Holly Tucker - City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris

1. RUE DU BEAUREGARD: CATHERINE VOISINS HOME

2. COUR DES MIRACLES

3. RUE MONTORGEUIL

4. RUE DU BOULOI: NICOLAS DE LA REYNIES HOME AND HEADQUARTERS

5. CHTELET: CRIMINAL COURTS AND PRISON

6. PALAIS DE JUSTICE (PARLEMENT)

7. SAINT-PAUL CHURCH: LETTER DISCOVERED

8. SAINT-SVERIN CHURCH: FATHER MARIETTE PERFORMS CEREMONY FOR VOISIN AND LESAGE

9. SAINT-DNIS: FATHER GUIBOURGS HOME AND CHURCH

10. BASTILLE

11. ARSENAL COMPOUND

12. CHTEAU OF VINCENNES

OTHER BOOKS BY HOLLY TUCKER

Blood Work:
A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution

Pregnant Fictions:
Childbirth and the Fairy Tale in Early Modern France

Copyright 2017 by Holly Tucker

All rights reserved

First Edition

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Book design by JAM Design

Jacket design by Albert Tang

Jacket art: (top) Louis XV (1710-74) and the Infanta of Spain in the Tuileries, Paris, c. 1720 (engraving), French School, (18th century) / Private Collection / Roger - Ciollet, Paris / Bridgeman Images; (bottom) Gabriel Nicolas De La Reynie (1625-1709), engraving by Nicolas Mignard / Photo by DeAgostini / Getty Images

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ISBN: 978-0-393-23978-2

ISBN 978-0-393-24884-5 (e-book)

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To my parents, Louhon and Carolyn Tucker.

My journeys, across continents and through time,

would not be possible without their

love and encouragement.

And to Pat Fife, our Gam, whose adventures

are as good as any bookand whose

Moscow Mules helped the words

flow for this one.

If you judge by appearances in this place you will often be deceived, because what appears to be the case hardly ever is.

MADAME DE LA FAYETTE ,

La Princesse de Clves, 1678

Contents

H owever dark and strange the events depicted here may seem, City of Light, City of Poison is a work of nonfiction. Unless otherwise noted, anything between quotation marks is taken directly from details in a court document, interrogation record, memoir, or letter as cited in the endnotes.

In the French legal tradition of the early modern period, depositions were recorded in the third person, but in such a way as to capture how a witness or suspect spoke and the words they chose. I have translated these indirect quotations into direct quotations, being careful not to change the nature of the exchange between the questioner and the witness or suspect. A few clarifications have been made, as necessary. For example, some referents are not clear in a specific sentence, but are obvious in the context of the rest of the testimony. Run-on sentences, often the result of a scribes effort to capture fast-moving dialogue, have been shortened where needed. I have attributed no words, thoughts, motivations, or actions for which there is not documentation.

If, as I hope, the story feels rich and the characters full of life, it is because what history has left us is similarly rich and alive. Truth be told, I am comforted by the fact that I do not have sufficient imagination to conjure up a story as grim and troubling as this nonfiction account of lost souls and cruel deeds.

T he main forms of seventeenth-century French currency referenced here are the denier, sol or sous, livre, and cu. Twelve deniers were the equivalent of one sol or sous. Twenty sols made one livre. Six livres comprised an cu.

In 1667, one pound of bread cost eight deniers. A prisoners daily food allowance was four sols. A police officer patrolling on horseback made fifty sols a day, which included the keep of his horse. Police fines ran from six to thirty livres.

It cost twenty sols to have ones palm read or horoscope prepared by a magician in the Montorgeuil neighborhood. Midwives and poisoners there also paid fifteen to thirty sols for pigeons, frogs, and other ingredients to make their beauty creams and potions, which they sold for upward of twelve livres. The average fee to prune a family tree ranged from 2,000 to 10,000 livres (more than 1,600 cus ).

Versailles, 1709

T he plumes on the guards hats fluttered in time with the beats of the horses hooves along the route from Paris to Versailles. Riding in formation on the hot June day, the men had been entrusted with delivering a single letter to the king. No one, not even the horsemen, knew what made the cargo so precious. But as the swords dangling at their sides and the muskets slung across their chests made clear, they would kill to protect it.

After a few hours the travelers could see the sprawling palace in the distance. Once the site of a modest royal hunting lodge, Versailles was now home to Louis XIV. Construction on the palace had begun nearly a half century earlier, just months after the king had assumed the throne at the age of twenty-three.

The palaces golden gates shimmered in the sun. Beyond them one could spy the large clock above the window of the kings bedroom. At the center of the clock sat Apollo, the sun god, his face framed by rays of light. The clock marked the kings day with precision. From the moment he awoke in the morning to the time he went to bed at night, nobles jockeyed for the privilege of attending to the kings every need, from helping him dress to removing his chamber pot.

Since 1682 nearly ten thousand souls had lived in cramped quarters in the palace in return for access, either real or longed for, to the king. This sense of connection allowed Louis XIV to retain a large measure of control over the noble class, which he had learned long ago never to trust.

As the guards entered the palace gates, a sea of carriages and sedan chairs parted to make way for them. Once inside the main gates, the horsemen traversed the place dArmes, the expansive courtyard fronting the chteau. Hundreds of soldiers stood in formation to protect the king and to impress his subjects.

Dismounting, the lead horseman bounded up the massive stone staircase and headed for the quarters of the kings most trusted minister, Louis de Pontchartrain. As Louis XIVs chief of staff, Pontchartrain held unparalleled power at Versailles. All correspondence passed through himno small task given the daily avalanche of reports and requests that flowed into the palace from across France and throughout Europe.

The guard entered the ministers quarters and, once acknowledged, placed the letter in Pontchartrains hands. Pursing his lips, as was his habit, Pontchartrain turned the letter over. With a start, he recognized the bold handwriting of Nicolas de La Reynie.

It was a letter from a dead man.

For more than thirty years Nicolas de la Reynie had served as the police chief of Paris, the citys first. He never cared for Pontchartrain. In fact, it had been Pontchartrains appointment as the kings counselor that brought about La Reynies eventual retirement. After working closely with La Reynie for nearly seven years, Pont-chartrain strongly encouraged the king to replace the aging police chief with a younger, more dynamic officer. Still, the ever-practical La Reynie knew that the only way to get a letter to the kingand to be sure what it contained stayed intactwas through Pontchartrain.