LITMIR.BIZ

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fashion at the close of the fifteenth and throughout the sixteenth century for the ladies of Italy to acquire a certain knowledge of some of the principles of chemistry. Of course, at the head of these ladies we must place Lucretia Borgia.”

      Monsieur Blurosset nods an assent. Valerie looks from Raymond to the blue spectacles; but the face of the chemist testifies no shade of surprise at the singularity of Raymond’s observation.

      “Then,” continued Monsieur Marolles, “if a lady was deeply injured or cruelly insulted by the man she loved; if her pride was trampled in the dust, or her name and her weakness held up to ridicule and contempt—then she knew how to avenge herself and to defy the world. A tender pressure of the traitor’s hand; a flower or a ribbon given as a pledge of love; the leaves of a book hastily turned over with the tips of moistened fingers—people had such vulgar habits in those days—and behold the gentleman died, and no one was any the wiser but the worms, with whose constitutions aqua tofana at second hand may possibly have disagreed.”

      “Vultures have died from the effects of poisoned carrion,” muttered Monsieur Blurosset.

      “But in this degenerate age,” continued Raymond, “what can our Parisian ladies do when they have reason to be revenged on a traitor? The poor blunderers can only give him half a pint of laudanum, or an ounce or so of arsenic, and run the risk of detection half an hour after his death! I think that time is a circle, and that we retreat as we advance, in spite of our talk of progress.”

      His horrible words, thrice horrible when contrasted with the coolness of his easy manner, freeze Valerie to the very heart; but she does not make one effort to interrupt him.

      “Now, my good Blurosset,” he resumes, “what I want of you is this. Something which will change a glass of wine into a death-warrant, but which will defy the scrutiny of a college of physicians. This lady wishes to take a lesson in chemistry. She will, of course, only experimentalise on rabbits, and she is so tender-hearted that, as you see, she shudders even at the thought of that little cruelty. For the rest, to repay you for your trouble, if you will give her pen and ink, she will write you an order on her banker for five thousand francs.

      Monsieur Blurosset appears no more surprised at this request than if he had been asked for a glass of water. He goes to a cabinet, which he opens, and after a little search selects a small tin box, from which he takes a few grains of white powder, which he screws carelessly in a scrap of newspaper. He is so much accustomed to handling these compounds that he treats them with very small ceremony.

      “It is a slow poison,” he says. “For a full-grown rabbit use the eighth part of what you have there; the whole of it would poison a man; but death in either case would not be immediate. The operation of the poison occupies some hours before it terminates fatally.”

      “Madame will use it with discretion,” says Raymond; “do not fear.”

      Monsieur Blurosset holds out the little packet as if expecting Valerie to take it; she recoils with a ghastly face, and shudders as she looks from the chemist to Raymond Marolles.

      “In this degenerate age,” says Raymond, looking her steadily in the face, “our women cannot redress their own wrongs, however deadly those wrongs may be; they must have fathers, brothers, or uncles to fight for them, and the world to witness the struggle. Bah! There is not a woman in France who is any better than a sentimental schoolgirl.”

      Valerie stretches out her small hand to receive the packet.

      “Give me the pen, monsieur,” says she; and the chemist presents her a half-sheet of paper, on which she writes hurriedly an order on her bankers, which she signs in full with her maiden name.

      Monsieur Blurosset looked over the paper as she wrote.

      “Valerie de Cevennes!” he exclaimed. “I did not know I was honoured by so aristocratic a visitor.”

      Valerie put her hand to her head as if bewildered. “My name!” she muttered, “I forgot, I forgot.”

      “What do you fear, madame?” asked Raymond, with a smile. “Are you not among friends?”

      “For pity’s sake, monsieur,” she said, “give me your arm, and take me back to the carriage! I shall drop down dead if I stay longer in this room.”

      The blue spectacles contemplated her gravely for a moment. Monsieur Blurosset laid one cold hand upon her pulse, and with the other took a little bottle from the cabinet, out of which he gave his visitor a few drops of a transparent liquid.

      “She will do now,” he said to Raymond, “till you get her home; then see that she takes this,” he added, handing Monsieur Marolles another phial; “it is an opiate which will procure her six hours’ sleep. Without that she would go mad.”

      Raymond led Valerie from the room; but, once outside, her head fell heavily on his shoulder, and he was obliged to carry her down the steep stairs.

      “I think,” he muttered to himself as he went out into the courtyard with his unconscious burden, “I think we have sealed the doom of the king of spades!”

      Chapter VI

       A Glass of Wine

       Table of Contents

      Upon a little table in the boudoir of the pavilion lay a letter. It was the first thing Valerie de Lancy beheld on entering the room, with Raymond Marolles by her side, half an hour after she had left the apartment of Monsieur Blurosset. This letter was in the handwriting of her husband, and it bore the postmark of Rouen. Valerie’s face told her companion whom the letter came from before she took it in her hand.

      “Read it,” he said, coolly. “It contains his excuses, no doubt. Let us see what pretty story he has invented. In his early professional career his companions surnamed him Baron Munchausen.”

      Valerie’s hand shook as she broke the seal; but she read the letter carefully through, and then turning to Raymond she said—

      “You are right; his excuse is excellent, only a little too transparent: listen.

      “ ‘The reason of my absence from Paris’—(absence from Paris, and to-night in the Bois de Boulogne)—‘is most extraordinary. At the conclusion of the opera last night, I was summoned to the stage-door, where I found a messenger waiting for me, who told me he had come post-haste from Rouen, where my mother was lying dangerously ill, and to implore me, if I wished to see her before her death, to start for that place immediately. Even my love for you, which you well know, Valerie, is the absorbing passion of my life, was forgotten in such a moment. I had no means of communicating with you without endangering our secret. Imagine, then, my surprise on my arrival here, to find that my mother is in perfect health, and had of course sent no messenger to me. I fear in this mystery some conspiracy which threatens the safety of our secret. I shall be in Paris to-night, but too late to see you. To-morrow, at dusk, I shall be at the dear little pavilion, once more to be blest by a smile from the only eyes I love.—Gaston de Lancy.’ ”

      “Rather a blundering epistle,” muttered Raymond. “I should really have given him credit for something better. You will receive him to-morrow evening, madame?”

      She knew so well the purport of this question that her hand almost involuntarily tightened on the little packet given her by Monsieur Blurosset, which she had held all this time, but she did not answer him.

      “You will receive him to-morrow; or by to-morrow night all Paris will know of this romantic but rather ridiculous marriage; it will be in all the newspapers—caricatured in all the print-shops; Charivari will have a word or two about it, and little boys will cry it in the streets, a full, true, and particular account for only one sous. But then, as I said before, you are superior to your sex, and perhaps you will not mind this kind of thing.”

      “I shall see him to-morrow evening at dusk,” she said, in a hoarse whisper not pleasant to hear; “and I shall never

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