‘That’s true!’ Mme de Villefort said, energetically but with some signs of unease. ‘I do recall.’
‘I am not sure of precisely everything that you told me, Madame,’ the count continued, in a perfectly calm voice, ‘but I do remember that, making the same mistake as others about me, you consulted me on the health of Mademoiselle de Villefort.’
‘But, Monsieur, you really were a doctor,’ said Mme de Villefort, ‘since you cured the sick.’
‘Madame, Molière or Beaumarchais would reply that it was precisely because I am no doctor that my patients were cured – not meaning that I cured them. I shall simply say that I have made a profound study of chemistry and natural science, but only as an amateur… you understand…’
At this point, the clock chimed six.
‘It’s six o’clock,’ Mme de Villefort said, visibly agitated. ‘Won’t you go, Valentine, and see if your grandfather is ready to have dinner?’
Valentine got up, took her leave of the count and went out of the room without uttering a word.
‘Oh, dear! Is it because of me, Madame, that you sent Mademoiselle de Villefort away?’ the count said when she had gone.
‘Not at all,’ the young woman replied emphatically. ‘This is the time when we give Monsieur Noirtier the sad meal that sustains his sad existence. You know, Monsieur, of the unhappy state to which my husband’s father is reduced?’
‘Yes, Madame, Monsieur de Villefort did mention it to me. A paralysis, I believe?’
‘Alas, yes! The poor old man is quite incapable of moving; his soul alone remains alive in that human mechanism, and even that is pale and quivering, like a lamp about to go out. But forgive me, Monsieur, for telling you of our family misfortunes. I interrupted you just as you were saying that you are a skilled chemist.’
‘Oh, no, I didn’t say that, Madame,’ the count replied, smiling. ‘On the contrary, I studied chemistry because, having made up my mind to live mainly in the East, I wanted to follow the example of King Mithridates.’
‘Mithridates, rex Ponticus,’1 said the little pestilence, cutting the illustrations out of a splendid album. ‘The one who breakfasted every morning on a cup of poison à la crème.’
‘Edouard! You wicked child!’ Mme de Villefort exclaimed, seizing the mutilated book from her son’s hands. ‘You are unbearable, you’re driving us mad. Leave us alone; go to your sister Valentine and dear Grandpa Noirtier.’
‘The album…’ said Edouard.
‘What about the album?’
‘I want it.’
‘Why did you cut out the pictures?’
‘Because it amuses me.’
‘Go away! Off with you!’
‘I shan’t go unless you give me that album,’ the child said, settling into a large armchair and pursuing his usual policy of never giving way.
‘There you are. Take it and leave us in peace,’ said Mme de Villefort. She gave Edouard the album and walked to the door with him. The count looked after her.
‘Let’s see if she closes the door after him,’ he muttered.
Mme de Villefort closed the door with the utmost care behind the child; the count pretended not to notice. Then, with one final glance around her, the young woman came back to her chair.
‘I hope you will forgive me, Madame,’ said the count in that good-natured way we have already noticed in him, ‘for remarking that you are very strict with that delightful little scamp.’
‘He needs a strong hand, Monsieur,’ Mme de Villefort replied, with what was truly a mother’s imperturbability.
‘Monsieur Edouard was reciting his Cornelius Nepos when he spoke about Mithridites,’ the count said. ‘You interrupted him in a quotation which proves that his tutor has not been wasting his time and that your son is very advanced for his age.’
‘The fact is, Monsieur le Comte,’ the mother replied sweetly, ‘that he is very quick and can learn whatever he wants. He has only one fault: he is very wilful. But, on the subject of what he was saying, do you think, Count, that Mithridates really did take such precautions and that they can be effective?’
‘So much so, Madame, that I myself took the same measures to avoid being poisoned in Naples, in Palermo and in Smyrna, on three occasions when I might otherwise have lost my life.’
‘And you were successful?’
‘Perfectly so.’
‘That’s right: now I remember you telling me something of the sort in Perugia.’
‘Really!’ the count said, admirably feigning surprise. ‘I don’t recall it.’
‘I asked you if poisons acted equally and with similar force on men from the north and those from the south, and you answered that the cold lymphatic temperaments of northerners made them less susceptible than the rich and energetic nature of those from the south.’
‘Quite so,’ said Monte Cristo. ‘I have seen Russians untroubled as they devour substances which would surely have killed a Neapolitan or an Arab.’
‘So you think the method would be even more effective here than in the East, and that, in the midst of our fogs and rains, a man would more easily become accustomed to this gradual absorption of poison than in a warm climate?’
‘Yes, indeed; though of course one would only be protected against the poison to which one had become accustomed.’
‘I understand. And how would you, yourself, obtain this immunity; or, rather, how did you do so?’
‘It is very easy. Suppose you know in advance what poison is to be used against you… Suppose this poison to be, for example… brucine…’
‘Brucine is obtained from the nux vomica, I believe,’ said Mme de Villefort.
‘Precisely, Madame,’ Monte Cristo replied. ‘But I think I have very little to teach you. Let me compliment you: such learning is rare in a woman.’
‘I must confess,’ said Mme de Villefort, ‘that I have an all-consuming passion for the occult sciences, which speak like poetry to the imagination and yet in the end come down to figures like an algebraic equation. But please continue. I am extremely interested in what you tell me.’
‘Well then, suppose this poison to be brucine, for example, and that you take a milligram the first day, two milligrams the second, and so on. After ten days you would have a centigram; and, increasing the daily dose by a further milligram, you would have three centigrams after twenty days; in other words, a dose that you would support with no ill-effects but which would be very dangerous for anyone who had not taken the same precautions. Finally, after a month, you could drink water from the same jug and kill a person who had taken it with you, while feeling no more than a slight discomfort to tell you that the water contained a poisonous substance.’
‘You know of no other antidote?’
‘None.’
‘I often read and re-read that story of Mithridates,’ Mme de Villefort said pensively, ‘and always thought it was a myth.’
‘No, Madame, unlike most things in history, it is true. But what you are telling me, your question, is not just idle curiosity, is it, since you have been considering this matter for two years already and you tell me that the story of Mithridates has been in your mind for a long time?’
‘That’s true, Monsieur. When I was young, my two favourite subjects were the study of botany and of mineralogy. Later, when I realized that one could often explain all the history of the nations and all the lives of individuals in the East by their use of herbs and simples, just as flowers explain all their concepts of love, I regretted not being a man so that I could follow the example of Flamel, Fontana or Cabanis.’2
‘All the more so, Madame,’ Monte Cristo continued, ‘since the Orientals are not content, like Mithridates, to make a shield of poison, but also use it as a dagger. In their hands, this science becomes not only a defensive weapon but often an offensive one. The one serves to protect them against physical suffering, the other against their enemies. With opium, belladonna, strychnine, bois de couleuvre or cherry-laurel, they put to sleep those who woul
d rouse them. There is not one of those Egyptian, Turkish or Greek women whom you call here wise women or spaewives, who does not know enough of chemistry to astound a doctor and of psychology to appal a confessor.’
‘Really!’ Mme de Villefort exclaimed, her eyes shining with a strange light as she listened.
‘Yes, indeed, Madame!’ Monte Cristo continued. ‘This is how the secret dramas of the Orient are woven and unwoven, from the plant that induces love to the one that kills, from the draught that opens the heavens to the one that plunges a man into hell. There are as many subtle distinctions of all kinds as there are whims and peculiarities in the moral and physical nature of man. I would even say that the art of these chemists can admirably supply the ill and the cure to his need for love or desire for revenge.’
‘But, Monsieur, are these countries in which you have spent part of your life really as fantastic as the tales that come out of them? Can a person be disposed of there with impunity? Are Baghdad and Basra truly as Monsieur Galland3 described them? Are you seriously telling me that the sultans and viziers who rule those peoples, making up what we here in France call the government, are like Haroun al-Rashid or Giaffar – men who not only forgive a poisoner, but will even appoint him prime minister if his crime is ingenious enough and, in that case, have the story set down in gold letters to amuse them in their idle moments?’
‘No, Madame, the marvellous no longer exists even in the East. There, too, disguised under other names and concealed in different costumes, they have police commissioners, investigating magistrates, crown prosecutors and other experts. Criminals there are very pleasantly hanged, decapitated or impaled; but, being clever fraudsters, they have managed to outwit human justice and ensure the success of their designs by skilful plotting. In our country, when some fool is seized with the demon of hatred or greed, when he has an enemy to destroy or a grandparent to obliterate, he goes to a grocer, gives a false name (that will identify him more surely than his real one) and, pretending that the rats are keeping him awake, he buys five or six grammes of arsenic. If he is very clever, he goes to five or six grocers, so he will be five or six times more easily detected. Then, once he has his medicine, he administers a dose of arsenic to his enemy or his grandparent that would kill a mammoth or a mastodon, and this, without rhyme or reason, causes the victim to emit cries that put the whole district into a turmoil. At that, a crowd of policemen and gendarmes arrives. They send for a doctor who cuts the dead man open and takes arsenic by the spoonful out of his stomach and his entrails. The next day, a hundred newspapers report the matter with the name of the victim and the murderer. The very same evening, the grocer – or grocers – come and announce: “I sold this gentleman the arsenic.” They would identify twenty purchasers, rather than not identify this one. So the foolish criminal is caught, imprisoned, interrogated, confronted, confounded, condemned and guillotined. Or, if it is a woman of some status, then she is sentenced to life imprisonment. This is the understanding you northerners have of chemistry, Madame; though I must admit Desrues4 was better than that.’
‘What do you expect, Monsieur!’ the young woman said with a laugh. ‘We do what we can. Not everyone knows the secrets of the Medici or the Borgias.’
The count shrugged his shoulders: ‘Would you like me now to tell you the cause of all this ineptitude? It is because in your theatres, as far as I can tell by reading the plays that they put on there, you always see people swallowing the contents of a flask or biting the bezel of a ring, then dropping, stone dead: five minutes later, the curtain falls and the audience leaves. No one knows the consequences of the murder, one never sees the police commissioner with his scarf, or the corporal of the guard with his four men, and as a result a lot of weak brains imagine that this is the way that things happen. But if you just go a step outside France, to Aleppo or Cairo, or even no further than Naples or Rome, you will see people walking along the street, upright, fresh-faced and ruddy with health, of whom the devil, were he to touch you with his cloak, could tell you: “This man has been poisoned for three weeks and he will be completely dead in a month.” ’
‘In that case,’ Mme de Villefort said, ‘they have rediscovered the secret of that famous aqua tofana which was said to have been lost in Perugia.’
‘Come, come, Madame, is anything ever lost to mankind? The arts and sciences travel around the world, things change their name, that’s all, and ordinary people are deceived by it; the outcome is always the same. Poisons will particularly affect one organ or another: the stomach, the brain, the intestines. Well, then: a poison can give rise to a cough and that cough, in turn, to a pneumonia or some other illness recognized by medical science – which does not prevent it from being quite deadly; or, if it was not already, from becoming so thanks to the remedies administered by ignorant doctors, who are generally very poor chemists, remedies that will favour the illness or impede it, as you wish. The result: a man artistically killed in accordance with the rules, about whose death the law has nothing to discover, in the words of one of my friends, that fearful and excellent chemist Abbé Adelmonte of Taormina, in Sicily, who had made an exhaustive study of these phenomena.’
‘That’s terrifying, but wonderful,’ said the young woman, riveted to the spot. ‘I must admit that I had always thought such things to be inventions from the Middle Ages.’
‘So they are, but perfected in our own time. What do you suppose is the point of time, encouragement, medals, awards and the Prix Montyon, except to bring society closer to perfection? Mankind will not be perfect until it can create and destroy like God. It can already destroy: that’s half the battle.’
‘What you mean,’ Mme de Villefort continued, always coming back to what interested her, ‘is that the poisons of the Borgias and the Medicis, the Renés, the Ruggieris and probably later the Baron de Trenk,5 so badly treated in modern drama and novels…’
‘Were simply works of art, Madame, nothing more,’ said the count. ‘Do you think the true scientist is crudely concerned with the individual himself? Not so. Science loves the oblique approach, tours de force, imagination if you like. Take the worthy Abbé Adelmonte, whom I mentioned a moment ago: he made some astonishing experiments in this field.’
‘Really!’
‘Yes. Let me give you just one example. He had a splendid garden, full of vegetables, flowers and fruit. From among his vegetables he would choose the least exotic, most digestible of all: say, a cabbage. For three days he would water this cabbage with a solution of arsenic. On the third day, the cabbage would fall sick and wither: this was the moment to cut it. Everyone saw it as ripe and healthy, only Abbé Adelmonte knew it was poisoned. So he took the cabbage home, got a rabbit – he had a collection of rabbits, cats and guineapigs as magnificent as his collection of vegetables, flowers and fruit – and made the rabbit eat a leaf of the cabbage. The rabbit died. What investigating magistrate would dare question this; what crown prosecutor would ever draw up a petition against Monsieur Magendie or Monsieur Flourens6 for the rabbits, guinea-pigs and cats that they have killed? Not one. So the rabbit is now dead, and the law has no reason to ask questions about it. Abbé Adelmonte gets his cook to gut the rabbit and throws the intestines on a dungheap. On the dungheap there is a hen, which pecks at the intestines, falls ill in its turn and dies the following day. Just as it is in its final, convulsive agony, a vulture flies past – there are a lot of vultures in Adelmonte’s country – dives at the body and carries it off to a distant crag to eat it. Three days later the poor vulture, having felt constantly ill since its meal, is seized with a fainting fit several hundred feet up. It falls out of the sky and plummets into your fishpond. Pikes, eels and moray eels are greedy fish, as you know, so they bite the vulture. Well, suppose that on the following day this eel or this pike is served up at your table, poisoned at four removes, and your guest is poisoned at the fifth and dies after a week or ten days from a pain in the guts, vomiting and an abscess on the duodenum. There will be a post-mortem and the docto
rs will say: “The patient died of a tumour on the liver, or of typhoid fever.” ’
‘You link all these events together,’ said Mme de Villefort, ‘but the slightest accident might break the chain. The vulture might not fly over at the right moment, or it might fall a hundred yards away from the fishpond.’
‘That’s precisely where the art lies: to be a great chemist in the East, you must direct chance. It can be done.’
Mme de Villefort listened thoughtfully.
‘But arsenic is ineradicable,’ she said. ‘However it is absorbed, if there is enough to kill, it will remain in the man’s body.’
‘Just so!’ cried Monte Cristo. ‘Just so! That is precisely what I told my good friend Adelmonte. He thought a while, smiled and replied with a Sicilian proverb which, I believe, is also a French one: “My child, the world was not made in a day, but in seven. Come back on Sunday.”
‘The following Sunday I returned. Instead of watering his cabbage with arsenic, he had watered it with a solution of salts of strychnine, strychnos colubrina, as scientists call it. This time, the cabbage seemed altogether healthy, so the rabbit had no suspicion of it. Five minutes later the rabbit died, the hen ate the rabbit, and the following day it was dead. So then we played the part of the vultures, took off the hen and opened it up. This time all specific symptoms had vanished and only general symptoms remained. There was no specific indication in any organ – irritation of the nervous system, that’s all, and evidence of cerebral congestion, nothing more. The hen had not been poisoned, it had died of apoplexy. This is a rare condition in hens, I know, but very common among human beings.’
Mme de Villefort seemed more and more preoccupied with her thoughts. ‘It’s fortunate,’ she said, ‘that such substances can only be prepared by chemists, or else one half of the world would be poisoning the other.’