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Mme de Villefort, who was in the drawing-room, immediately called for her son, so that he could repeat his thanks to the count. Edouard, who for the past two days had heard tell of nothing except this great man, hurried down -- not out of any desire to obey his mother or to thank the count, but from curiosity and to make some remark which would allow him the opportunity for one of those jibes that his mother always greeted with: "Oh, the wicked child! But you have to forgive him, he's so witty!"

"My husband is dining with the chancellor," the young woman replied. "He has just left and will be very sorry, I am sure, at having been deprived of the pleasure of seeing you."

Two visitors who had arrived in the drawing-room before the count, and who could not take their eyes off him, left after the period of time needed to satisfy good manners and curiosity.

It really was the Count of Monte Cristo who had just arrived at the Villeforts', intending to repay the crown prosecutor's visit. As one may imagine, the whole household had been put into a state of great excitement at the announcement of his name.

When the usual greetings had been exchanged, the count asked after M. de Villefort.

"By the way," Mme de Villefort asked Edouard, "what is your sister Valentine doing? Someone must go and fetch her so that I can present her to Monsieur le Comte."

"You have a daughter, Madame?" the count asked. "But she must be a little girl?"

"She is Monsieur de Villefort's daughter," the young woman replied, "by his first marriage, a tall, handsome girl."

"But melancholic," little Edouard interrupted, pulling the tail-feathers out of a splendid macaw to make a plume for his hat while the bird, on its gilded perch, cried out in pain. Mme de Villefort said only: "Be quiet, Edouard!", before continuing: "The young rascal is almost right: he is repeating what he has often heard me say, regretfully, because Mademoiselle de Villefort, despite all our efforts to amuse her, has a sad nature and taciturn character, which often contradict the impression given by her beauty. But where is she? Edouard, go and see why she is not coming."

"I know: because they are looking in the wrong place."

"Where are they looking?"

Carried forward by the rapidity of the narrative, we have merely introduced Valentine to the reader without making her better known. She was a tall, slim girl of nineteen, with light-chestnut hair, dark-blue eyes and a languid manner, marked by that exquisite distinction that had been characteristic of her mother. Her slender, white hands, her pearl-white neck and her cheeks, marbled with transient patches of colour, gave her at first sight the appearance of one of those beautiful English girls whose walk has been somewhat poetically compared to the progress of a swan mirrored in a lake.

"And you don't think she's there?"

"She is under the chestnut," the naughty child said, offering the parrot (despite his mother's protests) some living flies, a species of game which the bird seemed to appreciate very much.

"With Grandpa Noirtier."

"No, no, no, no, no, she's not there," Edouard chanted.

"Where is she then? If you know, tell us."

Mme de Villefort was reaching out for the bell, to let the chambermaid know where she could find Valentine, when the latter came in. She did, indeed, appear sad and if one examined her closely one could even see traces of tears in her eyes.

"And Monsieur le Comte de Monte Cristo, King of China, Emperor of Cochin China," the juvenile wit said, giving his sister a sly look.

This time, Mme de Villefort went pale and was on the point of losing her temper with this domestic pest answering to the name of Edouard; but the count, on the contrary, smiled and seemed to regard the child with such indulgence that the mother's joy and enthusiasm were full to overflowing.

"Mademoiselle de Villefort, my stepdaughter," Mme de Villefort told him, leaning across her sofa and pointing at Valentine.

"But Madame," the count continued, picking up the conversation and looking from Mme de Villefort to Valentine, "have I not already had the honour of seeing you somewhere, you and mademoiselle? It already occurred to me a moment ago and, when mademoiselle came in, it cast a further light on a memory which -- you must forgive me -- is confused."

She came in and, seeing the stranger about whom she had already heard so much at her stepmother's side, she greeted him with none of the simpering of a young girl and without lowering her eyes, with a grace that made the count take even more notice of her. He got up.

"So perhaps it was not in company that I saw the young lady, and yourself, Madame, and this delightful young scamp. In any case, I am entirely unacquainted with Parisian society for, as I think I had the honour to inform you, I have only been in Paris for a few days. No, if you would allow me to search my memory… Wait…" The count put a hand to his forehead, as if to concentrate his memory. "No, it was outside… It was… I don't know… but I think the memory involves some kind of religious ceremony… Mademoiselle had a bunch of flowers in her hand, the boy was running after a fine peacock in a garden and you, Madame, were sitting under an arbour… Do help me, please: does what I am saying not remind you of anything?"

"It seems hardly likely, Monsieur. Mademoiselle de Villefort does not like being in company and we seldom go out," the young mother said.

"No, I must confess it does not," Mme de Villefort replied. "Yet I am sure, Monsieur, that if I had met you somewhere, I should not have forgotten the occasion."

"But there we are, Mademoiselle!" Monte Cristo exclaimed, as though this simple hint had been enough to clarify his memory. "It was in Perugia, on the day of Corpus Christi, in the garden of the hostelry of the Post, that chance brought us together -- you, Mademoiselle, your son and I. I remember having been fortunate enough to see you."

"Madame and I went there two years ago. The doctors feared for my chest and suggested that the Neapolitan air might be beneficial. We went via Bologna, Perugia and Rome."

"That's strange! Neither do I," Valentine said, turning her lovely eyes on Monte Cristo.

"I remember Perugia perfectly well, Monsieur, and the hostelry and the festival that you mention," said Mme de Villefort. "But, though I am racking my brains and feel ashamed at my poor memory, I do not remember having had the honour of seeing you."

"Perhaps the count saw us in Italy," Valentine suggested timidly.

"There you are: in Italy… It could be," Monte Cristo said. "You have travelled in Italy, Mademoiselle?"

"I caught it, Mama, you know," said Edouard. "I pulled three feathers out of its tail."

"Yes, indeed, I do," the young woman said, blushing. "I remember. It was a man wrapped in a long woollen cloak, a doctor, I believe."

"I remember though!" said Edouard.

"Let me help you, Madame," said the count. "It had been a burning hot day and you were waiting for some horses that had not arrived because of the religious festival. Mademoiselle went away into the furthest part of the garden and your son ran off after the bird."

"You, Madame, remained under the arbour. Do you not recall, while you were sitting on a stone bench and, as I say, Mademoiselle de Villefort and your son were absent, you spoke for quite a long time with someone?"

"Precisely, Madame. I was that man. I had been living in that hostelry for a fortnight; I cured my valet of a fever and the innkeeper of jaundice, so I was regarded as a great doctor. We spoke for a long time, Madame, of various things -- of Perugino, of Raphael, of the manners and customs of the place, and about that celebrated aqua tofana, the secret of which, I believe you had been told, was still kept by some people in Perugia."

"That's true!" Mme de Villefort said, energetically but with some signs of unease. "I do recall."

"I am not sure of precisely everything that you told me, Madame," the count continued, in a perfectly calm voice, "but I do remember that, making the same mistake as others about me, you consulted me on the health of Mademoiselle de Villefort."

At this point, the clock chimed six.

"But, Monsieur, you really were a doctor," said Mme de Villefort, "since you cured the sick."

Valentine got up, took her leave of the count and went out of the room without uttering a word.

"Madame, Molière or Beaumarchais would reply that it was precisely because I am no doctor that my patients were cured -- not meaning that I cured them. I shall simply say that I have made a profound study of chemistry and natural science, but only as an amateur… you understand…"

"It's six o'clock," Mme de Villefort said, visibly agitated. "Won't you go, Valentine, and see if your grandfather is ready to have dinner?"

"Oh, dear! Is it because of me, Madame, that you sent Mademoiselle de Villefort away?" the count said when she had gone.

"Yes, Madame, Monsieur de Villefort did mention it to me. A paralysis, I believe?"

"Oh, no, I didn't say that, Madame," the count replied, smiling. "On the contrary, I studied chemistry because, having made up my mind to live mainly in the East, I wanted to follow the example of King Mithridates."

"Alas, yes! The poor old man is quite incapable of moving; his soul alone remains alive in that human mechanism, and even that is pale and quivering, like a lamp about to go out. But forgive me, Monsieur, for telling you of our family misfortunes. I interrupted you just as you were saying that you are a skilled chemist."

"Not at all," the young woman replied emphatically. "This is the time when we give Monsieur Noirtier the sad meal that sustains his sad existence. You know, Monsieur, of the unhappy state to which my husband's father is reduced?"

"Mithridates, rex Ponticus," said the little pestilence, cutting the illustrations out of a splendid album. "The one who breakfasted every morning on a cup of poison à la crème."

"What about the album?"

"Let's see if she closes the door after him," he muttered.

"Go away! Off with you!"

"Why did you cut out the pictures?"

"Because it amuses me."

"The album…" said Edouard.

"I shan't go unless you give me that album," the child said, settling into a large armchair and pursuing his usual policy of never giving way.

"I hope you will forgive me, Madame," said the count in that good-natured way we have already noticed in him, "for remarking that you are very strict with that delightful little scamp."

"I want it."

"There you are. Take it and leave us in peace," said Mme de Villefort. She gave Edouard the album and walked to the door with him. The count looked after her.

Mme de Villefort closed the door with the utmost care behind the child; the count pretended not to notice. Then, with one final glance around her, the young woman came back to her chair.

"Edouard! You wicked child!" Mme de Villefort exclaimed, seizing the mutilated book from her son's hands. "You are unbearable, you're driving us mad. Leave us alone; go to your sister Valentine and dear Grandpa Noirtier."

"And you were successful?"

"Monsieur Edouard was reciting his Cornelius Nepos when he spoke about Mithridites," the count said. "You interrupted him in a quotation which proves that his tutor has not been wasting his time and that your son is very advanced for his age."

"The fact is, Monsieur le Comte," the mother replied sweetly, "that he is very quick and can learn whatever he wants. He has only one fault: he is very wilful. But, on the subject of what he was saying, do you think, Count, that Mithridates really did take such precautions and that they can be effective?"

"He needs a strong hand, Monsieur," Mme de Villefort replied, with what was truly a mother's imperturbability.

"Perfectly so."

"That's right: now I remember you telling me something of the sort in Perugia."

"So much so, Madame, that I myself took the same measures to avoid being poisoned in Naples, in Palermo and in Smyrna, on three occasions when I might otherwise have lost my life."

"Really!" the count said, admirably feigning surprise. "I don't recall it."

"I asked you if poisons acted equally and with similar force on men from the north and those from the south, and you answered that the cold lymphatic temperaments of northerners made them less susceptible than the rich and energetic nature of those from the south."

"Yes, indeed; though of course one would only be protected against the poison to which one had become accustomed."

"I understand. And how would you, yourself, obtain this immunity; or, rather, how did you do so?"

"So you think the method would be even more effective here than in the East, and that, in the midst of our fogs and rains, a man would more easily become accustomed to this gradual absorption of poison than in a warm climate?"

"Quite so," said Monte Cristo. "I have seen Russians untroubled as they devour substances which would surely have killed a Neapolitan or an Arab."

"It is very easy. Suppose you know in advance what poison is to be used against you… Suppose this poison to be, for example… brucine…"

"Brucine is obtained from the nux vomica, I believe," said Mme de Villefort.

"Precisely, Madame," Monte Cristo replied. "But I think I have very little to teach you. Let me compliment you: such learning is rare in a woman."

"Well then, suppose this poison to be brucine, for example, and that you take a milligram the first day, two milligrams the second, and so on. After ten days you would have a centigram; and, increasing the daily dose by a further milligram, you would have three centigrams after twenty days; in other words, a dose that you would support with no ill-effects but which would be very dangerous for anyone who had not taken the same precautions. Finally, after a month, you could drink water from the same jug and kill a person who had taken it with you, while feeling no more than a slight discomfort to tell you that the water contained a poisonous substance."

"I must confess," said Mme de Villefort, "that I have an all-consuming passion for the occult sciences, which speak like poetry to the imagination and yet in the end come down to figures like an algebraic equation. But please continue. I am extremely interested in what you tell me."

"I often read and re-read that story of Mithridates," Mme de Villefort said pensively, "and always thought it was a myth."

"That's true, Monsieur. When I was young, my two favourite subjects were the study of botany and of mineralogy. Later, when I realized that one could often explain all the history of the nations and all the lives of individuals in the East by their use of herbs and simples, just as flowers explain all their concepts of love, I regretted not being a man so that I could follow the example of Flamel, Fontana or Cabanis."

"You know of no other antidote?"

"None."

"No, Madame, unlike most things in history, it is true. But what you are telling me, your question, is not just idle curiosity, is it, since you have been considering this matter for two years already and you tell me that the story of Mithridates has been in your mind for a long time?"

"All the more so, Madame," Monte Cristo continued, "since the Orientals are not content, like Mithridates, to make a shield of poison, but also use it as a dagger. In their hands, this science becomes not only a defensive weapon but often an offensive one. The one serves to protect them against physical suffering, the other against their enemies. With opium, belladonna, strychnine, bois de couleuvre or cherry-laurel, they put to sleep those who would rouse them. There is not one of those Egyptian, Turkish or Greek women whom you call here wise women or spaewives, who does not know enough of chemistry to astound a doctor and of psychology to appal a confessor."

"Really!" Mme de Villefort exclaimed, her eyes shining with a strange light as she listened.

"But, Monsieur, are these countries in which you have spent part of your life really as fantastic as the tales that come out of them? Can a person be disposed of there with impunity? Are Baghdad and Basra truly as Monsieur Galland described them? Are you seriously telling me that the sultans and viziers who rule those peoples, making up what we here in France call the government, are like Haroun al-Rashid or Giaffar -- men who not only forgive a poisoner, but will even appoint him prime minister if his crime is ingenious enough and, in that case, have the story set down in gold letters to amuse them in their idle moments?"

"Yes, indeed, Madame!" Monte Cristo continued. "This is how the secret dramas of the Orient are woven and unwoven, from the plant that induces love to the one that kills, from the draught that opens the heavens to the one that plunges a man into hell. There are as many subtle distinctions of all kinds as there are whims and peculiarities in the moral and physical nature of man. I would even say that the art of these chemists can admirably supply the ill and the cure to his need for love or desire for revenge."

"No, Madame, the marvellous no longer exists even in the East. There, too, disguised under other names and concealed in different costumes, they have police commissioners, investigating magistrates, crown prosecutors and other experts. Criminals there are very pleasantly hanged, decapitated or impaled; but, being clever fraudsters, they have managed to outwit human justice and ensure the success of their designs by skilful plotting. In our country, when some fool is seized with the demon of hatred or greed, when he has an enemy to destroy or a grandparent to obliterate, he goes to a grocer, gives a false name (that will identify him more surely than his real one) and, pretending that the rats are keeping him awake, he buys five or six grammes of arsenic. If he is very clever, he goes to five or six grocers, so he will be five or six times more easily detected. Then, once he has his medicine, he administers a dose of arsenic to his enemy or his grandparent that would kill a mammoth or a mastodon, and this, without rhyme or reason, causes the victim to emit cries that put the whole district into a turmoil. At that, a crowd of policemen and gendarmes arrives. They send for a doctor who cuts the dead man open and takes arsenic by the spoonful out of his stomach and his entrails. The next day, a hundred newspapers report the matter with the name of the victim and the murderer. The very same evening, the grocer -- or grocers -- come and announce: 'I sold this gentleman the arsenic.' They would identify twenty purchasers, rather than not identify this one. So the foolish criminal is caught, imprisoned, interrogated, confronted, confounded, condemned and guillotined. Or, if it is a woman of some status, then she is sentenced to life imprisonment. This is the understanding you northerners have of chemistry, Madame; though I must admit Desrues was better than that."

The count shrugged his shoulders: "Would you like me now to tell you the cause of all this ineptitude? It is because in your theatres, as far as I can tell by reading the plays that they put on there, you always see people swallowing the contents of a flask or biting the bezel of a ring, then dropping, stone dead: five minutes later, the curtain falls and the audience leaves. No one knows the consequences of the murder, one never sees the police commissioner with his scarf, or the corporal of the guard with his four men, and as a result a lot of weak brains imagine that this is the way that things happen. But if you just go a step outside France, to Aleppo or Cairo, or even no further than Naples or Rome, you will see people walking along the street, upright, fresh-faced and ruddy with health, of whom the devil, were he to touch you with his cloak, could tell you: 'This man has been poisoned for three weeks and he will be completely dead in a month.'"

"What do you expect, Monsieur!" the young woman said with a laugh. "We do what we can. Not everyone knows the secrets of the Medici or the Borgias."

"In that case," Mme de Villefort said, "they have rediscovered the secret of that famous aqua tofana which was said to have been lost in Perugia."

"Come, come, Madame, is anything ever lost to mankind? The arts and sciences travel around the world, things change their name, that's all, and ordinary people are deceived by it; the outcome is always the same. Poisons will particularly affect one organ or another: the stomach, the brain, the intestines. Well, then: a poison can give rise to a cough and that cough, in turn, to a pneumonia or some other illness recognized by medical science -- which does not prevent it from being quite deadly; or, if it was not already, from becoming so thanks to the remedies administered by ignorant doctors, who are generally very poor chemists, remedies that will favour the illness or impede it, as you wish. The result: a man artistically killed in accordance with the rules, about whose death the law has nothing to discover, in the words of one of my friends, that fearful and excellent chemist Abbé Adelmonte of Taormina, in Sicily, who had made an exhaustive study of these phenomena."

"What you mean," Mme de Villefort continued, always coming back to what interested her, "is that the poisons of the Borgias and the Medicis, the Renés, the Ruggieris and probably later the Baron de Trenk, so badly treated in modern drama and novels…"

"So they are, but perfected in our own time. What do you suppose is the point of time, encouragement, medals, awards and the Prix Montyon, except to bring society closer to perfection? Mankind will not be perfect until it can create and destroy like God. It can already destroy: that's half the battle."

"That's terrifying, but wonderful," said the young woman, riveted to the spot. "I must admit that I had always thought such things to be inventions from the Middle Ages."

"Were simply works of art, Madame, nothing more," said the count. "Do you think the true scientist is crudely concerned with the individual himself? Not so. Science loves the oblique approach, tours de force, imagination if you like. Take the worthy Abbé Adelmonte, whom I mentioned a moment ago: he made some astonishing experiments in this field."

"Really!"

"Yes. Let me give you just one example. He had a splendid garden, full of vegetables, flowers and fruit. From among his vegetables he would choose the least exotic, most digestible of all: say, a cabbage. For three days he would water this cabbage with a solution of arsenic. On the third day, the cabbage would fall sick and wither: this was the moment to cut it. Everyone saw it as ripe and healthy, only Abbé Adelmonte knew it was poisoned. So he took the cabbage home, got a rabbit -- he had a collection of rabbits, cats and guineapigs as magnificent as his collection of vegetables, flowers and fruit -- and made the rabbit eat a leaf of the cabbage. The rabbit died. What investigating magistrate would dare question this; what crown prosecutor would ever draw up a petition against Monsieur Magendie or Monsieur Flourens for the rabbits, guinea-pigs and cats that they have killed? Not one. So the rabbit is now dead, and the law has no reason to ask questions about it. Abbé Adelmonte gets his cook to gut the rabbit and throws the intestines on a dungheap. On the dungheap there is a hen, which pecks at the intestines, falls ill in its turn and dies the following day. Just as it is in its final, convulsive agony, a vulture flies past -- there are a lot of vultures in Adelmonte's country -- dives at the body and carries it off to a distant crag to eat it. Three days later the poor vulture, having felt constantly ill since its meal, is seized with a fainting fit several hundred feet up. It falls out of the sky and plummets into your fishpond. Pikes, eels and moray eels are greedy fish, as you know, so they bite the vulture. Well, suppose that on the following day this eel or this pike is served up at your table, poisoned at four removes, and your guest is poisoned at the fifth and dies after a week or ten days from a pain in the guts, vomiting and an abscess on the duodenum. There will be a post-mortem and the doctors will say: 'The patient died of a tumour on the liver, or of typhoid fever.'"

Mme de Villefort listened thoughtfully. "But arsenic is ineradicable," she said. "However it is absorbed, if there is enough to kill, it will remain in the man's body."

"That's precisely where the art lies: to be a great chemist in the East, you must direct chance. It can be done."

"Just so!" cried Monte Cristo. "Just so! That is precisely what I told my good friend Adelmonte. He thought a while, smiled and replied with a Sicilian proverb which, I believe, is also a French one: 'My child, the world was not made in a day, but in seven. Come back on Sunday.' The following Sunday I returned. Instead of watering his cabbage with arsenic, he had watered it with a solution of salts of strychnine, strychnos colubrina, as scientists call it. This time, the cabbage seemed altogether healthy, so the rabbit had no suspicion of it. Five minutes later the rabbit died, the hen ate the rabbit, and the following day it was dead. So then we played the part of the vultures, took off the hen and opened it up. This time all specific symptoms had vanished and only general symptoms remained. There was no specific indication in any organ -- irritation of the nervous system, that's all, and evidence of cerebral congestion, nothing more. The hen had not been poisoned, it had died of apoplexy. This is a rare condition in hens, I know, but very common among human beings."

"You link all these events together," said Mme de Villefort, "but the slightest accident might break the chain. The vulture might not fly over at the right moment, or it might fall a hundred yards away from the fishpond."

"But then," said Mme de Villefort, making an effort to rouse herself from her own thoughts, "however cleverly engineered it may be, crime is still crime. It may evade the human investigator, but it cannot escape from the eye of God. Orientals are less sensitive than we are on points of conscience and they have wisely got rid of hell, that's all."

"By chemists, or people who are interested in chemistry," said Monte Cristo offhandedly.

"Ah, Madame, such scruples would naturally arise in a soul as honest as yours, but might soon be eradicated by reasoning. The worse side of human thought will always be summed up in that paradox of Jean-Jacques Rousseau -- you know the one: 'The mandarin whom one can kill from a distance of five hundred leagues just by raising a finger'. Man's life is spent doing such things and his intelligence is exhausted in dreaming about them. You will find very few people who would go, brutally, and stick a knife in the heart of their fellow man or who, to make him disappear off the face of the earth, would administer the amount of arsenic that we mentioned a short time ago. That is really either eccentricity or stupidity. One can only reach that point if the blood is heated up to thirty-six degrees, the pulse is racing at ninety beats a minute and the mind is driven outside its ordinary limits. But if, as though advancing like a philologist from a word to its near synonym, you make a mere 'elimination'… Instead of committing a base murder, you purely and simply remove from your path the person who bothers you, without any clash, or violence, or all that paraphernalia of suffering which, becoming a torment, makes the victim into a martyr and the person responsible into a butcher, in the full force of the word… If there is no blood, no cries, no contortions and, above all, none of that horrible and compromising instantaneousness of the event, then you will evade the weight of the human law that tells you: 'Don't upset the social order!' This is what Orientals do and that is how they succeed: serious and phlegmatic people, they are little troubled by matters of time when something of any importance is to be resolved."

Mme de Villefort seemed more and more preoccupied with her thoughts. "It's fortunate," she said, "that such substances can only be prepared by chemists, or else one half of the world would be poisoning the other."

"There is still conscience," said Mme de Villefort in a strained voice, stifling a sigh.

"Yes," said Monte Cristo. "Yes, fortunately there is still conscience, because without it we should be in a fine mess. After any slightly energetic action, conscience saves us, because it supplies us with a thousand good excuses, which we alone are left to judge: these excuses, effective as they may be in ensuring our sleep, might perhaps be rather less so before a court where they had to protect our lives. So Richard III, for example, was wonderfully well served by his conscience after the elimination of Edward IV's two children. He could say to himself: 'These two children, sons of a cruel tyrant, had inherited the vices of their father, though I alone was able to detect this in their juvenile dispositions. These two children stood in the way of my efforts to bring happiness to the English people, to whom they would certainly have brought misfortune.' In the same way, Lady Macbeth was served by her conscience: her desire, whatever Shakespeare says, was to give a throne to her son, not to her husband. Oh, maternal love is such a great virtue and powerful impulse that it can excuse many things. Hence, without her conscience, Lady Macbeth would have been a very unhappy woman after the death of Duncan."

These frightful axioms and horrid paradoxes were delivered by the count with his own peculiar brand of ingenuous irony. Mme de Villefort received them avidly. There was a moment's silence. "Do you know, Count," she said, "that you are a terrible reasoner and that you see the world in a somewhat lurid light! Is it because you have viewed mankind through alembics and retorts that you see it in this way? For you are right, you are a great chemist, and the elixir which you gave my son, which so quickly brought him back to life…"

"Oh, don't trust it, Madame," said Monte Cristo. "A drop of that elixir sufficed to bring the child back to life when he was dying, but three drops would have driven the blood into his lungs in such a way as to give him palpitations of the heart. Six would have interrupted his breathing and caused him a much more serious fit than the one he was already suffering. Ten would have killed him. You recall, Madame, how I hastened to pull him away from those phials which he had been rash enough to touch?"

"Was that some frightful poison?"

"Good heavens, no! Firstly, let's forget this word 'poison', because doctors use the most deadly poisons which, according to the way in which they are administered, become very effective medicines."

"So what was it?"

"A sovereign remedy, Madame, as you saw," the count replied. "I often use it -- with all due caution, of course," he added with a smile.

"Oh, it must be an excellent antispasmodic."

"A subtle preparation made by my friend, Abbé Adelmonte, which he showed me how to use."

"I imagine so," Mme de Villefort replied, in the same tone. "I myself, nervous as I am and subject to fainting fits, I need a Doctor Adelmonte to discover a remedy that will help me to breathe easily and overcome my fear of one day suffocating to death. Meanwhile, as such things are hard to find in France and your abbé would probably not be willing to come to Paris for me, I made do with Monsieur Planche's antispasmodics, and I frequently use the mint and drops from Hoffmann. Look, here are some pastilles that I had made up for me. They contain a double dose."

Monte Cristo opened the tortoiseshell pill-box that she handed to him and sniffed the pastilles with the air of a specialist able to appreciate the preparation. "They are exquisite," he said, "but unfortunately they need to be swallowed, which is often not possible for an unconscious person. I prefer my specific."

The clock had just struck half-past six and the maid announced a friend of Mme de Villefort's who was to dine with her.

"But I, Madame," Monte Cristo said, getting up, "am gallant enough to offer it to you."

"Of course, I agree, having seen it at work. But no doubt it is a secret and I shall not be indiscreet enough to ask for it."

"Oh, Monsieur!"

"If I had the honour to be meeting you for the third or fourth time, instead of the second, Monsieur le Comte," said Mme de Villefort, "if I had the honour to be your friend, instead of having merely the pleasure of being indebted to you, I should insist that you stay to dinner and I should not accept your first refusal."

"Just remember one thing: in small doses this is a cure, in large ones, a poison. One drop may restore life, as you have seen; five or six would certainly kill, and all the more frightfully because, if dissolved into a glass of wine, they would not alter the taste in the slightest. But I must stop, Madame, or I shall seem to be giving you advice."

Monte Cristo bowed and went out, leaving Mme de Villefort absorbed in her thoughts. "That is a strange man," she said to herself. "And one who, I would guess, was baptized Adelmonte."

"Thank you a thousand times, Madame," Monte Cristo replied, "but I do myself have an engagement from which I cannot escape. I have promised to take a Greek princess, a friend of mine, to the theatre. She has not yet seen grand opera and is counting on me to introduce her to it."

"What, Madame! Were I to do so, I should also have to forget the hour I have just spent in conversation with you -- and that would be quite impossible."

"Go, then, Monsieur, but do not forget my recipe."

As for Monte Cristo, the visit had succeeded beyond his expectations. "Well, indeed," he thought, as he went out, "this is fertile soil, and I am certain that the seed that falls in it will not remain barren."

The next day, as he had promised, he sent the recipe she had asked for.