Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 3).djvu/71

Rh "But, sir," remarked the lady, "these Eastern societies, in the midst of which you have passed a portion of your existence, are as wild and visionary as the tales that come from their strange land. A man can easily be put out of the way there, then; it is, indeed, the Bagdad and Bassora of M. Galland. The sultans and viziers, who rule over such society, and who constitute what in France we call the government, are in fact, really these Haroun-al-Raschids and Giaffars, who not only pardon a poisoner, but even make him a prime minister, if his crime has been an ingenious one, and who, under such circumstances, have the whole story written in letters of gold, to divert their hours of idleness and ennui"

"By no means, madame; the fanciful exists no longer in the East. There are there now, disguised under other names, and concealed under other costumes, agents of police, magistrates, attorney-generals, and bailiffs. They hang, behead, and impale their criminals in the most agreeable possible manner; but some of these, like clever rogues, have contrived to escape human justice, and succeed in their fraudulent enterprises by cunning stratagems. Amongst us a simpleton, possessed by the demon of hate or cupidity, who has an enemy to destroy or some near relation to dispose of, goes straight to the grocer's or drug gist's, gives a false name, which leads more easily to his detection than his real one, and purchases, under a pretext that the rats prevent him from sleeping, five or six pennyworth of arsenic if he is really a cunning fellow, he goes to five or six different druggists or grocers, and thereby becomes only five or six times more easily traced; then, when he has acquired his specific, he administers duly to his enemy, or near kinsman, a dose of arsenic which would make a mammoth or mastodon burst, and which, without rhyme or reason, makes his victim utter groans which alarm the entire neighborhood. Then arrive a crowd of police men and constables. They fetch a doctor, who opens the dead body, and collects from the entrails and stomach a quantity of arsenic in a spoon. Next day a hundred newspapers relate the fact, with the names of the victim and the murderer. The same evening the grocer or grocers, druggist or druggists, come and say, i It was I who sold the arsenic to the gentleman accused: And rather than not recognize the guilty purchaser, they will recognize twenty. Then the foolish criminal is taken, imprisoned, "interrogated, confronted, confounded, condemned and cut off by hemp or steel; or if she be a woman of any consideration, they lock her up for life. This is the way in which you northerns understand chemistry, madame. Desrues was, however, I must confess more skillful."

"What would you have, sir?" said the lady, laughing; "we do what