drops by rubbing arsenic into the broken joints of a hog just killed and then collecting the juice. Tofana took refuge in a convent and lived for some twenty years after her condemnation. A letter from the English Secretary of State to the Commissioners of Customs, dated July 29, 1717, is on record, cautioning them against admitting a liqueur called Aqua Tufania from Italy, as accounts of its dangerous character had been received from the British envoys at Naples and Genoa.
The Chambre Ardente.
After the execution of the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, secret poisoning, far from being suppressed, appears to have become almost fashionable. The Government at least pretended to believe in wide-spread conspiracies. It may have been a political trick, as has been alleged, to get rid of some inconvenient opponents; but, however this may have been, a special commission was appointed by the French Government to inquire into the truth of certain rumours, and this commission acquired the title of the Chambre de Poisons, or Chambre Ardente. Louis XIV consented to the institution of this special court on learning that the notorious Ste. Croix, the coadjutor of Mme. de Brinvilliers, had at one time nearly secured the position of maître d'hôtel in his palace at Versailles. It principally concerned itself with the revelations made by two women who called themselves La Voisin and La Vigoureux, who with an unfrocked priest, who had assumed the name of Le Sage, had carried on a fortune-telling business of enormous extent in the city. They claimed the power of exhibiting the devil to their clients, and it was charged against them
