is a hen, who, pecking these intestines, is in her turn taken ill, and dies next day. At the moment when she is struggling in the convulsions of death, a vulture is flying by (there are a good many vultures in Adelmonte’s country); this bird darts on the dead fowl, and carries it away to a rock, where it dines off its prey. Three days afterwards, this poor vulture, which has been very much indisposed since that dinner, suddenly feels very giddy while flying aloft in the clouds, and falls heavily into a fishpond.
The pike, eels, and carp eat greedily always, as everybody knows—well, they feast on the vulture. Now suppose that next day, one of these eels, or pike, or carp, poisoned at the fourth remove, is served up at your table. Well, then, your guest will be poisoned at the fifth remove, and die, at the end of eight or ten days, of pains in the intestines, sickness, or abscess of the pylorus. The doctors open the body and say with an air of profound learning, ‘The subject has died of a tumor on the liver, or of typhoid fever!’ ”
“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 fishpond.”
“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