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marquis de Brinvilliers, who had left France to avoid his creditors, made no effort to terminate them, M. d'Aubray secured the arrest of Sainte-Croix on a lettre de cachet. For a year Sainte-Croix remained a prisoner in the Bastille, where he is popularly supposed to have acquired a knowledge of poisons from his fellow-prisoner, the Italian poisoner Exili. When he left the Bastille, he plotted with his willing mistress his revenge upon her father. She cheerfully undertook to experiment with the poisons which Sainte-Croix, possibly with the help of a chemist, Christopher Glaser, prepared, and found subjects ready to hand in the poor who sought her charity, and the sick whom she visited in the hospitals. Meanwhile Sainte-Croix, completely ruined financially, enlarged his original idea, and determined that not only M. Dreux d'Aubray but also the latter's two sons and other daughter should be poisoned, so that the marquise de Brinvilliers and himself might come into possession of the large family fortune. In February 1666, satisfied with the efficiency of Sainte-Croix's preparations and with the ease with which they could be administered without detection, the marquise poisoned her father, and in 1670, with the connivance of their valet La Chauss�e, her two brothers. A post-mortem examination suggested the real cause of death, but no suspicion was directed to the murderers. Before any attempt could be made on the life of Mlle Th�res� d'Aubray, Sainte-Croix suddenly died. As he left no heirs the police were called in, and discovered among his belongings documents seriously incriminating the marquise and La Chauss�e. The latter was arrested, tortured into a complete confession, and broken alive on the wheel (1673), but the marquise escaped, taking refuge first probably in England, then in Germany, and finally in a convent at Li�ge, whence she was decoyed by a police emissary disguised as a priest. A full account of her life and crimes was found among her papers. Her attempt to commit suicide was frustrated, and she was taken to Paris, where she was beheaded and her body burned on the 16th of July 1676.

See G. Roullier, La Marquise de Brinvilliers (Paris, 1883); Toiseleur, Trois �nigmes historiques (Paris, 1882).

BRIONIAN ISLANDS, a group of small islands, in the Adriatic Sea, off the west coast of Istria, from which they are separated by the narrow Canale di Fasana. They belong to Austria and are twelve in number. Up to a recent period they were chiefly noted for their quarries, which have been worked for centuries and have supplied material not only for the palaces and bridges of Venice and the whole Adriatic coast, but latterly for Vienna and Berlin also. As they command the entrance to the naval harbour of Pola, a strong fortress, "Fort Tegetthoff," has been erected on the largest of them (Brioni), together with minor fortifications on some of the others. The islands are inhabited by about 100 Italian quarrymen.

BRIOSCO, ANDREA (c. 1470-1532), Italian sculptor and architect, known as Riccio ("curly-headed"), was born at Padua. In architecture he is known by the church of Sta Giustina in his native city, but he is most famous as a worker in metal. His masterpieces are the bronze Paschal candelabrum (11 ft. high) in the choir of the Santo (S. Antonio) at Padua (1515), and the two bronze reliefs (1507) of "David dancing before the Ark" and "Judith and Holofernes" in the same church. His bronze and marble tomb of the physician Girolamo della Torre in San Fermo at Verona was beautifully decorated with reliefs, which were taken away by the French and are now in the Louvre. A number of other works which emanated from his workshop are attributed to him; and he has been suggested, but doubtfully, as the author of a fine bronze relief, a "Dance of Nymphs," in the Wallace collection at Hertford House, London.

BRIOUDE, a town of central France, capital of an arrondissement in the department of Haute-Loire, on the left bank of the Allier, 1467 ft. above the sea, 47 m. N.W. of Le Puy on the Paris-Lyon railway. Pop. (1906) 4581. Brioude has to a great extent escaped modernization and still has many old houses and fountains. Its streets are narrow and irregular, but the town is surrounded by wide boulevards lined with trees. The only building of consequence is the church of St Julian (12th and 13th centuries) in the Romanesque style of Auvergne, of which the choir, with its apse and radiating chapels and the mosaic ornamentation of the exterior, is a fine example. Brioude is the seat of a sub-prefect, and of tribunals of first instance and of commerce. The plain in which it is situated is of great fertility; the grain trade of the town is considerable, and market-gardening is carried on in the outskirts. The industries include brewing, saw-milling, lace-making and antimony

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 / "Brescia" to "Bulgaria"