They gave up all hope of recovery. Indeed, his state grew worse and
worse; he felt an unconquerable aversion for every kind of food, and the
vomiting was incessant. The last three days of his life he complained
that a fire was burning in his breast, and the flames that burned within
seemed to blaze forth at his eyes, the only part of his body that
appeared to live, so like a corpse was all the rest of him. On the 17th
of June 1670 he died: the poison had taken seventy-two days to complete
its work. Suspicion began to dawn: the lieutenant's body was opened, and
a formal report was drawn up. The operation was performed in the
presence of the surgeons Dupre and Durant, and Gavart, the apothecary, by
M. Bachot, the brothers' private physician. They found the stomach and
duodenum to be black and falling to pieces, the liver burnt and
gangrened. They said that this state of things must have been produced
by poison, but as the presence of certain bodily humours sometimes
produces similar appearances, they durst not declare that the
lieutenant's death could not have come about by natural causes, and he
was buried without further inquiry.

It was as his private physician that Dr. Bachot had asked for the autopsy
of his patient's brother. For the younger brother seemed to have been
attacked by the same complaint, and the doctor hoped to find from the
death of the one some means for preserving the life of the other. The
councillor was in a violent fever, agitated unceasingly both in body and
mind: he could not bear any position of any kind for more than a few
minutes at a time. Bed was a place of torture; but if he got up, he
cried for it again, at least for a change of suffering. At the end of
three months he died. His stomach, duodenum, and liver were all in the
same corrupt state as his brother's, and more than that, the surface of
his body was burnt away. This, said the doctors; was no dubious sign of
poisoning; although, they added, it sometimes happened that a 'cacochyme'