The Count of Monte Cristo

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the other against all their enemies. With opium, belladonna, brucaea,
snake-wood, and the cherry-laurel, they put to sleep all who stand in
their way. There is not one of those women, Egyptian, Turkish, or
Greek, whom here you call 'good women,' who do not know how, by means of
chemistry, to stupefy a doctor, and in psychology to amaze a confessor."

"Really," said Madame de Villefort, whose eyes sparkled with strange
fire at this conversation.

"Oh, yes, indeed, madame," continued Monte Cristo, "the secret dramas
of the East begin with a love philtre and end with a death potion--begin
with paradise and end with--hell. There are as many elixirs of every
kind as there are caprices and peculiarities in the physical and moral
nature of humanity; and I will say further--the art of these chemists
is capable with the utmost precision to accommodate and proportion the
remedy and the bane to yearnings for love or desires for vengeance."