Noble Blood - The Marquise and Her Poisons

Episode Date: October 29, 2019

The Marquise de Brinvilliers is a subject of operas and stories, a larger-than-life villainess who murdered her family with poison and almost got away with it. Almost. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodam. My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot.

But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, The cat, just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck.

Listen to Thanks, Dad, on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Aaron Manky. Listener discretion is advised. Since it's the week of Halloween, let's start with a scary story. This is one called The Leather Funnel, written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was written during one of the many periods in his life he was exhausted with writing stories about his famous detective, Sherlock Holmes, and somewhat resentful of how successful that one character had become.

Like all good scary stories, this one begins with a visitor coming to stay at the mysterious residence of a distant, eccentric friend. As soon as the guest arrives, the host apologizes profusely. He doesn't have a spare bedroom, but he does have a wide, comfortable couch in his library. Our guest is, of course, enchanted by the idea of an evening kept company by a low, crackling fireplace and the warm parchment smell of books. And he readily agrees. But as soon as the men enter the library, the guest realizes that there are more than just

books there. As it turns out, the host is a collector. And his library is where he displays his treasures, strange and macabre historical objects, most of which the guest can't even identify. One such object in particular catches his interest. A large, dark funnel constructed of leather with brass accents, maybe a foot long at its widest diameter. At the tapered side, the tube had deep notches in it,

Like it was whittled away by a very sharp knife. The host catches the guest staring. Ah, he says, I see you've noticed my funnel. I've been wondering about this thing. I'll tell you what. Why don't you sleep with it next to your head and see if you can glean anything about it from your dreams? Our host was not just a collector,

but also a student of the occult and the paranormal workings of the mystical arts. The guest agreed and went to sleep on the couch in the library that, for all of its strange objects, still did have a warm, glowing fireplace, and the familiar and wonderful smell of books. As it so happens, that night the man had a dreamt he was in a French prison cell, where a woman in a white night dress was being tortured. The woman's body was bent over something that looked like a wooden beam, just taller than her hip. She was pulled over it backwards so that her head was pulled down to the floor and her belly was

thrust upwards. Her ankles and wrists were chained to the ground. While a nervously murmuring priest watched on, the prison guards took a funnel, the same leather funnel, and forced it into her mouth. In his dream, the guests saw the massive jugs of water set nearby. Surely they came be planning on forcing her to drink those, he thought, she'll drown. Her stomach will burst. But to his horror, the guards in the dream picked up the first jug of water and poured it into the funnel. The woman flailed and recoiled, rattling the chains and thrashing violently. The priest left the room, horrified, and seeing that there still remained another jug full of water to torture the woman with. The man woke from his dream with a start, soaked with sweat as though he had been the one

doused with water. In the morning, the host asked if he had any dreams. Dutifully, the man recounted everything he had seen the night before. The woman, the wooden beam, the jugs of water, the priest. The host's eyes lit up, and he raced back to a bookshelf to pull out a book. After a few moments of frantic flipping, he found what he had been looking for, a chapter about Madame de Brinvilliers, a Marquise who had been found guilty of poisoning her brothers and her father, and who had been tortured into confession with what was ironically called the water cure. You see, the host explained, what you saw in your dream actually happened, and this is the very funnel they used to inflict her torture. But what of the knife marks around the mouthpiece, the guest asked?

Ah, said the host, the Marquise fought like a tiger, it seems like she had the teeth to match. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story is fictional, as is the power of dreams to reveal unknown truths, probably. But the story Doyle was referencing is absolutely true. The Marquise de Brinville is one of history's most famous poisoners, a woman who's often painted as either evil or beautifully mad with love, or both. It's impossible to know now the full extent of her crimes. What we can know is that she was a woman confident

that she would get away with them. And the funny thing is, she almost did. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. If you had to be born a girl in 1630, you couldn't hope to be born much better than Marie Madelan Marguerite Dobre, the future Marquis de Brinvilliers. Her father was a prominent Parisian bureaucrat, himself the son of a much respected treasurer.

The family was incredibly well-connected and also very rich, which meant that Marie's two brothers would each come into a sizable inheritance, and that there was no reason in the world to think that their sister, wouldn't marry extremely well and live in comfort for her entire life. Marie was the family's eldest child. No one would describe her as beautiful. Maybe striking was a bit closer. After meeting her, her general appearance would fade from your memory,

but specific features would be tattooed onto your brain. Extraordinarily thick brown hair. Bone white, nearly translucent skin. blue eyes. She was better than her brothers at her letters, spelling words easily and writing with thick, clean, bold, firm lines that made her tutors press their lips together in pleasure and made her parents worry.

Her siblings and playmates thought she came across as haughty and distant at best, or maybe slow in the head even, for her unwillingness to join them in silly games. But the truth was, Marie, was just uncommonly observant. She preferred to watch and to learn. Even as an adolescent, the future Marquise de Brunvilliers was shrewd and sharp as a fresh-cut blade. Studious as she was, she refused to learn her prayers or waste her mornings in church unless absolutely forced. She was bored and disinterested by religion, which seemed in her youth as just a minor

defect of an aristocratic woman. But looking back on the woman that she became, maybe it was a sign from the beginning. Maybe there was always a certain wickedness that lingered beneath her skin, that repelled her from studying the Holy Scripture, the same way a demon knows to pull itself away from holy water. At age 21 in 1651, Marie got married to a titled nobleman, Antoine de Brunvilleier, a marquis and a baron. Love might have been too much to ask for from the much older man who, even from their wedding night,

seemed to prefer the company of mistresses to his new wife. But the Marquis treated Marie with something even less than affection, less than mild interest, something worse even than outright hatred, because at least hatred has a spark of passion to it.

The Marquis treated the Marquise with complete and utterance. her indifference. He left his wife alone while he spent evenings in smoke-filled parlors, sipping champagne and tasting sweets and oranges, racking up gambling debts and new women to take home. The Marquise, who had, above all else in childhood, hated boredom, was left to fend for herself. Well, that's not entirely true. The Marquis did give his wife one kindness. He introduced her to one of his young military friends, a tall and handsome young officer, the Marquis' own age, named Gaudine de Saint-Croix.

By any estimation, San Croix was not the sort of person a young, married, aristocratic woman should be associating with. He was an officer, yes, but just a simple captain in the cavalry. His birth could virtuously be called dubious, although everyone knew he was probably just a bastard. But St. Croix had a winning habit of smiling when he talked to people, acting as if he was including them in Ona Secret. He mirrored not only hand gestures back at people, but personalities. With vickers, he was pious and straight-backed, with gamblers loushoush and indulgent. And with the Marquise de Brinvilliers, he was clever and patient and romantic.

Far from being angry that his wife began an affair with one of his oldest friends. The Marquis was delighted. It gave him more time to spend with his mistresses. Weeks would go by before the Marquis and the Marquise slept under the same roof. Husband and wife would occasionally lock eyes from across the rooms of salons and parties. Parties where the Marquis gambled and the Marquise glittered like a jewel on the arm of her lover, San Croix. Meanwhile, the Marquis' skill in picking up new mistresses

was matched only by his skill in picking up new debts. And when every creditor in town began to send out collection notices, the nobleman ran, fleeing the country and leaving his wife in the capable hands of his former friend. The Marquise de Brinvilliers and San Croix were far from subtle. People began talking about the way the woman behaved, flaunting her affair, ignoring even the pretense of her marriage.

It was almost disgraceful. And remember, this was coming from people in France. Word got to Madame de Brinvilliers' brothers about the way their sister was living in sin. They were outraged, and as a pair, they arrived on the doorstep of her Paris home, unannounced, to beg her to abandon St. Croix. in order to preserve the honor of the family. When she refused, their pleads turned to threats. They swore they would get a magistrate. The Marquise de Brinvilliers laughed in their faces.

She wished them a good day, shut the door, and returned to her lover in the foyer. Burning with humiliation, the Marquise's brothers went to their father, the esteemed bureaucrat, Drew D'Aubre. The pair told their father what their sister. had been doing, how she had taken up with a common soldier, flaunting her disrespect of her marital vows. Their father took a deep breath. He rose and walked around his desk, where he carefully

dipped his favorite pen and ink and began to write in silence. The brothers looked at one another, confused. For several silent moments, they watched their father write something on parchment, crossing out a word here or there before finally he pursed his lips with satisfaction, dusted the ink to dry it, and sealed the letter with his personalized wax stamp.

Finally he spoke, I will take care of your sister. On a brisk day at the end of March, police stopped a carriage on a crowded street and pulled a man out. When the man demanded an explanation, the policeman brandished a letter from the king himself authorizing the arrest. Onlookers gawked.

The man agreed to go without struggle. But please, sir, he told the policeman, there's no need to scandalize the young woman I'm riding with. The crowds don't need to see her face. Take me, but please, let the carriage continue its journey home safely. The policeman agreed. And so even as the Marquise de Brunvilliers shes, shouted from its window in protest and anger, the carriage continued on, further and further away, until the sight of Saint-Croix, her lover, being arrested and pulled to prison,

disappeared in the chaos of the Paris Street. In between Notre Dame and the Palace of Justice, on the Isle de la Cite in the heart of Paris, lies the city's oldest hospital, the Hotel D'ieu. It was a grotesque place where nuns and priest doctors patrolled filthy hallways, 3,000 patients waiting in varying proximity to death. The patients with skin diseases and contagious viruses lay next to mothers in labor. Beds contained six patients, three with their heads at one end and three with their heads at the other. Operations happened in the middle of wards, in the full view of other patients.

and all of the wards were just feet from the hospital's dead house and dissecting rooms. The stench of death never left the place. Even so, the noble ladies of Paris came regularly to bestow their largesse upon the less fortunate. They arrived in small groups clutching handkerchiefs to their noses to ward off the stench. Among the most dedicated visitors was the Marquise de Brinvilliers, nearly every day the Marquis arrived at the hospital bearing sweets and wine and biscuits, treats that she distributed among the grateful and lonely sick who had been waiting in boredom and misery. The Marquise gave each a treat and a winning smile and a flick of her extraordinarily thick hair,

and they wondered if she was an angel. Brinvilliers' lover, San Croix, had been released from prison at the Bastille after three months. And since he returned home, the pair acted as the very models of Christian virtue. Brinvilliers made her daily hospital visits. San Croix went to confession, and the two were never seen at clubs or parties together. Instead, they were staying home and working together side by side in the new laboratory the Marquis de Brinvillee had paid for. In prison, San Croix's roommate was a man. named Exili, a mysterious Italian who had been arrested for coming into France while he was in the

service of the eccentric queen of Sweden. He was being detained while the French government figured out exactly what he was there to do and which of the stories from his past were true and which were mere rumors. People said that Exili was a magician and a poisoner, and that he had worked in Rome under the illustrious Madame Olympia, and that he had been restored. responsible for the deaths of over 150 people with the strange tonics and waters that he brewed. San Croix had always been a smart man, always knowledgeable about the clear, colorless liquids that could be tipped into a cup of wine, or the inheritance powder, as they called it, that could be sprinkled over a stew to hasten a wealthy relative's demise. But in his time in a cell with Exili, he became an expert.

He learned about arsenic and belladana and vitriol and aquatofana and a particularly noxious poison, Venin de Cropas, or Toad Venom, which was brewed by boiling down the liquids of a dead toad and carefully distilling its essence. And when Saint-Croy returned from prison, the Marquise de Brinvilliers was still bubbling with anger towards her brothers and towards her father. The men in her life who had sold her to anew. indifferent husband and then denied her the only happiness she had ever known. What could she take from the men who had tried to take everything from her? With her brothers gone, the Marquise would

inherit her father's vast estate. She could take their fortunes. But the Marquise thought, she could also take their lives. And so the Marquise and San Croix set to work mixing their own variation on the poison aquato fauna, which was already famous in the back alleys of Europe, among women who wanted to hasten their widowhood. All the while, the pair behaved pious as saints, Sancroix with his church going in confessions, and the Marquise de Brinvilliers with her regular hospital visits. And the Marquise had also been transformed into a dutiful daughter. Three years after San Croix had been sent to prison, the Marquis Keese's father visited Paris. His daughter called on him, begging for his forgiveness for her youthful

scandal, and assuring him that she had all but forgotten his letter to the king. The two became so close that when her father began to feel ill and decided to retire to his country estate for some clean air, he invited his daughter to come be at his bedside. His mood lifted as soon as she arrived, and he jokingly chastised her for not coming sooner. But then her father's condition deteriorated. It was slow at first, and then suddenly quicker. He called upon the best doctors, but in the end it was of no use. It was his daughter, the Marquise de Brinvilliers,

cooing at his bedside and wiping his forehead with a wet cloth to soothe him in his final moments before he died. And a similar fate befell the marquis de Brinvilleier, Marquise's two brothers. Strangely, their health began to worsen soon after they hired a servant on their sister's recommendation. She assured them that there was absolutely no servant in Paris more loyal. And there wasn't.

The servant filled their wine glasses with the dedication and precision of a man at the top of his profession. And as they became sicker, he never left their sides. He was at their bedside's day and night. as they died, first one and then the other. The poisons had been masterfully brewed, slow acting and subtle, so that even to a well-trained eye it seemed as though the victims had merely taken ill and died of natural causes. Brinvillier had become an expert. She had tested the doses dutifully. people didn't tend to pay attention to the noble woman making a charitable visit to a hospital,

and people paid even less attention to the impoverished sick when they got even sicker. Who could have noticed the way that the patients all seemed to take a turn for the worse after the Marquise de Brinvillier had come by to drop off one of her little treats? You see, it took years of trial and error to perfect the dosage of her poisons. but fortunately for the Marquise, she had found the perfect test subjects. For a decade, the Marquise de Brinvillier lived a quiet life. Her affair with San Croix had dampened, as affairs are wont to do in the aftermath of homicide, and the two drifted out of touch, although Brinvillier continued to pay for San Croix's laboratory,

where he continued his experiments with poisons. That's where San Croix was found dead. in 1672, collapsed on the floor of his laboratory, next to the broken fragments of the glass mask that had been meant to protect him from the deadly fumes with which he was working. Sankroy was no longer content with poisons made from liquid or powder. He was chasing the idea that an item could be so poisonous that merely touching it would kill someone. There were rumors that the elder brother of Charles the 7th had died after wiping his face with a poison napkin at a tennis match, and that Catherine de Medici had designed gloves that would kill the wearer.

As Sancroix worked on his own formula, his glass mask protected him from the fumes. At least it had until it fell off and broke. San Croix died heavily in debt. Like the Marquise de Brunvilliers's long-disappeared husband, her former lover was addicted to the rush of gambling. When the financiers examined his home, claiming whatever looked like it could be sold, they came across a strange locked box. It was 18 inches long, seemed to be wrapped in red-died leather, and there was a letter across the top. I very humbly beg those persons in whose hands this casket may fall into, to be good enough to return to Madame the Marquise de Brunvilliers,

as all that it contains concerns her alone, and in case she should have pre-deceased me, everything in it is to be burnt without examination. But unable to resist temptation, the magistrate pried open the lid and peeked inside. When word reached the Marquise de Brunvillier that St. Croix was dead and that the police had found in his possession a small red, casket. The Marquise de Brunvilleier fled the country. With whatever money she could gather in a few

hours, Brinvilleers escaped to London, then to Holland, and finally to Antwerp, where she found refuge in a convent. She lived in exile for almost three years, but the French police had not stopped looking for her. Inside that little red casket, the police had found tiny vials containing a white powder that when thrown on a fire made it burn blue. Arsenic. Also inside the casket, perfectly preserved, were letters detailing the exact formula for poison that the Marquise and her lover had spent years concocting. Letters written in the clean, bold, firm handwriting of the Marquise de Brinville. She was found, finally, in that nunnery in Antwerp, by a magistrate who disguised himself as a priest.

As soon as she was caught, she broke a glass and tried to swallow the pieces to end her life. When they no longer allowed her glass, she tried to swallow a pin. But, unable to kill herself, the Marquise de Brinvilliers was brought to Paris to be tortured into confession. Her body was bent backwards across a wooden beam with her arms and legs chained to the floor. A funnel was shoved into her mouth, and the tortued. torturers forced down a full gallon of water. You're killing me, Brunvilliers sputtered when the gallon was finished. They demanded that she name her accomplices.

She claimed that she had none left. The torture continued. The Marquise de Brinvilleier was carried off to her execution in a cart meant for livestock. Her hair was still brown and extraordinarily thick. Her eyes were blue. her skin was bone white and almost translucent and everyone could see her from the back of the cart when she reached the execution platform

a rough knife sheared off her hair to give the blade a clear path to her neck she was facing the sen when the executioner lowered a mask over her eyes the marquise began to pray but the axe cut her off mid-sentence Usually after executions, the corpses were strict, but the Marquis's body remained clothed. A distant relative had bribed someone or another to preserve her dignity or the reputation of their family in that one, small, final way. The corpse, still fully clothed, was placed on a pyre and burned to ash. History, especially modern history, tends to have a problem with glamorized,

female murderesses. Allow me to make it clear that I think the Marquise is a villain, but perhaps you'll also allow me to tell you the story, maybe apocry, of what supposedly happened when the magistrate had finally caught her in that nunnery, and the Marquise immediately tried to swallow glass. You wretch, the policeman shouted at her, you want to kill yourself, you already poisoned your father and your brothers. And the Marquise responded with a Bonneau so beautifully modern, it seems impossible to believe, like it should be the final line in a Billy Wilder film. Supposedly, the magistrate confronted her with her murders, and the Marquise looked back at him, and she said, we all have our bad moments. That's the end of the Marquise de Brinvilliers' life,

but it's not the end of the story. Keep listening after a brief ad break to hear how her case shook the French aristocracy to its core. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Wodom. My next guest, you know from Step Brothers Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network. It's Will Ferrell. Woo-woo, whoo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot. I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings. I'm working my way up through, and I know it's a place that come look for up-and-coming talent.

He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet. Yeah. He goes, but there's so much luck involved. And he's like, just give it a shot. He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you. You're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore. It's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.

It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat. Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right. It wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to thanks, Dad, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Iris Palmer and my new podcast is called Against All Od.

exactly what the show is about, doing whatever it takes to be thoughts. Get ready to hear from some of your favorite entrepreneurs and entertainers as they share stories about defying expectations, overcoming barriers, and breaking generational patterns. I'm talking to people like award-winning actress, producer, and director, Eva Langoria. I think I had like $200 in my savings account, and my mom goes, what are you going to do? And I was like, I'll figure it out. We got a one-bedroom apartment for like $400 a month, and we all could not afford. I was like, how am I going to make $100 a month?

I'm opening up like I've never before. For those of you who think you know me from what you've seen on social media, get ready to see a whole new side of me. Listen to Against All Odds with Iris Palmer as part of the MyCultura podcast network, available on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Enthrolling as the Marquise de Brinvilliers murders and gruesome as her torture and execution were, her life was nothing compared to the chaos

that was about to hit the French court of Louis XIV. Because while Brinvillee was being tortured, she didn't give up the names of any co-conspirators, but she did say something that left law enforcement reeling. Between bouts of water torture while choking on the funnel they pulled from her mouth, Brinvillee managed to say something truly chilling.

So many of us are doing it, she remarked. but only I get caught. The terrifying thing was, she was right. The affair of the poisons, as this frenzy of enforcement would come to be known, led to 319 arrests and 36 individuals sentenced to death. Poisoning, especially among the upper class, had become modus operandi for eliminating enemies and rival heirs. Self-styled witches ran back-alley apothecaries,

where they made tonics and powders and potions to sell to women willing to pay any price. One such woman, it seemed, was Madame de Montespan, the official mistress of King Louis XIV. It isn't known for sure if Montespa bought poisons, although there are rumors that she attempted to do in the newer, younger women that threatened to steal King Louis' attention away. What we do know is Madame de Montespa did almost. everything else in her power to make sure that the king's attention didn't leave her.

After all, losing her position as official mistress meant losing everything in the world. Montespas snuck love potions into the king's food and wine, drops of menstrual blood and sperm, iron filings, and the iridescent green wings of the Spanish fly beetles ground into fine powder. And, according to the most damning rumors against her, She engaged in black mass. They say she watched a baby butchered before her in a dim palace basement, and then extended her tongue to accept a communion waper dotted with the dead infant's blood. When the affair of the poisons reached Madame de Montespan,

Louis XIV, cooled down proceedings. He spared her a criminal investigation, but from that point on, her position diminished, then dwindled until she was left with nothing. For most of recorded history, women have been excluded from overt mainstream political participation. They're shoved into drawing rooms and forced to steal whatever shreds of power they can with restrained smiles and unrestrained cunning.

And it's no secret that people become desperate when they have no control, when they're spectators to their own lives, seeing themselves becoming boxed in like human prey. For the cost of a small vial of powder and her soul, a woman could become the architect of her own life, or at least she could try to be, temporarily. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Aaron Manky.

The show is written and hosted by Dana Schwartz and produced by Aaron Manky, Matt Frederick, Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more about the show over at noblebloodtales.com. For more podcasts from IHeartRadio, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What's up, everyone? I'm Ago Vodom.

My next guest, it's Will Ferrell. Woo, woo, woo, woo, woo. My dad gave me the best advice ever. He goes, just give it a shot. But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall, and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit. If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration. It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.

Just hang in there. Yeah, it would not be. Right, it wouldn't be that. There's a lot of luck. Listen to Thanks Dad on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.