may be continued; and that, honored by the princes and princesses of the court, nothing be denied me of all that I shall ask the king, as well for my relatives as my servitors." Guibourg said that the child sacrificed at this mass was bought by him from " a very fine girl," to whom he paid a crown, — about throe dollars of present value. Having drawn blood from the child, whom he stabbed in the throat with a small knife, he poured the blood into the chalice and then allowed the child to be taken away, doubtless to be burnt in the furnace at the rear of the chapel. As Montespan became more popular than before and regained the king's favor to a larger degree, it can readily be understood that she believed the masses had been the direct cause of her success. While the queen had a suite of eleven rooms at Versailles, Montespan had one of twenty-seven on the first floor. Her cos tumes were magnificent, her jewels were so resplendent that a lady of the court wrote : "Madame de Montespan was the other day covered with diamonds; the brilliance of so blazing a divinity was more than one could bear." In the eight years that she was virtually the wife of Louis XIV. she bore him seven children, who were all legitimized as " Enfants de France." When she was for a short time neglected for the beautiful but unfor tunate Madame de Fontanges, she was so irritated that she arranged with La Voisin for a deadly poison, which there is no doubt Montespan administered with her own hand. The infidelities of the king increasing, and Montespan fearing that she might be ban ished from his presence, turned her love into vindictive hate, and she offered I^a Voisin a sum equal to two hundred thousand dollars if she would poison the king. The means she intended to employ seem
absurd to us in these days. M. FunckBrentano thus describes them : "In conformity with the ancient custom of the kings of France, Louis XIV. used to receive in person on certain days the peti tions presented by his subjects. Everybody was introduced to his presence without dis tinction of rank or condition. It was re solved to prepare a petition and steep it in powders that had gone under the chalice; the king would take it in his hands and get his death-blow. La Trianon undertook the preparation of the paper, and La Voisin was to place it in the hands of the king. "The petition was drawn up. The king's intervention was asked in favor of a certain Blessis, an alchemist whom the Marquis de Terms was keeping confined in his chateau. La Voisin betook herself to her friend Leger, a valet de chambre of Montausier, and asked of him a letter of recommendation to one of his friends at St. Germain, who would get her passed in among the first to an audience with the king, so that she might herself hand him the petition. Leger replied that it was unnecessary for her to go to St. Germain, as he would undertake to forward the petition by a sure route; but the sorceress insisted on presenting it herself. "The boldness of La Voisin terrified the most courageous of her companions. The majority of them feared, not death, but the horrible tortures reserved by the law for regicides. In order to frighten her, La Trianon cast her horoscope. This document was found among the papers seized on the sorceress by the Chambrc Ardente. La Trianon foretold that La Voisin would be im plicated in a trial for a crime against the State. ' Bah,' she replied, 'there are a hun dred thousand crowns to be gained.' That was the price agreed upon by La Voisin and Madame de Montespan for the poisoning- of the king.
