Page:The Count of Monte-Cristo (1887 Volume 3).djvu/74

54 you link thus one to another may be broken by the least accident; the vulture may not pass at the precise moment, or may fall a hundred yards from the fish-pond."

"Ah, this it is which is art. To be a great chemist in the East, we must direct chance; and this is to be achieved."

Madame de Villefort was deep in thought, yet listened attentively.

"But," she exclaimed, suddenly, "arsenic is indelible, indestructible; in what way soever it is absorbed, it will be found again in the body of the creature from the moment when it has been taken in sufficient quantity to cause death."

"Precisely so," cried Monte-Cristo—"precisely so; and this is what I said to my worthy Adelmonte. He reflected, smiled, and replied to me by a Sicilian proverb, which I believe is also a French proverb, 'My son, the world was not made in a day—but in seven. Return on Sunday.' On the Sunday following I did return to him. Instead of having watered his cabbage with arsenic, he had watered it this time with a solution of salts, having their basis in strychnine, strychos colubrina, as the learned term it. Now, the cabbage had not the slightest appearance of disease in the world, and the rabbit had not the smallest dis trust; yet, five minutes afterward, the rabbit was dead. The fowl pecked at the rabbit, and the next day was a dead hen. This time we were the vultures, so we opened the bird, and this time all particular symptoms had disappeared; there were only general symptoms. There was no peculiar indication in any organ—an excitement of the nervous system that was it; a case of cerebral congestion nothing more. The fowl had not been poisoned—she had died of apoplexy. Apoplexy is a rare disease amongst fowls, I believe, but very common amongst men."

Madame de Villefort appeared more and more reflective.

"It is very fortunate," she observed, "that such substances could only be prepared by chemists; for else, really, all the world would be poisoning each other."

"By chemists and persons who have a taste for chemistry," said Monte-Cristo, carelessly.

"And then," said Madame de Villefort, endeavoring by a struggle, and with effort, to get away from her thoughts, "however skillfully it is prepared, crime is always crime; and if it avoid human scrutiny, it does not escape the eye of God. The Orientals are stronger than we are in cases of conscience, and, very prudently, have no hell—that is the point."

"Really, madame, this is a scruple which naturally must occur to a pure mind like yours, but which would easily yield before sound reason-