FROM CONVENT TO STAKE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 November 1940, Page 6

FROM CONVENT TO STAKE

NOTORIOUS WOMAN'S FATE. They put her to death in 1676, and she deserved it. She was the Marquise de Brinvilles. Born in 1632, she was the daughter of a a French municipal lieutenant, and everyone knew her as Marguerite. She was married at 19, but she soon left her husband, living with a notor- | ious criminal, Sainte Croix. This scoundrel had long practised the gentle art of poisoning, and he and his lover soon set out on a career of crime almost without parallel. One shudders to think of it. With incredible callousness and awful sangfroid. they selected victims, experimented with arsenic by administering it to patients in hospital, and having studied its effects and won singular proficiency in the art of getting rid of people without any blame attaching to themselves, they extended their operations with remarkable success. In order that Marguerite might inherit the vast property of her people, they quietly poisoned her father and two brothers, no suspicion resting on theb conspirators.

One day Sainte Croix was busy concocting a poison when the mask fell from his face, and the fumes overpowered him. His books coming to light, his own and Marguerite’s crimes wore revealed. She fled to a convent but a police officer disguised as an abbe succeeded in drawing her from her hiding place. Dragged to Paris, she confessed all. and after being horribly tortured, she was executed while tile crowd cheered.