nough. The popular
feeling turned against her immediately. Those who, but a moment before,
had looked upon her as a saint, now reviled her as a devil, and were as
eager for her punishment as they had before been for her escape.
Tophania was then put to the torture. She confessed the long catalogue
of her crimes, and named all the persons who had employed her. She was
shortly afterwards strangled, and her corpse thrown over the wall into
the garden of the convent, from whence she had been taken. This appears
to have been done to conciliate the clergy, by allowing them, at least,
the burial of one who had taken refuge within their precincts.

After her death the mania for poisoning seems to have abated; but we
have yet to see what hold it took upon the French people at a somewhat
earlier period. So rooted had it become in France between the years
1670 and 1680, that Madame de Sevigne, in one of her letters, expresses
her fear that Frenchman and poisoner would become synonymous terms.

As in Italy, the first notice the government received of the prevalence
of this crime was given by the clergy, to whom females of high rank,
and some among the middle and lower classes, had avowed in the
confessional that they had poisoned their husbands. In consequence of
these disclosures, two Italians, named Exili and Glaser, were arrested,
and thrown into the Bastille, on the charge of compounding and selling
the drugs used for these murders. Glaser died in prison, but Exili
remained without trial for several months; and there, shortly
afterwards, he made the acquaintance of another prisoner, named Sainte
Croix, by whose example the crime was still further disseminated among
the French people.

The most notorious of the poisoners that derived their pernicious
knowledge from this man was Madame de Brinvilliers, a young woman
connected both by birth and marriage with some of the noblest families
of France. She seems, from her very earliest years, to have been
heartless and depraved; and, if we may believe her own confession, was
steeped in wickedness ere she had well entered her teens. She was,
however, beautiful and accomplished; and, in the eye of the world,
seemed exemplary and kind. Guyot de Pitaval, in the "Causes Celebres,"
and Madame de Sevigne, in her Letters, represent her as mild and
agreeable in her manners, and offering no traces on her countenance of
the evil soul within. She was married in 1651 to the Marquis de
Brinvillie