for their cause, that the controversial papers are not real confessions, but rather only notes to be used for a confession.
“If we also admit that this statement is really valid; yet, even such a note may also not be used as a legal proof. For, by doing so, the confessing person would also, often, find himself in the namely danger. The Church ordered that such confessing person should recognize all his sins; as his memory is weak, he must help himself by putting, little by little, in writing the content of his confession. A process which the confessor himself very often uses! And should it be used against him afterwards? All the theologists have also decided unanimously that neither spiritual, nor worldly judges may make distinctions in consideration of the content which a sinner recognized, that they should exclude rather more the same papers from the legal acts, and should refrain from hearing an accused about them, or ask proofs about the details contained in them.
Without getting ourselves, here, into a broad enumeration of all the writers who have written over this subject, we invoke only what the famous canonist Dominicus Scoto, Charles the Fifth's confessor, said about it: “A certain man,” he says, “lost a paper on which he has written his crimes. This paper fell into the hands of a spiritual judge who, for that reason, filed a legal investigation against him and wanted to hear witnesses about such crimes. But he would be prevented by his superiors to use this irregular procedure to punish someone, and because of the law,“ adds this writer “which states that confession is such a sacred matter that everything leading to the disclosure of the same confession and has a relation to it, must remain buried in the deepest and inviolable silence.” And what he, here, in consideration of the spiritual judges says, should also be applied, according to his instruction, to the worldly ones.
However, the papers of which we talk about here, in fact, are not mere notes drafted by Lady Brinvillier, for her confession afterwards, but rather it is a true confession, written down in the confidence that it should be made known only to God or his servant. This whole incident with these letters shows that it is a true and real confession. It begins with the words: “I recognize before God and you, my honourable father.” The Marquess speaks, in that respect, only with God and her confessor who replaces God, and consequently, as her confession is meant to God alone, hence, God alone should know about it, and no human being has the right to investigate about her confession. The Church itself must be the Marquess' guarantee for keeping the secrecy of this confession, for “the Church has sacredly promised,” as the Cardinal Perron says, “to secure in its midst the secrets of its repenting children's heart, and to preserve their honour and life, that all their sins should remain faithfully and inviolably kept silent; and no one can do anything against it without, at the same time, trespassing all the divine and human rights.
“It is also neither the anointed person of the priest, nor his sacred office of giving the absolution, which contains the fundamental of this secrecy; it is rather more certain that the priest is also obliged to discretion, even if he should find it necessary to deny absolution to the confessing person, and that this duty also binds, in equal manner, any person who is not a priest and either intentionally, when he sits on a confessing chair to hear the dispositions of another person, or fortuitously, when he finds himself in the proximity of a confessional chair, or in case of necessity when a priest is not available, has taken the place of the confessor. Rather, his indissoluble duty to discretion comes uniquely and solely from the essence of confession itself.
“But people may argue that it is out of question to keep secret such writings of the Marquess; whether it is a confession or not, for people already know, indeed, what it contained. This objection is, however, already lifted up by the above demonstrated grounds. It is proven that not only a trial should never be based upon the same recognition, but rather such recognition may also never be used in an already pending trial as proof; and hence, above all, all this legal procedure, according to the same principle, should be considered null and void.
“Apart from these general grounds which show irrefutably the negligence in all the legal procedures based merely upon information obtained from a confession, one even finds in the confession of the Marquess herself a particular detail which sheds an even more enlightening ray about the uselessness of the same confession. Necessitated to flee from her fatherland where embittered enemies have sworn to bring her on the gallows; wandering around in a foreign country, without any assistance, without any advisor, covered with shame of her revealed love relationships with the most shameful of all human beings to all the world; she would, finally, experience a violent fever which confused her mind and put her in a fantasizing and incoherent condition when the sick person accepts the images of her shaken mind as truths, and very often describes acts which she has never once committed, or in which she did not have the least share. This condition is always the consequence of persecution through unfair images of terror and of presentation of horrible and undeserved punishments to a fearful imagination.
This detail proves not, however, that this writing is not a true confession. The whole content of the same letters is dedicated to God, because the beginning of the letter told us immediately that the whole recognition is put before God. To secure her the protection of inviolable secrecy, it is enough that she had the intention of asking for a general absolution which the confessor can also not refuse to the sick person in a state of incoherence, because such confusions are not to be considered as enduring error, but rather as temporary assaults during which lighter moments can also happen. Indeed, a prayer which a human being directs in such condition to God, is a true prayer and not seldom finds His hearing.
“By the way, people can judge from all these details that Lady Brinvillier, as she wrote in these letters, really had a violent fever which deprived her of the free use of her reason. In the state of torments in which her heated blood put her, she could hardly keep the feather. The letters are so clumsy that people cannot recognize her handwriting; and the words can hardly be read. The acknowledgments contained in these letters are proved false. She accused herself of having killed her father who has died calmly in the year 1666.”
These were the precise grounds with which Mister Nivelle defended the Marquess. But the corpus delicti have been perfectly proven. The Marquess' two brothers have really been poisoned, as proven by the report of a doctor, two nurses and a pharmacist. However, that Saint Croix and the Marquess, through the help of LaChaussée, have completed the two murders, is distinctively made clear by the gathered testimonies; and the Marquess' answers contained an even stronger motive against her. We also communicate here the answers from the affidavit itself:
“As cause of her fleeing from France, she gives a certain embarrassment which she has had with her sister in law. The confession which people found among the papers in her coffer, was written when she was in a totally foreign country, abandoned by all her relatives and constrained to the most extreme necessity, so as to resort to borrowing a Thaler; her mind was so devastated that she did not know what she was doing, or what she was writing. Regarding the first paragraph of her confession in which she has put fire to a house, as well as on the questions about six other paragraphs of the same confession, she always answered bluntly that she has not done any of these acts, and if she has written them, hence, it is only due to the confusion in her mind. On the question whether she has poisoned her father and her two brothers or not, she answered nothing further than not knowing anything about these instances.
On the question whether she intended to poison her sister or not, which was grounded upon her sister expressing an opinion stating she will not live long any more, she answered that this presumption only relied upon the sickly condition with which her sister already then has been tormented, and of which she still suffers now. She says further that she has forgotten the time when she has written her confession, and confessed that she has left France on her relatives' advice. On the question why her relatives has given her this advice, she replied: “Because of the incident with her brothers”. She conceded that she has met again with Saint Croix after his liberation from Bastille. On the question whether Saint Croix has convinced her to kill her father or not, she answered that she can not remember such instance; equally little remembers she that Saint Croix has given her powder and other spices, and that he has said to her, then, that he knew the means to make her rich.
Eight letters would be presented to her, and she would be asked to whom she has written them. She answered that she cannot remember to whom. About