firmness and a resolution to await and to endure death if so it must be, should yet be so criminal as she was proved to be by the parricide to which she confessed before her judges.  She had nothing in her face that would indicate such evil.  She had very abundant chestnut hair, a rounded, well-shaped face, blue eyes very pretty and gentle, extraordinarily white skin, good nose, and no disagreeable feature.  Still, there was nothing unusually attractive in the face:  already she was a little wrinkled, and looked older than her age.  Something made me ask at our first interview how old she was.  ‘Monsieur,’ she said, ’if I were to live till Sainte-Madeleine’s day I should be forty-six.  On her day I came into the world, and I bear her name.  I was christened Marie-Madeleine.  But near to the day as we now are, I shall not live so long:  I must end to-day, or at latest to-morrow, and it will be a favour to give me the one day.  For this kindness I rely on your word.’  Anyone would have thought she was quite forty-eight.  Though her face as a rule looked so gentle, whenever an unhappy thought crossed her mind she showed it by a contortion that frightened one at first, and from time to time I saw her face twitching with anger, scorn, or ill-will.  I forgot to say that she was very little and thin.  Such is, roughly given, a description of her body and mind, which I very soon came to know, taking pains from the first to observe her, so as to lose no time in acting on what I discovered.”

As she was giving a first brief sketch of her life to her confessor, the marquise remembered that he had not yet said mass, and reminded him herself that it was time to do so, pointing out to him the chapel of the Conciergerie.  She begged him to say a mass for her and in honour of Our Lady, so that she might gain the intercession of the Virgin at the throne of God.  The Virgin she had always taken for her patron saint, and in the midst of her crimes and disorderly life had never ceased in her peculiar devotion.  As she could not go with the priest, she promised to be with him at least in the spirit.  He left her at half-past ten in the morning, and after four hours spent alone together, she had been induced by his piety and gentleness to make confessions that could not be wrung from her by the threats of the judges or the fear of the question.  The holy and devout priest said his mass, praying the Lord’s help for confessor and penitent alike.  After mass, as he returned, he learned from a librarian called Seney, at the porter’s lodge, as he was taking a glass of wine, that judgment had been given, and that Madame de Brinvilliers was to have her hand cut off.  This severity—­as a fact, there was a mitigation of the sentence—­made him feel yet more interest in his penitent, and he hastened back to her side.

As soon as she saw the door open, she advanced calmly towards him, and asked if he had truly prayed for her; and when he assured her of this, she said, “Father, shall I have the consolation of receiving the viaticum before I die?”