and fickle; unstable, paying no attention if the same thing were said several times over.  For this reason,” continued the doctor, “I was obliged to alter what I had to say from time to time, keeping her but a short time to one subject, to which, however, I would return later, giving the matter a new appearance and disguising it a little.  She spoke little and well, with no sign of learning and no affectation, always, mistress of herself, always composed and saying just what she intended to say.  No one would have supposed from her face or from her conversation that she was so wicked as she must have been, judging by her public avowal of the parricide.  It is surprising, therefore—­and one must bow down before the judgment of God when He leaves mankind to himself—­that a mind evidently of some grandeur, professing fearlessness in the most untoward and unexpected events, an immovable firmness and a resolution to await and to endure death if so it must be, should yet be so criminal as she was proved to be by the parricide to which she confessed before her judges.  She had nothing in her face that would indicate such evil.  She had very abundant chestnut hair, a rounded, well-shaped face, blue eyes very pretty and gentle, extraordinarily white skin, good nose, and no disagreeable feature.  Still, there was nothing unusually attractive in the face:  already she was a little wrinkled, and looked older than her age.  Something made me ask at our first interview how old she was.  ‘Monsieur,’ she said, ’if I were to live till Sainte-Madeleine’s day I should be forty-six.  On her day I came into the world, and I bear her name.  I was christened Marie-Madeleine.  But near to the day as we now are, I shall not live so long:  I must end to-day, or at latest to-morrow, and it will be a favour to give me the one day.  For this kindness I rely on your word.’  Anyone would have thought she was quite forty-eight.  Though her face as a rule looked so gentle, whenever an unhappy thought crossed her mind she showed it by a contortion that frightened one at first, and from time to time I saw her face twitching with anger, scorn, or ill-will.  I forgot to say that she was very little and thin.  Such is, roughly given, a description of her body and mind, which I very soon came to know, taking pains from the first to observe her, so as to lose no time in acting on what I discovered.”

As she was giving a first brief sketch of her life to her confessor, the marquise remembered that he had not yet said mass, and reminded him herself that it was time to do so, pointing out to him the chapel of the Conciergerie.  She begged him to say a mass for her and in honour of Our Lady, so that she might gain the intercession of the Virgin at the throne of God.  The Virgin she had always taken for her patron saint, and in the midst of her crimes and disorderly life had never ceased in her peculiar devotion.  As she could not go with the priest, she promised to be with him at least in the spirit.  He left