Prince Eugene | Page 7

was not deceived. Olympia de Soissons was a handsome
woman, and with so much comeliness, such ready wit, and such
unrivalled powers of conversation, she might gird up her loins to do
battle with her rivals. Was not Madame de Maintenon her elder by
three years? And as for De Montespan, was she not wasting away into
an old woman? If they had found it possible to win the heart of this
sensual Louis, why not she? This heart had once been all her own, and
why should not she, who combined the beauty of one mistress with the
shrewdness of the other, dispossess them both, and re-enter into
possession of her old domains?
She smiled again, and saw how well her smiles became her. "Yes," said
she to herself, "yes, I will recall this truant merlin, and he shall return to
perch upon the hand he used to love! I will be mistress of his heart and
mistress of his realms. She foretold it all, and gave me the charm
wherewith to work the spell."
But as she gave utterance to these last words, her lips began to quiver,
and her fine features were distorted by some sudden pain. She had just
called to mind the fearful intelligence of La Voisin's arrest.
"Great God! If my letters should have been found among her papers!
What, oh what would be MY fate?"
She shuddered--and in place of the triumphant vision of a heart
recaptured, a monarch at her feet, there arose the fearful spectacle of an
execution which, four years before, she had witnessed at the bloody
Place de Greve. Once more she saw the square, black with a mass of
human beings, who, jeering, shouting, and cursing, moved hither and

thither like the waves of a turbulent ocean; at every window that looked
out upon the place, she saw gayly-dressed ladies who peered anxiously
out to catch a glimpse of one gloomy object that loomed darkly up
from its centre. She saw the crowd give way and part, as, keeping pace
with the dull sound of a muffled drum, a sad procession entered upon
the scene. At its head marched a battalion of soldiers, and behind them,
seated in the felon's cart, came a pale, beautiful woman, who ever and
anon pressed to her quivering lips the crucifix held out to her by a
priest--that last link of sympathy between the convict and his
fellow-creatures. At the criminal's side, in symbolic robes of
sanguinary red, was the executioner that was to sever this slender tie,
and wrench the spirit from the body to whose guardianship God had
committed it on earth. Silently the hideous cortege moved on, while the
crowd fell back to let it pass, until the scaffold came to view. How
joyously the sun's rays seemed to play around the glittering axe that
was to end a career of secret crime! How eagerly the high-born dames
bend forward to catch sight of the criminal, as, leaning on the arm of
the priest, she tottered to her doom! Olympia remembered only too well
the moment when the drum ceased its "discordant sound," and when
the silence was so oppressive that the low voice of the condemned was
heard uttering her last prayer. She knelt beside the block--a circle of
light was described upon the air--and the head fell upon the
blood-besprinkled sand.
The Countess de Soissons sickened as she remembered that the woman
whom she had seen executed was one of high position, no less a
personage than the beautiful and fascinating Marquise de Brinvilliers.
Neither her rank, her charms, nor the strenuous efforts of her powerful
friends, had been adequate to save her from the headsman's axe. She
had been convicted of poisoning, and had shared the fate of other
malefactors of less repute. Her confidante La Voisin had been arrested
at the time, but as nothing proved her to have been an accomplice of
her former mistress she had escaped conviction.
Something new with regard to the fortune-teller must have transpired,
for Louvois had considered her arrest as an ill-omen for the Countess
de Soissons. Not only for Olympia, however, was the arrest of

Catherine a calamity, for she was the trusty counsellor of many a noble
lady who, before suspicion had sullied her name, had been the dear and
intimate associate of the Marquise de Brinvilliers.
The countess had turned away from the contemplation of her mellow
charms, and was on her way to her boudoir. She bolted the door within,
and, crossing the room, mounted a chair that stood by the side of a tall
mirror set in a thick gilt frame. She touched a spring, when the mirror
glided noiselessly aside, revealing a dark recess within the wall.
Olympia slipped through the opening, which closed