recollect it.

Another lady whom Castaing had attended free of charge swore,
with a good deal of reluctance, that Castaing had told her a
somewhat similar story as accounting for his possession of
100,000 francs.

Witnesses were called for the defence who spoke to the diligence
and good conduct of Castaing as a medical student; and eighteen,
whom he had treated free of expense, testified to his kindness
and generosity. "All these witnesses," said the President,
"speak to your generosity; but, for that very reason, you must
have made little profit out of your profession, and had little
opportunity for saving anything," to which Castaing replied:
"These are not the only patients I attended; I have not called
those who paid me for my services." At the same time Castaing
found it impossible to prove that he had ever made a substantial
living by the exercise of his profession.

One of the medical witnesses called for the defence, M.
Chaussier, had volunteered the remark that the absence of any
trace of poison in the portions of Auguste Ballet's body
submitted to analysis, constituted an absence of the corpus
delicti. To this the President replied that that was a question
of criminal law, and no concern of his. But in his speech for
the prosecution the Avocat-General dealt with the point
raised at some length--a point which, if it had held good as a
principle of English law, would have secured the acquittal of so
wicked a poisoner as Palmer. He quoted from the famous French
lawyer d'Aguesseau: "The corpus delicti is no other thing than