t the offending grocer was to be spared
nothing. For an aristocrat like Mme. de Brinvilliers beheading was
considered indignity enough. But Derues must go through with it all; he
must be broken on the wheel and burnt alive and his ashes scattered to
the four winds of heaven; there was to be no retentum for him, a
clause sometimes inserted in the sentence permitting the executioner to
strangle the broken victim before casting him on to the fire. He must
endure all to the utmost agony the law could inflict. It was six o'clock
when Derues arrived at the Place de Greve, crowded to its capacity, the
square itself, the windows of the houses; places had been bought at high
prices, stools, ladders, anything that would give a good view of the end
of the now famous poisoner.

Pale but calm, Derues faced his audience. He was stripped of all but his
shirt; lying flat on the scaffold, his face looking up to the sky, his
head resting on a stone, his limbs were fastened to the wheel. Then with
a heavy bar of iron the executioner broke them one after another, and
each time he struck a fearful cry came from the culprit. The customary
three final blows on the stomach were inflicted, but still the little
man lived. Alive and broken, he was thrown on to the fire. His burnt
ashes, scattered to the winds, were picked up eagerly by the mob,
reputed, as in England the pieces of the hangman's rope, talismans.

Some two months after the execution of her husband Mme. Derues was
delivered in the Conciergerie of a male child; it is hardly surprising,
in face of her experiences during her pregnancy, that it was born an
idiot. In January, 1778, the judges of the Parliament, by a majority of
one, decided that she should remain a prisoner in the Conciergerie for
another year, while judgment in her case was reserved. In the following
August she was charged with having forged the signature of Mme. de
Lamotte on the deeds of sale. In February, 1779, the two experts in
handwriting to whom the question had been submitted decided in her
favour, and the charge was abandoned.

But Mme. Derues had a far sterner, more implacable and, be it added,
more unscrupulous adversary than the law in M. de Lamotte.

Not content with her husband's death, M. de Lamotte believed the wife to
have been his partner in guilt, and thirsted for revenge.

To accomplish it he even stooped to suborn witnesses, but the conspiracy
was exposed, and so strong became the sympathy with