The Count of Monte Cristo

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the Sunday following I did return to him. Instead of having watered his
cabbage with arsenic, he had watered it this time with a solution of
salts, having their basis in strychnine, strychnos colubrina, as the
learned term it. Now, the cabbage had not the slightest appearance of
disease in the world, and the rabbit had not the smallest distrust; yet,
five minutes afterwards, the rabbit was dead. The fowl pecked at the
rabbit, and the next day was a dead hen. This time we were the
vultures; so we opened the bird, and this time all special symptoms had
disappeared, there were only general symptoms. There was no peculiar
indication in any organ--an excitement of the nervous system--that was
it; a case of cerebral congestion--nothing more. The fowl had not been
poisoned--she had died of apoplexy. Apoplexy is a rare disease among
fowls, I believe, but very common among men." Madame de Villefort
appeared more and more thoughtful.

"It is very fortunate," she observed, "that such substances could only
be prepared by chemists; otherwise, all the world would be poisoning