Alexandre Dumas: The Count of Monte Cristo

Chapter 52: Toxicology. (continued)

"But," remarked Madame de Villefort, "all these circumstances which you link thus to one another may be broken by the least accident; the vulture may not see the fowl, or may fall a hundred yards from the fish-pond."

"Ah, that is where the art comes in. To be a great chemist in the East, one must direct chance; and this is to be achieved." -- Madame de Villefort was in deep thought, yet listened attentively. "But," she exclaimed, suddenly, "arsenic is indelible, indestructible; in whatsoever way it is absorbed, it will be found again in the body of the victim 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, strychnos 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 distrust; yet, five minutes afterwards, 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 special 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 among fowls, I believe, but very common among men." Madame de Villefort appeared more and more thoughtful.

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

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