After B—— ran off, and the counselor sought to lift up Antonia, who lay unconscious on the ground, the girl raised her eyelids with a sudden deep sigh, however, soon she seemed to want to sink back into death. Krespel broke out in a loud, inconsolable wail. The physician whom the counselor’s housekeeper fetched declared Antonia’s state to be the consequence of a severe, but by no means fatal, fluke of nature, and indeed his daughter recovered much more quickly than the counselor had supposed. She favored her father with the most heartfelt childish love; she shared all his whimsies – his mad caprices and conceits. She helped him take old violins apart, and glue new ones together.

  “I don’t want to sing anymore, but to live only for you,” she often said to her father with a soft smile, after someone invited her to sing and she declined. The counselor sought from then on, if possible, to spare her such moments, and consequently did not like to take her along on social visits and painstakingly avoided all music. For he knew all too well how painful it must be for Antonia to completely forsake the art that she had so thoroughly mastered. When the counselor had purchased and wanted to take apart the wondrous violin that he had subsequently buried beside her, she softly pleaded, “This one too?” He could not tell what obscure force compelled him to leave it intact, and to play on it. No sooner had he stroked the first notes than Antonia cried out in a loud and cheerful voice, “Oh, it’s me – I’m singing again.” There was indeed something altogether remarkable about the silver-soft tones of the instrument; they seemed to have been produced by the human breast. Krespel was profoundly moved, he played more superbly than ever, and when in bold partitas he fiddled with great gusto and a deep expressivity, and the music soared and sank, Antonia clapped her hands together and cried out in rapturous delight, “I did it! I really did it!” From then on, her life was infused with a great peacefulness and joy. Oftentimes she said to the counselor: “I’d like to sing something, father!” Then Krespel took the violin down from the wall where it hung and played Antonia’s loveliest songs, and her heart was glad.

  One night shortly before my arrival in town, the counselor thought he heard someone playing the piano in the room next door, and he soon clearly recognized B—— playing preludes in his particular way. He wanted to shoot up out of bed, but the sound hung like a heavy load over him; as if bound with iron bands, he was unable to budge. Then Antonia chimed in with soft, breath-like tones that soared and soared into a blaring fortissimo. The wondrous sounds came together in the deeply moving song that B—— had composed in the pious manner of the old masters. As Krespel recalled, he found himself in an inconceivable state, in which a deathly fear was bound up with a never before experienced rapture. Suddenly he was infused with a dazzling clarity, and at the same time he beheld B—— and Antonia locked in an embrace and peering at each other with silent rapture. The musical tones of the song and the accompanying piano lingered awhile without Antonia visibly moving her lips or B——’s fingers striking the keyboard. The counselor fell into a cloud of unconsciousness in which the image and the musical notes slowly dissolved. When he came to again, he was still gripped by the lingering wave of fear. He raced into Antonia’s room. She lay still on the sofa with her eyes shut tight and a blessed smile playing on her lips, with her hand piously folded on her breast, as though asleep and dreaming of heavenly bliss and joyfulness. But she was dead.

  Skip Notes

  *1 Characters in Orlando Furioso, a sixteenth-century Italian epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533).

  *2 German beast.

  *3 Beloved husband and most happy father.

  Mademoiselle de Scudéry

  1819

  On the rue Saint-Honoré stood the little house of Mademoiselle de Scudéry, a favorite of Louis XIV and Madame de Maintenon known for her lovely verses.

  Late, around midnight – it may have been in the fall of 1680 – there was such a loud knocking at the door that the entire hallway echoed with the sound. Baptiste, who in Mademoiselle’s small household simultaneously held the positions of cook, butler, and doorman, had – with his mistress’s permission – taken leave to journey to the country to attend his sister’s wedding. So Martinière, Mademoiselle’s lady-in-waiting, held down the fort on her own. Hearing the resounding knocks, she realized that, since Baptiste was away, the two were left to fend for themselves; it occurred to her that break-ins, burglaries, and murders were widespread in Paris at the time, and so she became convinced that a gang of hoodlums, knowing the house had been left defenseless, sought entry and, once let in, would act on their evil intentions. Consequently, she remained in her room, trembling and undecided, cursing Baptiste and his sister’s wedding. Meanwhile, the knocks kept thundering through the hallway, and it seemed to her as if she heard a voice calling: Open the door, for Christ’s sake, do open the door! Gripped by ever-mounting fear, Martinière finally grabbed the candlestick with the burning candle and ran out into the hall. There, she clearly heard the voice of the person knocking: “For Christ’s sake, open the door!”

  “Well,” thought Martiniere, “that’s definitely not the voice of a thief. Who knows, maybe it’s a persecuted person seeking refuge in the home of my mistress, someone who is inclined to acts of kindness. But let us be careful!”

  She opened the window and, trying to make her voice sound as manly as possible, called out to inquire as to who might be hammering at the door late at night, waking the entire household. In the shimmer of the moonlight breaking through the dark clouds overhead, she caught sight of a tall figure wrapped in a light gray coat, with a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low over the eyes. She then called out in a loud voice, so as to be clearly heard below, “Baptiste, Claude, Pierre, get up and have a look what ne’er-do-well is trying to break into the house.”

  A soft, almost plaintive voice replied from below, “Ach, Madame Martinière, I know it’s you, dear lady, as much as you are taking pains to distort your voice. I also know that Baptiste has gone to the country, and that you are alone in the house with your mistress. Please just open the door, and don’t be frightened. I must speak to the mademoiselle this very minute.”

  “What makes you think,” replied Martinière, “that my mistress wishes to speak to you in the middle of the night? Don’t you know that she is fast asleep, and that there is no way I am going to wake her from the sweet slumber that she, in her advanced years, badly needs!”

  “I know,” said the man standing below, “I know that your Mademoiselle has just set aside the manuscript of the novel Clelia on which she has been tirelessly working, and is at this very moment transcribing several verses which she plans to read tomorrow at the salon of the Marquise de Maintenon. I implore you, Madame Martinière, have mercy and open the door. You must know that it is a matter of saving an unhappy soul from perishing, that the honor, freedom, indeed the very life of a certain individual hangs on this moment in which I must absolutely speak with your mistress. Bear in mind that your employer would surely be eternally furious with you were she to learn that it was you who hard-heartedly rebuffed the poor unfortunate who implores her assistance.”

  “But why do you seek to elicit my mistress’s compassion at this ungodly hour? Come back tomorrow at a proper time!” Martinière called down to the man below.

  “Does destiny, when it is about to strike like a fatal bolt of lightning, give a damn about the hour? Open the door, have no fear of a poor suffering soul, helpless and abandoned by the world, hounded, beset by an inconceivable stroke of ill fortune, who begs to be rescued by your mistress from impending danger!” he responded.

  Martinière heard how, following these words, the individual standing below moaned and groaned in abysmal pain; moreover, the gentle timbre of his voice, that of a very young man, touched her deeply. Feeling profoundly moved, she went to fetch the key without hesitating another instant.

  No sooner had she opened the door than the man wrapped in the gray coat stormed in and, rushing past Martinière down the hallway, cried out in a wild voice: “Take me to Mademoiselle!”

  Fearful, Martinière raised the candlestick and the shimmer fell on the deathly pale, terribly contorted face of a young man. Martinière almost fell to the floor in a burst of terror as the young man opened his coat and pulled the bare handle of a stiletto knife from a scabbard. He glared at her with sparkling eyes and cried out in an even more ferocious tone than before, “Take me to Mademoiselle, I told you!”

  Martinière saw her mistress to be in the gravest danger, and all the love she felt for her cherished ladyship, whom she revered as a pious, faithful mother, flared up in her heart of hearts and engendered a courage of which she would not have thought herself capable. She hastened to fling shut the door to her bedchamber, which she had left open, stationed herself before it, and declared in no uncertain terms, “Your curious compartment inside this house hardly conforms with your pitiful words outside which, as I now see, ill-advisedly awakened my sympathy. You may not and shall not speak to my mistress at this ungodly hour. If you have no ill intent, you should not shun the light of day. Come back in the morning and present your case. Now, be gone!”

  The young man heaved a heavy sigh, glared at Martinière with a terrible look, and brandished his stiletto. Martinière silently committed her soul to the Lord, but stood her ground, and looked the man in the eyes, pressing herself harder against the door to her bed chamber, through which the intruder would have to pass to get to her Ladyship.

  “Let me go to your mistress, I tell you!” the man cried out again.

  “Do what you will,” Martinière replied, “I will not budge from this spot. Commit the evil deed you intended, you too will find your ignominious death on the Place de Grève, along with your accursed fellow cutthroats.”

  “Ha,” cried the young man, “you are quite right, Martinière! I look like and am armed like a nefarious thief and murderer. But my comrades in arms have not been executed— no!— they’ve not been executed!” Casting poisonous looks at the woman, whom he had already frightened half to death, he raised his stiletto.

  “Jesus!” she cried out, awaiting a fatal blow. But at that moment the clatter of arms and the clip-clop of horses’ hooves became audible outside on the street. “Gentlemen of the constabulary! Gentlemen of the constabulary! Help! Help!” cried Martinière.

  “Wretched woman, you seek my ruin – now I’m done for! All is lost, all is lost! Take this! Take it! Give it to Mademoiselle before morning – or tomorrow if you like!” Muttering these words quietly, the young man tore the candlestick out of the servant’s grip, blew out the candle, and pressed a little coffret into her hands. “For the sake of your mortal soul, give that package to Mademoiselle,” he cried, and ran out into the street.

  Having fallen to the ground, Martinière got back up with difficulty, and felt her way in the darkened corridor back to her room where, thoroughly drained and unable to say a word, she sank into an armchair. Then she heard the jangle of the key she had left inserted in the front door lock. The house was locked, and uncertain, quiet steps approached her bed chamber. Glued to the spot, without strength enough to budge, she awaited the worst. Imagine her surprise when the door was flung open, and in the shimmer of a night-light she immediately recognized her honest colleague, Baptiste, looking pale as death and deeply disturbed.

  “For the love of God, for the love of God, pray tell me, Madame Martinière, what in heaven has happened? Driven by terror— a premonition of terror!— I don’t know what it was— something drew me away from the wedding last night! And here I am on our street. Madame Martinière is a light sleeper, I thought to myself, she’ll surely hear me lightly tapping on the door and let me in. Then a formidable military patrol comes my way – cavalry, infantry armed to the teeth – confronts me and won’t let me go. Fortunately, Lieutenant Desgrais of the Gendarmes, whom I know well, was among them; he spoke up as they shone the lantern under my nose. ‘Well, for God’s sake, Baptiste, what are you doing gadding about in the middle of the night? You’ve got to stay put and guard the house. Strange to find you here, we’re out to catch us a big one tonight.’ You can’t possibly imagine, Madame Martinière, how these words moved me. But as I stood at the threshold, a cloaked man came bounding out with a shiny stiletto in hand, and gave me the run around. The house is open, the keys stuck in the lock— say, what the devil’s going on here?”

  Relieved of her mortal terror, Martinière told him all that had happened. Both she and Baptiste stepped inside the hallway and found the candlestick lying on the floor where the stranger had dropped it.

  “There’s no doubt in my mind,” said Baptiste, “that our mistress was about to be robbed and murdered. The intruder knew, by your account, that you were here alone with Mademoiselle, indeed even that she was still awake bent over her writing; no doubt it was one of those crafty rogues who break in and stake out a place, to gauge all the circumstances that could aid in their dastardly assault. And the little coffret, Madame Martinière, I think we’d best fling it into the Seine where the current runs deep. Who can say for sure that some accursed fiend does not still have designs on our dear mistress’s life, and that in opening the packet she would not drop dead like the old Marquis de Tournay did upon opening that letter he’d received from an unknown sender!”

  Thinking it over for a long time, the two faithful servants decided to reveal everything that had happened to their mistress, and to hand her the mysterious little packet, which could after all be cautiously opened. Together they assessed every aspect of the appearance of the suspicious stranger, deciding that a secret might well be at play here that they could not resolve on their own, but had best leave the resolution to Her Ladyship.

  * * *

  —

  Baptiste’s concerns were well founded. At that very moment Paris was the stage for the most horrendous atrocities and, concurrently, the most devilish inventions of hell presented the simplest means to fulfill evil intent.

  Like others of his calling, Glaser, a German apothecary and the best chemist of his day, engaged in alchemical experiments. He sought to discover the stone of wisdom. He was assisted in his work by an Italian named Exili. The latter employed his goldsmithing craft as a mere front. He only sought to master the skill of mixing, boiling, and subtilizing the poison elements – with which Glaser hoped to find salvation – and he finally succeeded in preparing a refined poison that killed either on the spot or slowly and left no traces in the body of the deceased, deluding the art and science of the doctors of the day who, failing to suspect poisoning, were obliged to ascribe the death to natural causes. As circumspectly as Exili went about his business, he was finally apprehended as a suspect in the sale of poison and brought to the Bastille. In the same cell, soon thereafter, they imprisoned Captain Godin de Sainte Croix. The latter had conducted for the longest time an illicit affair with the Marquise de Brinvillier, bringing scandal on the entire family. Since the marquis proved oblivious to the crime of his spouse, her father, Dreux d’Aubray, a police lieutenant in Paris, finally took it upon himself to separate the sinners with a warrant issued for the captain’s arrest. Impetuous, without character, scorning piety, and inclined from youth to debauchery of all sorts, jealous, longing for revenge, Sainte Croix could not have found a more welcome boon than Exili’s devilish secret which gave him the power to eliminate all his enemies. He became Exili’s avid apprentice, and soon imitated his master so that, once released from the Bastille, he was able to go about his business on his own.

  Madame de Brinvillier was a decadent woman; under the influence of Sainte Croix she became a monster. Seeking revenge, he induced her to poison her father under the guise of caring for him in his old age. Then, for the sake of the rich inheritance, to poison both her brothers, and finally her sister. The report of several such murders by poisoning set an example that led crimes of this sort to become an irresistible passion. For no reason other than taking pleasure in the act, like the chemist who takes pleasure in his experiments, poisoners often murdered individuals whose life or death made no difference to the perpetrator. The sudden demise of a number of destitute persons residing in the Hotel Dieu raised the suspicion that the loaves of bread, distributed by Madame Brinvillier on a weekly basis as a token of her piety and benevolence, contained poison. It is certain that the pigeon pies she set before her invited guests were injected with poison. The Chevalier du Guet and many other persons fell victim to these hellish repasts. Sainte Croix, his helper la Chaussée, and Madame Brinvillier managed for the longest time to hide their dastardly deeds; but the eternal scales of heavenly justice ultimately revealed the guile of the degenerate souls, making these evildoers pay the price here on earth. The poisons prepared by Sainte Croix were pounded into such a fine powder (Parisians dubbed it “inheritance powder”) that, left lying about following its concoction, a single whiff sufficed to bring on instant death. Consequently, Sainte Croix wore a fine glass mask while whipping up the toxic substance. But one day, when he was about to pour the poison into a vial, the mask fell off, he inhaled the powder, and immediately dropped dead. Seeing as he had no heirs, the court ordered agents who hastened by to put a seal on his estate. There in a crate they discovered his entire hellish arsenal of poison, in addition to letters from Brinvillier that left no doubt as to her role as an accomplice. She fled, seeking refuge in a cloister in Liège. Desgrais, a gendarme, was sent to apprehend her. Disguised as a priest he appeared in the cloister where she hid out. He managed to arrange a love tryst with the wretched woman, luring her to meet him in a lonesome garden outside the city. But no sooner had she arrived than she was surrounded by Desgrais’s deputies, the priestly lover suddenly revealed himself to be an officer of the gendarmes, and she was compelled to step into the paddy wagon that stood waiting outside the garden, surrounded by guards, and was driven straight back to Paris. La Chaussée had already been beheaded, and Brinvillier suffered the same fate; following the execution, her body was burned and her ashes tossed to the wind.