so coldly mocking before an anger that could bow the
proudest heads in France. "You have the pride of Satan, your greed is
insatiable, your domineering spirit utterly insufferable, and you have
the most false and poisonous tongue in the world!"

Her brutal answer bludgeoned that high divinity to earth.

"With all my imperfections," she sneered, "at least I do not smell as
badly as you do!"

It was an answer that extinguished her last chance. It was fatal to
the dignity, to the "terrible majesty" of Louis. It stripped him of
all divinity, and revealed him authoritatively as intensely and even
unpleasantly human. It was beyond hope of pardon.

His face turned the colour of wax. A glacial silence hung over the
agonized witnesses of that royal humiliation. Then, without a word, in a
vain attempt to rescue the dignity she had so cruelly mauled, he turned,
his red heels clicked rapidly and unsteadily across the polished floor,
and he was gone.

When Madame de Montespan realized exactly what she had done, nothing
but rage remained to her--rage and its offspring, vindictiveness. The
Duchess of Fontanges must not enjoy her victory, nor must Louis escape
punishment for his faithlessness. La Voisin should afford her the means
to accomplish this. And so she goes once more to the Rue de la Tannerie.

Now, the matter of Madame de Montespan's present needs was one in which
the witches were particularly expert. Were you troubled with a rival,
did your husband persist in surviving your affection for him, did those
from whom you had expectations cling obstinately and inconsiderately
to life, the witches by incantations and the use of powders--in which
arsenic was the dominant charm--could usually put the matter right for
you. Indeed, so wide and general was the practice of poisoning become,
that the authorities, lately aroused to the fact by the sensational
revelations of the Marchioness de Brinvilliers, had set up in this
year 1670 the tribunal known as the Chambre Ardente to inquire into the
matter, and to conduct prosecutions.

La Voisin promised help to the Marchioness. She called in another witch
of horrible repute, named La Filastre, her coadjutor Lesage, and two
expert poisoners, Romani and Bertrand, who devised an ingenious plot for
the murder of the Duchess of Fontanges. They were to visit her, Romani
as a cloth merchant, and Bertrand as his servant, to offer her their
wares, including some Grenoble gloves, which were the