The Count of Monte Cristo

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human justice, and succeed in their fraudulent enterprises by cunning
stratagems. Amongst us a simpleton, possessed by the demon of hate or
cupidity, who has an enemy to destroy, or some near relation to dispose
of, goes straight to the grocer's or druggist's, gives a false name,
which leads more easily to his detection than his real one, and under
the pretext that the rats prevent him from sleeping, purchases five or
six grammes of arsenic--if he is really a cunning fellow, he goes to
five or six different druggists or grocers, and thereby becomes only
five or six times more easily traced;--then, when he has acquired his
specific, he administers duly to his enemy, or near kinsman, a dose of
arsenic which would make a mammoth or mastodon burst, and which, without
rhyme or reason, makes his victim utter groans which alarm the entire
neighborhood. Then arrive a crowd of policemen and constables. They
fetch a doctor, who opens the dead body, and collects from the entrails
and stomach a quantity of arsenic in a spoon. Next day a hundred
newspapers relate the fact, with the names of the victim and the
murderer. The same evening the grocer or grocers, druggist or druggists,