De la Grange was hanged and La Reynie was convinced that even more murderous "witches" were operating in Paris. One of La Reynie's first arrests was a fortuneteller named Magdalene de la Grange, who was accused of faking a marriage to a wealthy Parisian lawyer and then poisoning him for his money. The most high-profile woman captured in the Affair of the Poisons was Catherine Deshayes Monvoisin, aka "La Voisin." When La Reynie's men stormed the magic shops and alchemists, they confiscated vials of suspicious powders, bubbling cauldrons and foul ingredients for black magic including "blobs of hanged-man's fat, nail clippings, bone splinters, specimens of human blood, excrement, urine, semen," according to one historian. They said it was extracted from toad venom and went by the name "succession powder," because it could quietly kill off your rivals for a handsome inheritance. But if the prayers didn't work, says Mollenauer, the wife might return to the sorceress for something stronger, something that would make the "husband problem" go away for good.īeginning with the Marquise case, rumors swirled around Paris that alchemists and witches had procured the ingredients for an odorless, tasteless, truly undetectable poison. If a woman went to the local sorceress complaining of a cruel and violent husband, she might go home with a few secret prayers to recite at mass. "If somebody like the Marquise de Brinvilliers is capable of that, so too would other people." "The case of this beautiful noblewoman being found guilty of poisoning her family members in cold blood made it imaginable for the police, for the king and for the judges that these types of murders were widespread," says Mollenauer. The stage was set for the explosion of wild accusations during the Affair of the Poisons. Suddenly, every mysterious aristocratic death over the previous decade came under suspicion. The Marquise reportedly claimed that "half the people in are involved in this sort of thing" and hinted at the existence of a ring of alchemists and sorceresses dabbling in the dark arts. There she was tortured with " the water cure" and was forced to drink 2.4 gallons (9 liters) until she confessed. In 1675, the Marquise was accused of the murders and fled to England, the Netherlands and Belgium, where she was arrested. When the odorless, tasteless poison was perfected (likely arsenic, says Molleneau), the Marquise used it to kill her father and two of her brothers, making her first in line to inherit the family's riches. When Sainte-Croix was released, he and the Marquise went on a poisoning spree, testing their increasingly toxic concoctions on unsuspecting hospital patients.
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