through the crowd of richer kinsmen, who shunned and bade him rot; saw
those whose death made him heir to lordship and gold and palaces and
power and esteem. As a worm through a wardrobe, that man ate through
velvet and ermine, and gnawed out the hearts that beat in his way. No.
A great intellect can comprehend these criminals, and account for the
crime. It is a mighty thing to feel in one's self that one is an army,--
more than an army! What thousands and millions of men, with trumpet and
banner, and under the sanction of glory, strive to do,--destroy a foe,--
that, with little more than an effort of the will,--with a drop, a grain,
for all his arsenal,--one man can do!"

There was a horrible enthusiasm about this reasoning devil as he spoke
thus; his crest rose, his breast expanded. That animation which a noble
thought gives to generous hearts kindled in the face of the apologist for
the darkest and basest of human crimes. Lucretia shuddered; but her
gloomy imagination was spelled; there was an interest mingled with her
terror.

"Hush! you appall me," she said at last, timidly. "But, happily, this
fearful art exists no more to tempt and destroy?"

"As a more philosophical discovery, it might be amusing to a chemist to
learn exactly what were the compounds of those ancient poisons," said
Dalibard, not directly answering the implied question. "Portions of the
art are indeed lost, unless, as I suspect, there is much credulous
exaggeration in the accounts transmitted to us. To kill by a flower, a
pair of gloves, a soap-ball,--kill by means which elude all possible
suspicion,--is it credible? What say you? An amusing research, indeed,
if one had leisure! But enough of this now; it grows late. We dine with
M. de----; he wishes to let his hotel. Why, Lucretia, if we knew a