seeking to make a poison so subtle that the very effluvia might be fatal.
He had heard of the poisoned napkin given to the young dauphin, elder
brother of Charles VII, to wipe his hands on during a game of tennis, and
knew that the contact had caused his death; and the still discussed
tradition had informed him of the gloves of Jeanne d'Albret; the secret
was lost, but Sainte-Croix hoped to recover it. And then there happened
one of those strange accidents which seem to be not the hand of chance
but a punishment from Heaven. At the very moment when Sainte-Croix was
bending over his furnace, watching the fatal preparation as it became
hotter and hotter, the glass mask which he wore over his face as a
protection from any poisonous exhalations that might rise up from the
mixture, suddenly dropped off, and Sainte-Croix dropped to the ground as
though felled by a lightning stroke. At supper-time, his wife finding
that he did not come out from his closet where he was shut in, knocked at
the door, and received no answer; knowing that her husband was wont to
busy himself with dark and mysterious matters, she feared some disaster
had occurred. She called her servants, who broke in the door. Then she
found Sainte-Croix stretched out beside the furnace, the broken glass
lying by his side. It was impossible to deceive the public as to the
circumstances of this strange and sudden death: the servants had seen the
corpse, and they talked. The commissary Picard was ordered to affix the
seals, and all the widow could do was to remove the furnace and the
fragments of the glass mask.

The noise of the event soon spread all over Paris. Sainte-Croix was
extremely well known, and the, news that he was about to purchase a post
in the court had made him known even more widely. Lachaussee was one of
the first to learn of his master's death; and hearing that a seal had
been set upon his room, he hastened to put in an objection in these
terms: