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She then added, that if her husband compelled her to live with him as his wife, she would destroy herself; saying that she had already tried the effects of poison, which had failed, and that all that she asked was permission from him to fly from France and seek an asylum at Smyrna.

After this explosion of passionate feeling, however, she seemed to become more reconciled to her lot, and lived with her husband on terms of amicable if not affectionate intercourse. The other inmates of the house at Glandier were the mother and sister of M. Lafarge.

At the end of a few months Lafarge was called to Paris by business, and during his absence Madame Lafarge purchased a quantity of arsenic. She wrote on the 12th of December, 1839, to M. Eyssartier, an apothecary, as follows:—

One day she proposed to her mother-in-law that as she was about to send her miniature to her husband, the latter should make a few cakes and send them to her son in the same parcel. This was done; and the cakes, when ready, were given to Madame Lafarge to put into the box. It arrived at its destination; but, according to the evidence, instead of several small cakes, such as his mother had made, there was one large one, and it was accompanied by a letter from Madame Lafarge, in which she begged him to eat it at a particular hour, saying that she would at the same time be similarly employed.

Upon receiving the box, M. Lafarge broke off a small piece of the cake and ate it. During the night and the following day he was a prey to the most violent pains and vomitings.

On the 5th of January, 1840, he returned to Glandier, greatly fatigued, and still suffering intensely. M. Bardou, a physician, was summoned, who attributed the symptoms to an inflammation of the stomach.

On the day of her husband's return Madame Lafarge bought a second quantity of arsenic of the same apothecary, together with some powdered gum-arabic.

Instead of improving, as the physician had assured his wife that he would, M. Lafarge grew worse. Madame Lafarge cared for him tenderly, although she herself was far from well. Finally the malady assumed a more serious character, and it was thought best, at the request of M. Bardou, to call in another physician, M. Massenat. The latter agreed with M. Bardou that inflammation of the stomach was the cause of all M. Lafarge's sufferings.

The suspicions of Madame Lafarge, the mother, were, however, aroused by her finding some white powder upon an omelette which had been prepared for her son. She had also seen, so she said, her daughter-in-law putting a white powder into a potion she was preparing for the sick man. And when she asked Marie what the substance was, she had replied that it was gum-arabic, and at the same time she had hastily wiped the glass and replaced it upon the mantelpiece.

On the 13th of January the mother secretly despatched a servant to M. Lespinasse, a physician at Lubersac, to advise him of the suspicions which she had formed, and requesting his immediate attendance at Glandier. M. Lespinasse at once started for the house. On the way the servant told him of the frequent purchases of arsenic, made at the instance of Marie Lafarge. M. Lespinasse, on reaching the bedside of the sick man, felt sure that the symptoms were those of poison, and immediately administered peroxide of iron; but M. Lafarge rapidly became worse, and on the morning of the 14th he died.