LII

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.”