Page:Hoffmann's Strange Stories - Hoffman - 1855.djvu/303

 might be rid of St. Croix and his accomplices, yet their art had not disappeared along with them. Like an invisible demon, the same horrid guilt of assassination continued to make its way even into the bosom of families, breaking through the most confidential circles that love and friendship could frame. He who had been to-day in the utmost bloom of health, might be found to-morrow tottering about in the most wretched state of decline; and no skill of the physician could rescue such victims from a certain death. Riches, a comfortable place in the legislature, a young and handsome wife—any such advantages were sufficient to direct against their possessors the relentless malice of these invisible assassins. Cruel distrust and suspicion dissolved the most sacred ties among relations. Husband and wife, father and son, sister and brother, were alienated by the terror which they felt one of another. At the social banquet, food and wine often remained untouched, while, instead of indulging in innocent mirth, the party, with pale and confused looks, were trying to find out the concealed murderer. At length fathers of families might be seen timidly purchasing provisions in remote districts, and dressing the food thus obtained, in some neighboring boutique, fearing the treachery that might lurk under their own roofs. Yet in many instances all these precautions were used in vain.

The king, in order as much as possible to stem this torrent of iniquity, established a peculiar court of justice, to which he gave exclusively the commission to search into, and punish these crimes. This was the institution named the Chambre Ardente, which held its sittings under the Bastile, and of which la Regnie was the president. For a considerable time, this man's endeavors, zealously as they were carried on, proved in vain; it was reserved for the cunning Desgrais to trace out the guilty, even in the most obscure hiding places. In the Faubourg de St. Germain, there lived an old woman named la Voisin, who employed herself in conjuration and fortune-telling, and who, with the help of two confederates, le Sage and la Vigoureux, had been able to excite the fear and as-