on returning to the kitchen to go on with her work, the exhaustion against which marie had hitherto fought successfully, overpowered her the moment she sat down; her heavy head drooped, her eyes closed in spite of her, and she fell into a broken, uneasy slumber. madame duparc and her daughter, seeing the condition she was in, undertook the preparation of the day’s dinner themselves. among the dishes which they got ready, and which they salted from the cellars on the dresser, were two different kinds of soup — one kind for themselves, made from fresh “stock”’ — the other, for marie and the nurse, made from old “stock.” they were engaged over their cookery, when monsieur duparc arrived from the country; and marie was awakened to take the horse he had ridden to the stables, to unsaddle the animal, and to give him his feed of corn. while she was thus engaged, madame duparc and her daughter remained alone in the kitchen. when she left the stable, it was time for her to lay the cloth. she was told to put plates for seven persons. only six, however, sat down to dinner. those six were, madame de beaulieu, monsieur and madame duparc, the youngest of their two sons, madame beauguillot (sister of madame duparc), and monsieur beauguillot (her son). mademoiselle duparc remained in the kitchen to help marie in serving up the dinner, and only took her place at table after the soup had been put on. her elder brother, after summoning his father home, had not returned to the house.
after the soup had been taken away, and while marie was waiting at table during the eating of the second course, young duparc complained that he felt something gritty between his teeth. his mother made precisely the same remark. nobody else, however, agreed with them, and the subject was allowed to drop. when the second course was done with, the dessert followed, consisting of a plate of cherries. with the dessert there arrived a visitor, monsieur fergant, a relation of madame duparc’s. this gentleman placed himself at table with the rest of the company.
meanwhile, the nurse and marie were making their dinner in the kitchen off the soup which had been specially provided for them — marie having previously placed the dirty plates, and the empty soup-tureen from the dining-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 burned arsenic in the kitchen!”
monsieur fergant, the visitor, hearing these last words, politely stepped forward to echo them. “burned arsenic, beyond a doubt,” said monsieur fergant. when this gentleman was subsequently questioned on the subject, it may not be amiss to mention that he was quite unable to say what burned arsenic smelled like. neither is it altogether out of place to inquire how madame duparc happened to be so amazingly apt at discovering the smell of burned 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 fergant) 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 burned 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 burned 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 rumor 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 burned-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 defense 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 defense, when a new personage appeared on the scene, and stilled the clamor 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 by searching the servant’s pockets without further 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 common justice to have allowed her the opportunity of speaking before the bread was carried away.
it was now seven o’clock in the evening. the next event was the arrival of another officious visitor. the new friend in need belonged to the legal profession — he was an advocate named friley. monsieur friley’s legal instincts led him straightway to a conclusion which seriously advanced the progress of events. having heard the statement of madame duparc and her daughter, he decided that it was his duty to lodge an information against marie before the procurator of the king, at caen.
the procurator of the king is, by this time, no stranger to the reader. he was the same monsieur revel who had taken such an amazingly strong interest in marie’s fortunes, and who had strongly advised her to try her luck at caen. here then, surely, was a friend found at last for the forlorn maid of all work. “we shall see how monsieur revel acted, after friley’s information had been duly lodged.
the french law of the period, and, it may be added, the commonest principles of justice also, required the procurator to perform certain plain duties as soon as the accusation against marie had reached his ears.
he was, in the first place, bound to proceed immediately, accompanied by his official colleague, to the spot where the alleged crime of poisoning was supposed to have taken place. arrived there, it was his business to ascertain for himself the condition of the persons attacked with illness; to hear their statements; to examine the rooms, the kitchen utensils, and the family medicine-chest, if there happened to be one in the house; to receive any statement the accused person might wish to make; to take down her answers to his questions; and, lastly, to keep anything found on the servant (the bread-crumbs, for instance, of which surgeon hébert had coolly taken possession), or anything found about the house which it might be necessary to produce in evidence, in a position of absolute security, under the hand and seal of justice.
these were the plain duties which monsieur revel, the procurator, was officially bound to fulfill. in the case of marie, he not only neglected to perform any one of them, but actually sanctioned a scheme for entrapping her into prison, by sending a commissary of police to the house, in plain clothes, with an order to place her in solitary confinement. to what motive could this scandalous violation of his duties and of justice be attributed? the last we saw of monsieur revel, he was so benevolently disposed toward marie that he condescended to advise her about her prospects in life, and even went the length of recommending her to seek for a situation in the very town in which he lived himself. and now we find him so suddenly and bitterly hostile toward the former object of his patronage, that he actually lends the assistance of his high official position to sanction an accusation against her, into the truth or falsehood of which he had not made a single inquiry! can it be that monsieur revel’s interest in marie was, after all, not of the purest possible kind, and that the unfortunate girl proved too stubbornly virtuous to be taught what the real end was toward which the attentions of her over-benevolent adviser privately pointed? there is no evidence attaching to the case (as how should there be?) to prove this. but is there any other explanation of monsieur revel’s conduct which at all tends to account for the extraordinary inconsistency of it?
having received his secret instructions, the commissary of police — a man named bertot — proceeded to the house of monsieur and madame duparc, disguised in plain clothes. his first proceeding was to order marie to produce the various plates, dishes, and kitchen-utensils which had been used at the dinner of tuesday, the seventh of august (that being the day on which the poisoning of the company was alleged to have taken place). marie produced a saucepan, an earthen vessel, a stew-pan, and several plates piled on each other, in one of which there were the remains of some soup. these articles bertot locked up in the kitchen cupboard, and took away the key with him. he ought to have taken the additional precaution of placing a seal on the cupboard, so as to prevent any tampering with the lock, or any treachery with a duplicate key. but this he neglected to do.
his next proceeding was to tell marie that the procurator revel wished to speak to her, and to propose that she should accompany him to the presence of that gentleman forthwith. not having the slightest suspicion of any treachery, she willingly consented, and left the house with the commissary. a friend of the duparcs, named vassol, accompanied them.
once out of the house, bertot led his unsuspecting prisoner straight to the jail. as soon as she was inside the gates, he informed her that she was arrested, and proceeded to search her person in the presence of vassol, of the jailer of the prison, and of a woman named dujardin. the first thing found on her was a little linen bag, sewn to her petticoat, and containing a species of religious charm, in the shape of a morsel of the sacramental wafer. her pockets came next under review (the pockets which surgeon hébert had previously searched). a little dust was discovered at the bottom of them, which was shaken out on paper, wrapped up along with the linen bag, sealed in one packet, and taken to the procurator’s office. finally, the woman dujardin found in marie’s bosom a little key, which she readily admitted to be the key of her own cupboard.
the search over, one last act of cruelty and injustice was all that remained to be committed for that day. the unfortunate girl was placed at once in solitary confinement.
