off the head of Holofernes. Their stories are plainly and
excellently told in the Scriptural manner, and the adding of
detail would be mere fictional exercise. Something, perhaps,
might be done for them by way of deducing their characters and
physical shortcomings through examination of their deeds and
motives--but this may be left to psychiatrists. There is room
here merely for a soupcon of psychology--just as much, in fact,
as may afford the writer an easy turn from one plain narrative to
another. You will have no more of it than amounts, say, to the
pinch of fennel that should go into the sauce for mackerel.

Toffana, who in Italy supplied poison to wives aweary of their
husbands and to ladies beginning to find their lovers
inconvenient, and who thus at second hand murdered some six
hundred persons, has her attractions for the criminological
writer. The bother is that so many of them have found it out.
The scanty material regarding her has been turned over so often
that it has become somewhat tattered, and has worn rather thin
for refashioning. The same may be said for Hieronyma Spara, a
direct poisoner and Toffana's contemporary.

The fashion they set passed to the Marquise de Brinvilliers, and
she, with La Vigoureux and La Voisin, has been written up so
often that the task of finding something new to say of her and
her associates looks far too formidable for a man as lethargic as
myself.

In the abundance of material that criminal history provides about
women choice becomes difficult. There is, for example, a
plethora of women poisoners. Wherever a woman alone turns to