiat had observed all this. On the 29th of June, the day she was taken ill, in passing through this antechamber he found nobody in it; seizing the opportunity, he opened the cupboard, took up the drinking-cup, and was rubbing it with a paper when the servant came suddenly in, and, finding him so employed, said to him, "Sir, what are you doing in that cupboard? Why do you touch Madame's cup?"—"I am excessively thirsty," answered d'Effiat, "and was seeking something to drink. I was going to pour some water into this cup; but, seeing it dusty, I was cleaning it with a bit of paper.' This circumstance was related to the second Duchess of Orleans by this domestic himself, who was long in her own service. He had been for many years in the service of his former mistress, to whom he was strongly attached.
In the evening the duchess drank the succory-water out of the cup; was instantly seized with excruciating pains, and exclaimed that she was poisoned. Her attendants had drunk some of the same succory-water, but not out of the same cup; and it had done them no harm. It can hardly be doubted, therefore, that the drinking-cup was poisoned, and not the succory-water in the pot; and that d'Effiat was rubbing the inside of it with poison when he pretended, to the servant who surprised him, that he was cleaning it in order to drink from it. There was some cunning in poisoning the cup, because it was used by nobody but the duchess.
She expired at three in the morning. The king, who seems to have conceived some deep suspicions, no sooner heard of her death than he got out of bed, sent for Brissac, an officer of his body-guards, and ordered him to go secretly, with six of his most trustworthy men, seize Purnon, the duchess's chief maitre d'hôtel, and bring him to his closet; which was instantly done. As soon as Purnon entered, the king desired Brissac and his valet-de-chambre to retire, and then, addressing him in a stern tone, and with a piercing look; "Attend to what I say to you, friend. If you confess all, and answer my questions truly, I shall pardon you, whatever you may have done. But beware of the slightest disguise or concealment; for otherwise you may look on yourself as a dead man before you leave this closet. Has Madame been poisoned?"—"Yes, sire," answered Purnon.—"Who poisoned her, and how was it committed?" Purnon answered that it was the Chevalier de Lorraine who had sent the poison to d'Effiat and Beuvron; and he then detailed the circumstances which have been mentioned. Then the king, repeating his assurances of pardon and threats of death, asked, with an appearance of painful effort, "And, my brother—did he know of it?"—"No, sire," said Purnon; "none of us three was fool enough to speak of it to him. He cannot keep a secret, and would have ruined us." At these words the king uttered a long "ah!" like a man who breathes again after being relieved from a load of anxiety. "That," he said, "is what I wished to know; but take care that you have told me the truth." He then called in Brissac, and ordered him to set Purnon at liberty as quietly as he had arrested him.
The account of this remarkable interview was given by Purnon himself, many years afterwards, to M. Joly de Fleury, the procureur-general, by whom it was related to the Duke de St. Simon. "The same magistrate," says the duke, "in another conversation I had with him on this subject, told me some things he had not mentioned at first. A few days after Monsieur's second marriage, the king took the new duchess aside, told her the above circumstance, and added, that he wished to satisfy her that he was too honourable a man to have allowed her to marry his brother if he was guilty of such a crime. Madame made her own use of this information. Purnon had remained in her service as maitre d'hôtel; but by degrees she affected to make inquiries into the expenditure of her household, and so annoyed Purnon that she forced him to leave her service."
"The persons who formed the plot to poison Madame," says the second Duchess of Orleans, "disputed among themselves whether they should reveal it to Monsieur: but one of them decided the question by saying, 'No, no; he would have us hanged were it ten years hence.' The deliberations of these wretches are well known. They made the duke believe that the Dutch had given Madame a slow poison, which had not taken effect till then; for, as to the poison itself, there was no denying it; she had three holes in her stomach. One Morelli was the agent employed to bring the poison from Italy: by way of recompense, he was afterwards placed in my household as chief maitre d'hôtel; and, after plundering me in every way he could, his patrons made him sell his office at a high price." She describes him as a man of superior talents, but totally unprincipled, given to every sort of debauchery and wickedness, and professing atheism even on his deathbed.
There seems, then, no reason to suppose that the Duke of Orleans had any participation in the murder of his wife. He had never loved her, for he seems to have been incapable of loving any one; and he was led by the machinations of her enemies to treat her with neglect and unkindness. But neither, on the other hand, does he appear to have been capable of atrocious crimes. He was weak, not wicked. It was the vile policy of Mazarin to enfeeble his mind from his very infancy. "What do you mean," said the subtle Italian to Mothe-le-Vayer, the young prince's preceptor, "by trying to make the king's brother an able man? If he were better educated than the king, he would soon forget the duty of blind obedience." His mother, Anne of Austria, seems to have concurred in this odious policy. Even when grown up, she used to treat him like a great girl, dressing him in petticoats for the amusement of her court; while his brother was accustomed to manly occupations. Thus the Duke of Orleans was, all his life, imbecile in character, and effeminate in his tastes and amusements. He was fond of dress, parties of pleasure, masquerades, the pageantry of the drawing-room, and pompous ceremonials. The natural result of his education, too, was utter selfishness and insensibility; and, if he had no hand in the assassination of his unfortunate wife, it was evident that her death was a matter of entire indifference to him.[2]
Some writers deny, or at least doubt, the guilt of the Chevalier de Lorraine. "It was alleged," says Voltaire, "that the Chevalier de Lorraine, a favourite of Monsieur, in order to take vengeance for the exile and imprisonment which his culpable conduct towards Madame had brought upon him, had committed this horrible act. But people did not consider that the Chevalier de Lorraine was then at Rome, and that it was no easy matter for a Knight of Malta, only twenty years old, and living at Rome, to purchase the death of a great princess." This is but a weak presumption in favour of Lorraine; for the circumstances related by the Duke de St. Simon and the second Duchess of Orleans show that he was enabled to gratify his revenge, not by purchasing the death of the princess, but by having confederates about her very person, whose motives for desiring her death were as strong as his own.
Lorraine's restoration to favour, within two years of the commission of this crime, has been urged as a presumption that he could not nave been the criminal; for, had he been guilty, it is said, the king would never have permitted him to return to France. We have already seen, from the passage written in cipher, in the English ambassador's letter to his own court, how much he was astonished at the permission which Lorraine had received to return to court, and to enter the military service. Madame de Sevigné, in a letter to her daughter Madame de Grignan, in February 1672, says that Lorraine's restoration to favour by the king was owing to the earnest entreaties of the Duke of Orleans, whose joy at obtaining it was as passionate as his grief had been when his favourite was sent into exile. Although the king had been acquainted with Lorraine's guilt, he could not well have resisted his brother's importunities; for, in the circumstances under which he had received his information, he could not allow it to appear that he knew anything of the matter; and he was therefore under the necessity of outwardly treating Lorraine and his confederates as if the fatal secret had never come to his knowledge. Lorraine's return, too, was useful to the king; for, having unbounded influence over the duke's conduct, he was the fittest instrument to manage him according to the policy of the court.
Those who wish to relieve the Chevalier de Lorraine of the imputation of this dreadful crime, seem inclined to throw the suspicion of it on the Countess de Soissons. This Italian was of a deep and dangerous character. She bore a deadly hatred towards the Duchess of Orleans. She was so much implicated in the dark transactions of the notorious women, La Vigoureux and La Voisin, that, when they were convicted of preparing and selling poisons, she fled precipitately to Brussels; and though Louis was greatly attached to her, as the companion and playfellow of his tender years, yet he would never hear of her return to France, and allowed her to die abroad. He sometimes even expressed his regret at having permitted her to make her escape, and used to say, "I fear I am responsible before God for not having had her arrested." From all this we are warranted in believing that the Countess de Soissons was capable of any atrocity; but, of her being a party to this crime, there does not seem to be a vestige of evidence.
It does not seem that any further light can now be thrown on this melancholy history. The character of the unfortunate princess is drawn, by all her contemporaries, in the most engaging colours. Except by her cold-hearted husband, and the wretches who were leagued together for her destruction, she was universally beloved; and her death is described as throwing a gloom, not only over the court of France, but the whole nation. Even her faults are treated, by those who are far from charitable in their judgments, with indulgence and pity; and, though she was an object of the libels and calumnies of Bussy Rabutin and writers of his stamp, the purity of her character as a wife has not been impeached by a single respectable authority.
1. Afterwards the celebrated Bishop of Meaux. His funeral sermon on the death of this princess is esteemed the most eloquent and powerful of his works.
2. "The satisfaction," says Hume, "which Charles reaped from his new alliance received a great check by the death of his sister, and still more by those melancholy circumstances which attended it. Her death was sudden, after a few days' illness; and she was seized with a malady upon drinking a glass of succory-water. Strong suspicions of poison arose in the court of France, and were spread all over Europe; and, as her husband had discovered many symptoms of jealousy and discontent on account of her conduct, he was universally believed to be the author of the crime. Charles himself, during some time, was entirely convinced of his guilt; but upon receiving the attestation of physicians, who on opening her body found no foundations for the general rumour, he was, or pretended to be, satisfied. The Duke of Orleans indeed did never, in any other circumstance of his life, betray such dispositions as might lead him to so criminal an action; and a lady, it is said, drank the remains of the same glass without feeling any inconvenience. The sudden death of princes is commonly accompanied with these dismal surmises, and therefore less weight is to be laid on the suspicions of the public."