room, in the scullery, as usual, to be washed
at the proper time. While she and her
companion were still engaged over their soup,
young Duparc and his mother suddenly
burst into the kitchen, followed by the other
persons who had partaken of dinner.

"We are all poisoned!" cried Madame
Duparc, in the greatest terror. "Good
heavens! I smell burnt arsenic in the kitchen!"

Monsieur Fergaut, the visitor, hearing these
last words, politely stepped forward to echo
them.

"Burnt arsenic, beyond a doubt," said
Monsieur Fergaut. When this gentleman
was subsequently questioned on the subject,
it may not be amiss to mention, that he
was quite unable to say what burnt arsenic
smelt like. Neither is it altogether out of
place to inquire how Madame Duparc
happened to be so amazingly apt at discovering
the smell of burnt arsenic? The answer to
the question does not seem easy to discover.

Having settled that they were all
poisoned, and having even found out (thanks
to those two intelligent amateur chemists,
Madame Duparc and Monsieur Fergaut)
the very nature of the deadly drug that
had been used to destroy them, the next
thing the company naturally thought of was
the necessity of summoning medical help.
Young Monsieur Beauguillot obligingly ran
off (it was apparently a very mild case of
poisoning, so far as he was concerned) to the
apothecary's shop, and fetched, not the
apprentice this time, but the master. The
master, Monsieur Thierry, arrived in great
haste, and found the dinner-eaters all
complaining of nausea and pains in the stomach.
He naturally asked, what they had eaten.
The reply was, that they had eaten nothing
but soup.

This was, to say the least of it, rather an
unaccountable answer. The company had
had for dinner, besides soup, a second course
of boiled meat and ragout of beef, and a
dessert of cherries. Why was this plain fact
concealed? Why was the apothecary's
attention to be fixed exclusively on the soup?
Was it because the tureen was empty, and
because the alleged smell of burnt arsenic
might be accounted for on the theory that
the remains of the soup brought from the
dining-room had been thrown on the kitchen
fire? But no remains of soup came down—
it had been all consumed by the guests.
And what is still more remarkable, the only
person in the kitchen (excepting Marie and
the nurse) who could not discover the smell
of burnt arsenic, was the person of all others
who was professionally qualified to find it
out first—the apothecary himself.

After examining the tureen and the plates,
and stirring up the wood ashes on the fire,
and making no sort of discovery, Monsieur
Thierry turned to Marie, and asked if she
could account for what had happened. She
simply replied, that she knew nothing at all
about it; and, thereupon, her mistress and
the rest of the persons present all
overwhelmed her together with a perfect torrent
of questions. The poor girl, terrified by the
hubbub, worn out by a sleepless night and
by the hard work and agitation of the day
preceding it, burst into an hysterical fit of
tears, and was ordered out of the kitchen to
lie down and recover herself. The only
person who showed her the least pity and offered
her the slightest attention was a servant-girl
like herself, who lived next door, and who
stole up to the room in which she was weeping
alone, with a cup of warm milk and water
to comfort her.

Meanwhile, the report had spread in the
town that the old man, Monsieur de Beaulieu,
and the whole Duparc family, had been
poisoned by their servant. Madame Duparc
did her best to give the rumour the widest
possible circulation. Entirely forgetting, as
it would seem, that she was on her own
showing a poisoned woman, she roamed
excitably all over the house with an audience
of agitated female friends at her heels; telling
the burnt-arsenic story over and over again
to every fresh detachment of visitors that
arrived to hear it; and finally leading the
whole troop of women into the room where
Marie was trying to recover herself. The
poor girl was surrounded in a moment; angry
faces and shrill voices met her on every side;
the most insolent questions, the most
extravagant accusations assailed her; and not one
word that she could say in her own defence
was listened to for an instant. She had
sprung up in the bed, on her knees, and was
frantically entreating for permission to speak
in her own defence, when a new personage
appeared on the scene, and stilled the clamour
by his presence. This individual was a
surgeon named Hébert, a friend of Madame
Duparc's, who announced that he had arrived
to give the family the benefit of his assistance,
and who proposed to commence operations in
a calm business-like manner, by searching
the servant's pockets without farther delay.

The instant Marie heard him make this
proposal, she untied her pockets, and gave
them to Surgeon Hébert with her own hands.
He examined them on the spot. In one, he
found some copper money and a thimble. In
the other (to use his own words, given in
evidence) he discovered "various fragments
  of bread, sprinkled over with some minute
substance which was white and shining. He
  kept the fragments of bread, and left the
room immediately without saying a word."
By this course of proceeding he gave Marie
no chance of stating at the outset whether
she knew of the fragments of bread being in
her pocket, or whether she was totally ignorant
how they came there. Setting aside,
for the present, the question, whether there
was really any arsenic on the crumbs at all,
it would clearly have been showing the
unfortunate maid-of-all-work no more than