arise
and be reunited with my soul. I trouble not concerning my body; grant,
O God, that I yield up to Thee my soul, that it may enter into Thy rest;
receive it into Thy bosom; that it may dwell once more there, whence it
first descended; from Thee it came, to Thee returns; Thou art the source
and the beginning; be thou, O God, the centre and the end!"

The marquise had said these words when suddenly the doctor heard a dull
stroke like the sound of a chopper chopping meat upon a block: at that
moment she ceased to speak. The blade had sped so quickly that the
doctor had not even seen a flash. He stopped, his hair bristling, his
brow bathed in sweat; for, not seeing the head fall, he supposed that
the executioner had missed the mark and must needs start afresh. But his
fear was short-lived, for almost at the same moment the head inclined to
the left, slid on to the shoulder, and thence backward, while the body
fell forward on the crossway block, supported so that the spectators
could see the neck cut open and bleeding. Immediately, in fulfilment of
his promise, the doctor said a De Profundis.

When the prayer was done and the doctor raised his head, he saw before
him the executioner wiping his face. "Well, sir," said he, "was not that
a good stroke? I always put up a prayer on these occasions, and God has
always assisted me; but I have been anxious for several days about this
lady. I had six masses said, and I felt strengthened in hand and heart."
He then pulled out a bottle from under his cloak, and drank a dram; and
taking the body under one arm, all dressed as it was, and the head in
his other hand, the eyes still bandaged, he threw both upon the faggots,
which his assistant lighted.

"The next day," says Madame de Sevigne, "people were looking for the
charred bones of Madame de Brinvilliers, because they said she was a
saint."

In 1814, M. d'Offemont, father of the present occupier of the castle
where the Marquise de Brinvilliers poisoned her father, frightened at
the approach of all the allied troops, contrived in one of the towers
several hiding-places, where he shut up his silver and such other
valuables as were to be found in this lonely country in the midst of the
forest of Laigue. The foreign troops were passing backwards and forwards
at Offemont, and after a three months' occupation retired to the farther
side of the frontier.

Then the owners ventured to take out the various things that had been
hidden