Bouillon, when questioned about these circumstances, denied them; still she confessed that La Voisin had come to her one day, and told her so much about her learning, that the duchess became curious. La Voisin told her of a man who performed real miracles; Madame de Bouillon spoke about these communications with the Duc de Vendôme and other persons, and they resolved to seek the miracle-worker, which really took place some days later. The man's name was Le Sage; he declared that he could only reveal his learning to a single person at a time, but eventually consented to produce a specimen for both persons present. Le Sage requested them to write down questions; he would burn the paper, and afterwards produce it again, wherever might be desired. The duke wrote two questions-1. Where is the Duc de Nevers? 2. Whether the Duc de Beaufort is dead?-and sealed up the note. Le Sage fastened up the letter with a thread, and placed sulphur round it, after which the duke burnt it in a pan of charcoal. The magician promised the duchess that she would find the burnt note uninjured in a porcelain vase at her house, but this was not the case; afterwards, however, Le Sage brought it unaltered to the duchess, ce qui la surprit extrêmement." Madame de Bouillon gave La Voisin a pistole when she went away, and the duke Le Sage the same amount. The duke, who was equally astonished, requested a repetition of this incredible circumstance; and hence the duchess ordered Le Sage to her house. The second billet, it was hinted, must contain two pistoles for the Sybils; but the result of the experiment did not take place for a long time, and not till after repeated warnings, and was to the effect "que les sibylles étoient empechées et qu'il (Le Sage), n'avoit pu lui rendre réponse," which Madame de Bouillon found so ridiculous, that she told it to several persons, and even wrote about it to her husband, who was with the army.

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We see that in this statement made by the accused the chief point, the requested answer to the questions, was evaded. The duchess was said to have written the second note herself, and in it to have demanded the death of her husband. The editor of the Memoirs is kind enough to explain to us that Le Sage possessed "l'adresse de l'escamoteur," in order not to let us grope in the dark. The sentence on the Duchess de Bouillon was not found among the documents.

In

Demoiselle de la Grange, widow of a receveur des gabelles et tailles" in the province of Anjou, thirty-eight years of age, arrested on February 23, 1677. This woman was a poisoner, and carried on the trade of one. She had an intrigue with Faurie, an advocate of the council; but, as she was afraid of losing him, she formed the resolution of killing him. order to appear as his widow and heiress after his death, she induced one clergyman Nail, to go with her to a notary, under the name of Faurie, and sign a marriage contract. When Faurie died under very suspicious circumstances, the demoiselle and her accomplice were arrested. The La Grange wrote from prison a letter to Louvois, in which she declared that she was in possession of valuable information concerning the safety of the king, upon which she was conveyed to the Bastille. As, however, her design was easily penetrated, she was soon removed again to the Châtelet. The La Grange and the priest were condemned to death. As the trial was spun out for a long time, secret connexions sprang up among the poisoners imprisoned in the Bastille, and the two last named, though no

longer in that prison, were examined by the king's order about these occurrences, as well as about a mysterious letter, which was handed to the Supérieur des Jesuites by an unknown person. In this certainly obscure letter a poisoning is alluded to. The La Grange was justly suspected of being at the bottom of all this, and it came out that the priest-a man of sixty-had written the "fameux billet," which appears to have spread a panic-terror. The guilty couple would not name their accomplices, or the object of these last intrigues. They must have had several assistants, as the La Grange was confined in the prisons of the Châtelet, and the worthy priest in the Conciergerie. Both were executed on February 4, 1683.

Although up to the present the women of the Bastille have passed before us like the spectres of an incredible immorality, a reaction suddenly appears to set in. The " pour fait de religion" appears all at once everywhere in the pages, and in this instance the women, many of whom entered the Bastille in the flower of their years, are in no way inferior to

the men.

Madame Vaillant was imprisoned in the Bastille on July 19, 1685. This lady belonged to the "religion prétendue reformée;" she had left the kingdom and settled with her husband in England; "grief about religion had led her to this resolution." She returned with a stock of drugs and spices, and sold them, with the intention, at the same time, of collecting her husband's property, left behind in Paris. By arresting this lady it was hoped to draw back her husband and family to France, where the former had been a grocer of high standing. The prisoner was at once told that her liberation depended on the return of her family.

Dame Mallet was imprisoned in the Bastille because she intended to go to a foreign country. She was arrested in the Brussels diligence, with her three daughters, two of whom were disguised as boys. She had placed one hundred and sixty-five Louis d'or in the hands of Mr. Dayrolle, Secretary of the English Ambassador, for a pass with which she could leave the country, but with the condition that the money should be returned her in case of non-success, which was done. Arrested on April 7, 1686, she was eventually transferred to Pont de l'Arche, where she was still a prisoner in 1695.

Mrs. Vion, an Englishwoman, was placed in the Bastille because she had brought to Paris two children of the Sieur de Grave from Rouen, and intended to convey them into a foreign country. This lady said, before Monsieur de la Reynie, that the parents of the children were concealed in a house at Rouen, near the bridge and opposite the castle. On the ground floor of this house was a room with a chimney, opposite to which was an ostensibly repaired piece of wall, two feet large: this was the entrance of the dark hiding-place, in which she had herself been, and where she had seen the De Graves, two of the husband's sisters, and two other persons, who concealed themselves there. The "Compagnie de la Cinquantaine" had searched the house several times, without finding anything for, so soon as the persecuted people heard the slightest noise, they hastened to their hiding-place, before which the troops passed up and down without any suspicion, "as it had neither a window nor any other opening." Mrs. Vion declared that the wretched people had been living for a long time in the manner described when she saw them. Mrs.

Vion escaped from the Bastille on October 33, 1686. The lady had, with the assistance of her husband and the English and Dutch envoys, helped many children and persons of importance to fly to foreign countries, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Her conduct while in prison was so excellent that she found means to escape from it.

Dame Amonnet was imprisoned on April 27, 1686, in order to bring back her husband from foreign parts, whither he had gone by her persuasion, because he had two hundred thousand crowns invested in business, which the authorities wished to secure for France.

Barbe Marguerite Vanderbourg, a Dutchwoman, also called the Lascoline, arrested in November, 1686. She took several journeys in France, under pretext of trade, during which she conveyed confessors of "the religion" out of the kingdom. She was bold and excessively clever. Letters were found on her which described her as the protectress of the "P. R." religion.

The Sieur and Dame de la Fontaine were arrested and conducted to the Bastille on September 5, 1693, in order to compel them to recal their fugitive son, who had been conveyed into Switzerland. They declared that they had taken no part in his removal. The king had taken charge of the education of the young fugitive, which was entrusted to a priest. Suddenly the pupil disappeared, and his parents declared they would sooner die than recal their son. Both openly confessed that they belonged to the "P. R." religion. They had already been confined in the Bastille on account of religion, and this second trial rendered them celebrated among the Protestants of Paris.

Jeanne Marie Vouvier, widow of Sieur Jacques Guyon, chevalier and seigneur of Quesnoy, a still very beautiful lady, though forty-seven years of age, was twice arrested, and confined the first time at Vincennes in 1675, the second time, in 1698, in the Bastille. This lady wrote letters about the Bible, and declared that she received revelations. She maintained private connexions at court, with the purpose of propagating her principles among persons of the highest class. She had a religious correspondence with Fénelon, Archbishop of Cambray, the Ducs de Beauvilliers, Charost, and Sully, the Marquis de Fénelon, the Sieur Dupuis, "gentleman to M. le Duc de Bourgogne," the Abbé de la Combe, and others. Père de la Combe always called Madame Guyon "my mother," and when he spoke of her, "la mère du saint enfant." She kept up a correspondence with a certain Davoust, a mystic and illuminato, who asserted that God had ordered him to give new laws and a "third Testament," which was intended to establish a new covenant and unite all the nations in one church. This Davoust said that he spoke and wrote from God, like St. Paul. Dame Guyon was not discharged till March 22, 1703, on her son giving bail for her. "Her grave is in Blois, and stands among her co-religionists in great honour: pilgrimages are made to it from time to time.'

Louise Mercier, wife of Jaques Robert, a native of Châteaudun, seventy-nine years of age, was conveyed to the Bastille on August 31, 1700, by a royal order, signed De Pontchartrain. She was a schoolmistress, and, under this pretext, taught the children of "badly-designing Protestants" the catechism of the P. R. religion, "to which she was secretly attached." She abjured it in the Bastille in 1703, and was sent to the hospital in the following year, eighty-three years old.

The second volume of the "Mémoires de la Bastille" contains a full account of the propagation of Jansenism, which, springing up about the year 1730, within a few years filled all the prisons of the city with its adherents, among whom the Convulsionnaires played a principal part. "The fact of these convulsions," we read, "of which the capital became witness, may be reckoned among the most remarkable events which France experienced since the existence of the monarchy, and our posterity will hardly believe that entire corporations and a number of sensible men very seriously took part in these madman's deceptions and cheatings, aud even promoted and certified to them before people and king, as truths of the Catholic Church, as evident revelations of the Almighty, who, through them, expressed His will in favour of the appellants, and testified as if by a heavenly voice that the error was on the side of the Pope, the bishops, and the Constitutionalists!" Deacon Paris was, as is well known, the Coryphæus of this sect in Paris; he was honoured as a saint, and he and his apostles performed miracles.

Among the many trials of Convulsionists and Cabalists there is a remarkable certificate, drawn up for Marie Sonnet on May 12, 1736, by eleven men, among others, M. Carré de Mongeron, councillor of parliament; my Lord Edward Drummond, Earl of Perth; Arrouet, treasurer of the chamber of accounts; François Desvernay, physician; Pierre Jourdan, priest of Bayeux; Robert Boindin, equerry; Baptiste Cornet, &c. This certificate was controlled at Paris on March 12, 1740, and countersigned Pipereau.

pre

The men bore witness therein that the Convulsionist had in their sence spent two hours and a quarter "uninterruptedly" over a glowing fire, surrounded by flames, "without suffering any injury. Even the sheet in which she was wrapped up naked remained undamaged, and hence it cannot be said that her clothes protected her.”

There is a letter in existence, written by Père Louis Floyrec, prior of the abbey of St. André Villeneuve d'Avignon, on November 28, 1737, in which he states that the celebrated Convulsionist called the "fire sister" had died from the consequences of playing with fire. The prior writes that he had striven in vain to convince M. de Mongeron that God's voice had not spoken out of a woman who, as her defender himself allows, had not been "fort sage" in her youth, and that the worship of such new saints could not be inspired by the Holy Spirit, because people thus acted contrary to the canonical decrees of the councils. All this, however, did not appear to convert M. de Mongeron, for the writer believes that he must leave it to God to change his mind.

Françoise Alano of Vannes, sixty years of age, assistant to the widow Anilon, bookseller in the Palais, arrested February 22, 1761. This woman had entrusted to the colporteur, Prudent de Rencourt, the MS. of an irreligious and blasphemous work, called "L'Oracle des Anciens Fidèles," to have it printed. She was arrested in order to discover the author of the book, but she persisted that a stranger had handed her the MS.; and hence, on April 13 of the same year, she was discharged, after two months' arrest. Afterwards, Michelin declared himself to be the author.

Madame de B., first bedchamber-woman to the Dauphiness, was arrested at Versailles, and conveyed to the Bastille on January 3, 1761,

by virtue of a warrant countersigned Philippeaux, but set at liberty again on the 21st of the same month and year by a royal order. She had sold diamonds and valuables belonging to the Dauphiness. She gave the following written explanation on January 7, 1761: "I declare that I sold the watch pendants and the diamonds that surrounded. St. John of Nepomuc, for about eleven thousand francs to the Jews and to the jeweller Guidamour, although I did not want the money. I accuse myself of it with the most bitter repentance. I found the breloques between the drawers and the toilette-table, and the St. John at the foot of the easy-chair on which the clothes are laid. It was partly concealed by the curtain. I declare that I am guilty of no other crimes but these two, which are sufficient to make me detest myself. I never before stole to the value of a farthing, or ever felt the slightest temptation to do so, I pray God and my mistress for forgiveness. Every moment of my life shall be devoted to penance for so odious a crime.' From the Bastille Madame de B. was carried to the convent of Montbareil, in Brittany. whence she fled, and returned to Paris, and afterwards to Versailles. She was again arrested, and conveyed to St. Pélagie, where she still was in 1768. The dame de B. was the foster-sister of the Dauphin (afterwards Louis XVI.). She is mentioned in the matter of a loan of fifty thousand livres which the Dauphiness wished to take up. Through the intervention of Madame de B., the lender was promised the protection of the princess, which rendered the man disposed to advance the money.

Marie Elizabeth Charlotte Valerie de Bruls, widow Wasser, called Dutilleul, and also known by the sobriquet of Milady Mantz, taken to the Bastille on June 15, 1761. This woman was a celebrated adventuress, and the greatest liar that ever existed. She was arrested on account of a letter to the Duc de Choiseul, which was subscribed with the false name of "Likonde," and pretended to reveal a plot of the first persons in the kingdom against royalty. Locked up on account of this, the criminal drew up countless writings about the history of her life, romances full of deception, in which she transferred her birthplace sometimes to Lorraine, at others to Vienna, and represented herself under all possible names as the daughter of great gentlemen. This adventuress possessed a full power, signed by the Marquise de Treston Don, authorising her to take up loans for the latter. In this the prisoner is called “the very noble and most mighty dame Countess of Lobkowitz, born Countess of Brulz of the Two Mountains, Lady High Justiciary of the country of Hetehonde, born Chevalière of Malta, through privilege granted by Pope Honorius I. to the most illustrious family of John of Brienne, first Prince of Tyre, and afterwards Emperor of Constantinople, from whom is descended the aforesaid Lady of Lobkowitz, widow of the late Messire Joachim Wasser, Count of Herchaud, captain-major in the Swiss regiment of Vigier, afterwards Castellas.'

She wore the cross and ribbon of the Maltese order, but asserted that she had been robbed in Paris in 1753 of the papers which proved her hereditary right to wear both, as well as the proofs of her claim to wear the order of St. Andrew, as well as all her documents and family papers. Her powers of imagination suggested to her every sort of extravagant notion, fable, and invention. She was discharged from the Bastille in 1762, under the condition not to enter the kingdom again without per