L'avvelenatrice Quotes

“Obsequies, madame, are for those who survive, not for the dead.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers

“Did you not hear what I said, sir? I told you there was fire in my sentence. And though it is only after death that my body is to be burnt, it will always be a terrible disgrace on my memory. I am saved the pain of being burnt alive, and thus, perhaps, saved from a death of despair, but the shamefulness is the same, and it is that I think of.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers

“The judges then filed out, disclosing as they did so the various apparatus of the question. The marquise firmly gazed upon the racks and ghastly rings, on which so many had been stretched crying and screaming. She noticed the three buckets of water”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers

“The marquise heard her sentence without showing any sign of fear or weakness. When it was finished, she said to the registrar, “Will you, sir, be so kind as to read it again? I had not expected the tumbril, and I was so much struck by that that I lost the thread of what followed.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers

“I should not expect to be saved before my stains have been purified by fire, without suffering the penalty that my sins have deserved. But I have been told that the flames of purgatory where souls are burned for a time are just the same as the flames of hell where those who are damned burn through all eternity tell me, then, how can a soul awaking in purgatory at the moment of separation from this body be sure that she is not really in hell? how can she know that the flames that burn her and consume not will some day cease? For the torment she suffers is like that of the damned, and the flames wherewith she is burned are even as the flames of hell. This I would fain know, that at this awful moment I may feel no doubt, that I may know for certain whether I dare hope or must despair.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers

“Sir, you are punctual, and I cannot complain that you have broken your promise; but oh, how the time has dragged, and how long it has seemed before the clock struck six!”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers

“Madame,” said the doctor, “they are not your enemies, but you are the enemy of the human race: nobody can think without, horror of your crimes.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers

“that he perceived that people said the truth and that she had poisoned all her family; to which she replied, that if she had, it was only through following bad advice, and that one could not always be good.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers

“the marquise had often said that there are means to get rid of people one dislikes, and they can easily be put an end to in a bowl of soup.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers

“The poison employed by Sainte-Croix has been tried in all the ways, and can defy every experiment. This poison floats in water, it is the superior, and the water obeys it; it escapes in the trial by fire, leaving behind only innocent deposits; in animals it is so skilfully concealed that no one could detect it; all parts of the animal remain healthy and active; even while it is spreading the cause of death, this artificial poison leaves behind the marks and appearance of life.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers

“It was in this room and at the apothecary Glazer’s that Sainte-Croix made his experiments; but in accordance with poetical justice, the manipulation of the poisons proved fatal to the workers themselves. The apothecary fell ill and died; Martin was attacked by fearful sickness, which brought, him to death’s door. Sainte-Croix was unwell, and could not even go out, though he did not know what was the matter.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers

“Her sobs and tears were so vehement that her brothers’ grief seemed cold beside hers. Nobody suspected a crime, so no autopsy was held; the tomb was closed, and not the slightest suspicion had approached her.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers

“Sainte-Croix, a strange mixture of qualities good and evil, had reached the supreme crisis of his life, when the powers of darkness or of light were to prevail. Maybe, if he had met some angelic soul at this point, he would have been led to God; he encountered a demon, who conducted him to Satan.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers

“he cursed his fellow-man who had snatched him from his joyous life to plunge him into a dungeon; he cursed his God who had let this happen; he cried aloud to whatever powers might be that could grant him revenge and liberty.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers

“This is all very well, sir,” he said to the officer, “but this warrant contains no other name than mine, and so you have no right to expose thus to the public gaze the lady with whom I was travelling when you arrested me. I must beg of you to order your assistants to allow this carriage to drive on; then take me where you please, for I am ready to go with you.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers

“The struggle had been going on same time, when suddenly one of the doors violently pushed open, and a young officer in the uniform of a cavalry captain jumped down, shutting the door as he did so though not too quickly for the nearest spectators to perceive a woman sitting at the back of the carriage. She was wrapped in cloak and veil, and judging by the precautions she, had taken to hide her face from every eye, she must have had her reasons for avoiding recognition.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Marquise de Brinvilliers