The Count of Monte Cristo
“Do you know any other counter-poisons?”
“I do not.”
“I have often read, and read again, the history of Mithridates,” said
Madame de Villefort in a tone of reflection, “and had always considered
it a fable.”
“No, madame, contrary to most history, it is true; but what you tell
me, madame, what you inquire of me, is not the result of a chance
query, for two years ago you asked me the same questions, and said
then, that for a very long time this history of Mithridates had
occupied your mind.”
“True, sir. The two favorite studies of my youth were botany and
mineralogy, and subsequently, when I learned that the use of simples
frequently explained the whole history of a people, and the entire life
of individuals in the East, as flowers betoken and symbolize a love
affair, I have regretted that I was not a man, that I might have been a
Flamel, a Fontana, or a Cabanis.”
“And the more, madame,” said Monte Cristo, “as the Orientals do not
confine themselves, as did Mithridates, to make a cuirass of his
poisons, but they also made them a dagger. Science becomes, in their
hands, not only a defensive weapon, but still more frequently an
offensive one; the one serves against all their physical sufferings,
the other against all their enemies. With opium, belladonna, brucea,
snake-wood, and the cherry-laurel, they put to sleep all who stand in
their way. There is not one of those women, Egyptian, Turkish, or
Greek, whom here you call ‘good women,’ who do not know how, by means
of chemistry, to stupefy a doctor, and in psychology to amaze a
confessor.”
“Really,” said Madame de Villefort, whose eyes sparkled with strange
fire at this conversation.
“Oh, yes, indeed, madame,” continued Monte Cristo, “the secret dramas
of the East begin with a love philtre and end with a death potion—begin
with paradise and end with—hell. There are as many elixirs of every
kind as there are caprices and peculiarities in the physical and moral
nature of humanity; and I will say further—the art of these chemists is
capable with the utmost precision to accommodate and proportion the
remedy and the bane to yearnings for love or desires for vengeance.”
“But, sir,” remarked the young woman, “these Eastern societies, in the
midst of which you have passed a portion of your existence, are as
fantastic as the tales that come from their strange land. A man can
easily be put out of the way there, then; it is, indeed, the Bagdad and
Bassora of the _Thousand and One Nights_. The sultans and viziers who
rule over society there, and who constitute what in France we call the
government, are really Haroun-al-Raschids and Giaffars, who not only
pardon a poisoner, but even make him a prime minister, if his crime has
been an ingenious one, and who, under such circumstances, have the
whole story written in letters of gold, to divert their hours of
idleness and _ennui_.”
“By no means, madame; the fanciful exists no longer in the East. There,
disguised under other names, and concealed under other costumes, are
police agents, magistrates, attorneys-general, and bailiffs. They hang,
behead, and impale their criminals in the most agreeable possible
manner; but some of these, like clever rogues, have contrived to escape
human justice, and succeed in their fraudulent enterprises by cunning
stratagems. Amongst us a simpleton, possessed by the demon of hate or
cupidity, who has an enemy to destroy, or some near relation to dispose
of, goes straight to the grocer’s or druggist’s, gives a false name,
which leads more easily to his detection than his real one, and under
the pretext that the rats prevent him from sleeping, purchases five or
six grammes of arsenic—if he is really a cunning fellow, he goes to
five or six different druggists or grocers, and thereby becomes only
five or six times more easily traced;—then, when he has acquired his
specific, he administers duly to his enemy, or near kinsman, a dose of
arsenic which would make a mammoth or mastodon burst, and which,
without rhyme or reason, makes his victim utter groans which alarm the
entire neighborhood. Then arrive a crowd of policemen and constables.
They fetch a doctor, who opens the dead body, and collects from the
entrails and stomach a quantity of arsenic in a spoon. Next day a
hundred newspapers relate the fact, with the names of the victim and
the murderer. The same evening the grocer or grocers, druggist or
druggists, come and say, ‘It was I who sold the arsenic to the
gentleman;’ and rather than not recognize the guilty purchaser, they
will recognize twenty. Then the foolish criminal is taken, imprisoned,
interrogated, confronted, confounded, condemned, and cut off by hemp or
steel; or if she be a woman of any consideration, they lock her up for
life. This is the way in which you Northerns understand chemistry,
madame. Desrues was, however, I must confess, more skilful.”
“What would you have, sir?” said the lady, laughing; “we do what we
can. All the world has not the secret of the Medicis or the Borgias.”
“Now,” replied the count, shrugging his shoulders, “shall I tell you
the cause of all these stupidities? It is because, at your theatres, by
what at least I could judge by reading the pieces they play, they see
persons swallow the contents of a phial, or suck the button of a ring,
and fall dead instantly. Five minutes afterwards the curtain falls, and
the spectators depart. They are ignorant of the consequences of the
murder; they see neither the police commissary with his badge of
office, nor the corporal with his four men; and so the poor fools
believe that the whole thing is as easy as lying. But go a little way
from France—go either to Aleppo or Cairo, or only to Naples or Rome,
and you will see people passing by you in the streets—people erect,
smiling, and fresh-colored, of whom Asmodeus, if you were holding on by
the skirt of his mantle, would say, ‘That man was poisoned three weeks
ago; he will be a dead man in a month.’”
“Then,” remarked Madame de Villefort, “they have again discovered the
secret of the famous _aqua Tofana_ that they said was lost at Perugia.”
“Ah, but madame, does mankind ever lose anything? The arts change about
and make a tour of the world; things take a different name, and the
vulgar do not follow them—that is all; but there is always the same
result. Poisons act particularly on some organ or another—one on the
stomach, another on the brain, another on the intestines. Well, the
poison brings on a cough, the cough an inflammation of the lungs, or
some other complaint catalogued in the book of science, which, however,
by no means precludes it from being decidedly mortal; and if it were
not, would be sure to become so, thanks to the remedies applied by
foolish doctors, who are generally bad chemists, and which will act in
favor of or against the malady, as you please; and then there is a
human being killed according to all the rules of art and skill, and of
whom justice learns nothing, as was said by a terrible chemist of my
acquaintance, the worthy Abbé Adelmonte of Taormina, in Sicily, who has
studied these national phenomena very profoundly.”
“It is quite frightful, but deeply interesting,” said the young lady,
motionless with attention. “I thought, I must confess, that these
tales, were inventions of the Middle Ages.”
“Yes, no doubt, but improved upon by ours. What is the use of time,
rewards of merit, medals, crosses, Monthyon prizes, if they do not lead
society towards more complete perfection? Yet man will never be perfect
until he learns to create and destroy; he does know how to destroy, and
that is half the battle.”
“So,” added Madame de Villefort, constantly returning to her object,
“the poisons of the Borgias, the Medicis, the Renées, the Ruggieris,
and later, probably, that of Baron de Trenck, whose story has been so
misused by modern drama and romance——”
“Were objects of art, madame, and nothing more,” replied the count. “Do
you suppose that the real _savant_ addresses himself stupidly to the
mere individual? By no means. Science loves eccentricities, leaps and
bounds, trials of strength, fancies, if I may be allowed so to term
them. Thus, for instance, the excellent Abbé Adelmonte, of whom I spoke
just now, made in this way some marvellous experiments.”
“Really?”
“Yes; I will mention one to you. He had a remarkably fine garden, full
of vegetables, flowers, and fruit. From amongst these vegetables he
selected the most simple—a cabbage, for instance. For three days he
watered this cabbage with a distillation of arsenic; on the third, the
cabbage began to droop and turn yellow. At that moment he cut it. In
the eyes of everybody it seemed fit for table, and preserved its
wholesome appearance. It was only poisoned to the Abbé Adelmonte. He
then took the cabbage to the room where he had rabbits—for the Abbé
Adelmonte had a collection of rabbits, cats, and guinea-pigs, fully as
fine as his collection of vegetables, flowers, and fruit. Well, the
Abbé Adelmonte took a rabbit, and made it eat a leaf of the cabbage.
The rabbit died. What magistrate would find, or even venture to
insinuate, anything against this? What procureur has ever ventured to
draw up an accusation against M. Magendie or M. Flourens, in
consequence of the rabbits, cats, and guinea-pigs they have killed?—not
one. So, then, the rabbit dies, and justice takes no notice. This
rabbit dead, the Abbé Adelmonte has its entrails taken out by his cook
and thrown on the dunghill; on this dunghill 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 fish-pond.
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
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