The Halifax Comet. — 1894-02-24 (Halifax, West Yorkshire, England)

THE COMET.  the idea of secret poisoning first put into the heads of hundreds, Who afterwards became guilty of it. On the 16th of July, 1676, the Superior Criminal Court of Paris pronounced a verdict of guilty against her, for the murder of her father and brothers, and the attempt upon the life of her sister. She was condemned to be drawn on a 'hurdle, with her feet bare, a rope about her neck, and a burning torch in her hand, to the great entrance of the cathedral of Notre Dame, where she was to make the amende honorable in sight of all the people; to be taken from thence to the Place de Greve, and there to be beheaded. Her body was afterwards to be burned, and her ashes scattered to the winds.  After her sentence, she made a full confession of her guilt. She seems to have looked upon death without fear; but it was recklessness, not courage, that supported her. Madame de Sevigne says, that when on the hurdle, on her way to the scaffold, she entreated her confessor to exert his influence with the executioner to place himself next to her, that his body might hide from her view "that scoundrel Desgrais, who had entrapped her." She also asked the lalies, who had been drawn to their windows to witness the procession, what they were looking at ? adding, ,"a pretty sight you have come to see; truly !" She laughed when on the scaffold, dying as she had lived, impenitent and heartless. On the morrow, the populace came in crowds to collect her ashes to preserve them as relics. She was regarded as a martyred saint, and her ashes were supposed to be endowed, by Divine grace, 'with the power of curing all diseases. Popular folly has often canonised persons whose pretensions to sanctity were extremely equivocal; but the disgusting folly of the multitude, in this instance, has never been surpassed.  ISefore her death proceedings word instituted against M. de Penautier, treasurer of the province of Languedoc, and receivergeneral for the clergy, who was accused by a lady, named St. Laurent, of having poisoned her husband, the late receivergeneral, in order to obtain his appointment. The circumstances of this case were never divulged, and the greatest influence was exerted to prevent it from going to trial. He was known to have been intimate with Sainte Croix and Madame de Brinvilliers, and was thought to have procured his poisons from them. The latter, however, refused to say anything which might implicate him. The inquiry was eventually stifled, after Penantier had been several months in the Bastille.  The Cardinal de Bonzy was accused by the gossips of the day of being an accomplice of Penautier. The cardinal's estates were burdened with the payment of several annuities; but, about the time that poisoning became so fashionable, all the annuitants died off, one after the other. The cardinal, in talking of these annuitants, afterwards used to say, "Thanks to my star, I have outlived them all." A wit, seeing him and Penautier riding in the same carriage, cried out, in allusion to this expression, "There go the Cardinal de Bonzy and his star ! " It was now that the popular mania for poisoning began to take hold of the popular mind. From this time until the year 1682, the prisons of France teemed with persons aecused of this crime; and it is very  --of any other penny paper published. -- singular that other offences decreased in a proportion. We have already seen the extent to which it was carried in Italy. It was, if possible, surpassed in France. The diabolical ease with which these murders be 'effected, by means of these scentless and .tasteless poisons, enticed the evil-minded. Jealousy, revenge, avarice, even petty spite, alike resorted to them. Those who would have been deterred, by fear of detection, from -Using the pistol or the dagger, or even strong doses ol poison, which kill at once, employed slow poisons without dread. The corrupt Government of the day, although it could wink at the atrocities of a wealthy and influential courtier like Penautier, was scandalised to see the crime spreading among the peopley Disgrace was, in fact, entailed in the eyes of Europe upon the name of Frenchmen. Louis