The Count of Monte Cristo

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Madame de Villefort.

"Precisely, madame," replied Monte Cristo; "but I perceive I have not
much to teach you. Allow me to compliment you on your knowledge; such
learning is very rare among ladies."

    * Brucoea ferruginea.

"Oh, I am aware of that," said Madame de Villefort; "but I have a
passion for the occult sciences, which speak to the imagination like
poetry, and are reducible to figures, like an algebraic equation; but go
on, I beg of you; what you say interests me to the greatest degree."

"Well," replied Monte Cristo "suppose, then, that this poison was
brucine, and you were to take a milligramme the first day, two
milligrammes the second day, and so on. Well, at the end of ten days you
would have taken a centigramme, at the end of twenty days, increasing