for her and
deliver to her, in secret, some blood from Jeanne's right arm, which she
mingled with three herbs, vervain, liver-wort, and daisy, pronouncing
over the mixture a mystic incantation. Placing it then upon a clean new
brick, she burned it by means of a fire fed with oak wood, and pounded
up the paste so produced into a powder, which was to be administered to
Philippe in his food or drink or cast upon his right side. For this
Isabelle received a substantial price, seventy _livres parisis_, and was
given a similar order for a philtre to recover the affections of the
Count de la Marche for his wife Blanche. Moreover, she asserted that
Mahaut, well pleased with the efficacy of these decoctions, asked for a
poison to envenom arrows, which she pretended that she desired to use
upon nothing more than the deer of her forests. The enchantress set to
work again, with an adder's tail and spine and a toad dried in the open
air, which she pounded up into a powder and mingled with wheat flour and
incense. The sorceress was painfully lacking in imagination, else we
should have had something to rival:

"Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."

But perhaps the report of unsympathetic historians and lawyers has been
unjust to her, and has toned down the horrors of her "charm of powerful
trouble," which she alleged the Countess Mahaut gave to Louis X.,
thereby procuring his death and the accession of her son-in-law,
Philippe V.

The king conducted a serious and searching investigation, to which
Mahaut declared herself more than ready to submit, provided that the
court were properly constituted and that her cause in the matter of the
succession in Artois be in no wise prejudiced. Witnesses on both sides
were examined, including the widow of the late King Louis X. and the
officers of his household, and on October 9, 1317, a solemn verdict of
acquittal resulted for Mahaut. There need be no doubt that the
accusations against her had been entirely groundless, merely trumped up
in the hope of prejudicing her cause in the eyes of the court. It was
only a few months later that Philippe V., after a careful and impartial
reexamination of the allegations on both sides, gave judgment in
parliament confirming the finding of his fat