On May 17, 1667, a sudden indisposition kept the Marquise de Gange confined to her bed. Her husband had departed once more for Avignon; she remained at the château with her two brothers-in-law, the Abbé and the Chevalier. This isolation was, according to Champagnac’s narrative, to open the sequence of violence that endured until her death nineteen days later.
Diane de Joannis, born in 1635, was the only daughter of the Marquis de Roussans. Her first marriage was contracted before she had reached the age of thirteen: her parents bestowed her upon the Marquis de Castellane, an Avignon nobleman. At the court of Louis XIV, she was remarked for her beauty and took part in the King’s ballets. She was dubbed the “Belle Provençale.” Mignard painted her portrait; Queen Christina of Sweden addressed letters to her which Champagnac compares to those of an impassioned lover.
Eight years of marriage had elapsed when Castellane perished in a shipwreck off Genoa. The young widow withdrew from the court and retired to Avignon, where she lived for three years. Then, prevailed upon by her friends, she wed Charles de Latude, who subsequently assumed the title of Marquis de Gange. The early years were, according to the chronicle, happy ones. Two children, a boy and a girl, were born of this union. The spouses, little drawn to the pleasures of the world, seemed above all to seek each other’s company.
This accord dissolved. Latude, who was two years younger than his wife, grew weary of their domestic life and returned to that society he had hitherto avoided. Neglected, the Marquise likewise reappeared in the world. She was surrounded by admirers; Champagnac affirms that her conduct was above reproach, despite the calumnies circulating about her. The Marquis, he writes, feigned belief in these rumors and employed them to justify his own excesses, multiplying his scenes of jealousy.
Latude’s two brothers, an abbé and a chevalier, came to dwell in his house. The chronicle attributes to them both an illicit passion for their sister-in-law. The Abbé, a man of great influence over his brother according to this portrait, acquired absolute authority within the household. He began by persuading the Marquis to restore his trust in his wife; then, attributing this reconciliation to his own intercession, he declared his passion to her. The Marquise did not reciprocate his sentiments. The Chevalier, whom the narrative portrays as subservient to the Abbé’s will, was then permitted to attempt her seduction in his turn. He met with equal failure.
The compact concluded between the two men, as reported by Champagnac, stipulated that the Abbé should resume his advances following his brother’s failure. Yet he altered his design: rather than appeasing the Marquis, he rekindled his jealousy and directed it against his wife. He is then said to have threatened the Marquise, intimating that he held her fate in his hands should she refuse to yield to his desires. She refused. The chronicle marks this refusal as the moment the Abbé resolved upon her destruction.
A first attempt is alleged to have taken place several days later. By the Abbé’s order, a dish of cream containing arsenic was served to the Marquise. The dose proved too weak, or she ate too little of it to endanger her life; she was nevertheless taken violently ill. This alarm did not put an end to the design. The death of her grandfather, M. de Nochères, furthermore altered the stakes: he bequeathed her his entire estate, with full liberty of disposition. Her husband and brothers-in-law thereupon redoubled their attentions, which Champagnac interprets as an endeavor to secure her fortune.
The Marquise designated her mother as her heir, with the obligation to transmit the estate to one of her children. Before the Vice-Legate of Avignon, she formally protested in advance against any will she might subsequently execute. Two years later, at her husband’s entreaty, she undertook a journey to the estate of Gange. Her farewells to her friends were so poignant that, following the catastrophe, some discerned in them a premonition. She arrived in the company of her husband and brothers-in-law, who overwhelmed her with care. But Latude soon returned to Avignon upon business which Champagnac describes as real or feigned; she was left alone with her brothers-in-law.
The Abbé pressed her to revoke her Avignon testament and name her husband as heir. She ultimately yielded. The Vice-Legate subsequently refused to register the new instrument by reason of the prior protestation. In the chronicler’s view, the succession supplied the brothers and the husband with an additional motive to act against her. He also describes an exercise of undue influence during which the Marquise was subjected to covert solicitations and persecutions.
On May 17, ailing and bedridden, she requested a purgative potion. A dark, thick draught was brought to her, presented as having been compounded upon the prescription of a local physician; she refused to drink it, taking instead the pills she was accustomed to employ. Neighboring women came to visit her. Having escorted them out, the Abbé returned armed with a pistol and bearing a glass of poison. The Chevalier followed him, sword drawn. The Abbé demanded that she choose between fire, steel, or poison, according to the words recorded in the chronicle.
The Marquise took the glass. While she swallowed its contents, her brother-in-law threatened her with the point of his sword and the Abbé held his weapon to her throat. She left the thickest dregs at the bottom of the glass, the residue of which the Chevalier gathered up, and which she held in her mouth before casting it into the bedsheets. She begged to receive a confessor. The two men withdrew, bolted the door, and sent for the vicar Perrette, whom Champagnac depicts as their accomplice.
The Marquise hastily wrapped herself in a skirt, then reached a window situated some twenty-two feet from the ground. She was on the verge of leaping when Perrette entered and seized her by the dress. The fabric tore; she fell into the courtyard. The vicar had altered the trajectory of her fall by holding her back, and she landed upon her feet, according to the chronicle. He then hurled a large earthen water pitcher at her, but missed. She induced vomiting by thrusting the tip of her tress down her throat, and then sought to escape. Every outlet being secured, a groom conducted her through the stables and entrusted her to the first women he encountered.
Perrette alerted the brothers. They pursued the Marquise, crying out that she was mad. The Chevalier overtook her near the house of an inhabitant and shut himself inside with her; the Abbé stood sentinel at the door, pistol in hand, to drive off any who approached. Women within brought her a glass of water. The Chevalier shattered it with a blow against his sister-in-law’s teeth, all the while maintaining that she was out of her senses. When the Marquise asked to remain alone with him, the onlookers left the room. Her supplications did not deter him. He struck her twice in the breast with his sword, then pursued her and inflicted five further wounds, leaving a portion of the blade lodged in her shoulder.
Believing her dead, the Chevalier rejoined the Abbé. Women hastened to the scene and summoned a surgeon. The Abbé then returned, attempted to press his pistol against the victim’s breast, struck a woman who deflected the weapon, and sought to use the pistol as a club. Those present fell upon him and drove him away. The two brothers fled into the dark. The Marquise still clung to life; local notables came to her bedside, and the magistrates set out in pursuit of the fugitives.
Latude learned in Avignon of the assault upon his wife, yet set out only on the following day. He railed against his brothers, but initiated no proceedings against them. Upon his return to the Marquise, he first demanded that she revoke the protestation executed before the Vice-Legate, which barred the probate of her final will. Champagnac construes these acts as badges of complicity, yet notes that the evidence against the Marquis was not deemed sufficient to visit upon him the same penalty as that inflicted upon his brothers.
After nineteen days of agony, the Marquise expired, praying for her murderers and beseeching her son never to seek vengeance. Her mother lodged a formal complaint. On August 21, 1667, the Parlement of Toulouse condemned the Abbé and the Chevalier to be broken alive on the wheel, Perrette to the galleys for life, and the Marquis to perpetual banishment. The two brothers eluded the execution of the sentence: the Chevalier was slain at the siege of Candia after entering the Venetian service; the Abbé reached Holland. Perrette died on the road while attached to the chain-gang. The Marquis was recalled by his son, but subsequently sought to seduce his daughter-in-law; he was once again forced to quit the château, ending his days in a small town of the Comtat Venaissin.