mr. david glenney produces his correspondence,
and throws some new lights on the story
i
be pleased to read the following letter from mr. lawyer's-clerk-schmuckle to mr. town-councilor-hof:
"my honored sir,—i beg to report that you may make your mind easy on the subject of madame fontaine. if she leaves frankfort, she will not slip away privately as she did at wurzburg. wherever she may go now, we need not apply again to her relations in this place to help us to find her. henceforth i undertake to keep her in view until the promissory note falls due.
"the lady is at present established as housekeeper in the employment of the firm of wagner, keller, and engelman; and there (barring accidents, which i shall carefully look after) she is likely to remain.
"i have made a memorandum of the date at which her promissory note falls due—viz., the 31st december in the present year. the note being made payable at wurzburg, you must take care (in the event of its not being honored) to have the document protested in that town, and to communicate with me by the same day's post. i will myself see that the law takes its regular course.
"permit me most gratefully to thank you for the advance on my regular fees which you have so graciously transmitted, and believe me your obedient humble servant to command."
ii
i next submit a copy of a letter addressed by the late chemistry-professor fontaine to an honored friend and colleague. this gentleman is still living; and he makes it a condition of supplying the copy that his name shall not appear:—
"illustrious friend and colleague,—you will be surprised at so soon hearing from me again. the truth is, that i have some interesting news for you. an alarming accident has enabled me to test the value of one of my preparations on a living human subject—that subject being a man.
"my last letter informed you that i had resolved on making no further use of the formula for recomposing some of the borgia poisons (erroneously supposed to be destroyed) left to me on the death of my lamented hungarian friend—my master in chemical science.
"the motives which have led me to this decision are, i hope, beyond the reach of blame.
"you will remember agreeing with me, that the two specimens of these resuscitated poisons which i have succeeded in producing are capable—like the poisons already known to modern medical practice—of rendering the utmost benefit in certain cases of disease, if they are administered in carefully regulated doses. should i live to devote them to this good purpose, there will still be the danger (common to all poisonous preparations employed in medicine) of their doing fatal mischief, when misused by ignorance or crime.
"bearing this in mind, i conceive it to be my duty to provide against dangerous results, by devoting myself to the discovery of efficient antidotes, before i adapt the preparations themselves to the capacities of the healing art. i have had some previous experience in this branch of what i call preservative chemistry, and i have already in some degree succeeded in attaining my object.
"the formula in cipher which i now send to you, on the slip of paper enclosed, is an antidote to that one of the two poisons known to you and to me by the fanciful name which you suggested for it—'alexander's wine.'
"with regard to the second of the poisons, which (if you remember) i have entitled—in anticipation of its employment as medicine—'the looking-glass drops,' i regret to say that i have not yet succeeded in discovering the antidote in this case.
"having now sufficiently explained my present position, i may tell you of the extraordinary accident to which i have alluded at the beginning of my letter.
"about a fortnight since, i was sent for, just as i had finished my lecture to the students, to see one of my servants. he had been suffering from illness for one or two days. i had of course offered him my medical services. he refused, however, to trouble me; sending word that he only wanted rest. fortunately one of my assistants happened to see him, and at once felt the necessity of calling in my help.
"the man was a poor half-witted friendless creature, whom i had employed out of pure pity to keep my laboratory clean, and to wash and dry my bottles. he had sense enough to perform such small services as these, and no more. judge of my horror when i went to his bedside, and instantly recognized the symptoms of poisoning by "alexander's wine!"
"i ran back to my laboratory, and unlocked the medicine-chest which held the antidote. in the next compartment, the poison itself was always placed. looking into the compartment now, i found it empty.
"i at once instituted a search, and discovered the bottle left out on a shelf. for the first time in my life, i had been guilty of inexcusable carelessness. i had not looked round me to see that i had left everything safe before quitting the room. the poor imbecile wretch had been attracted by the color of "alexander's wine," and had tasted it (in his own phrase) "to see if it was nice." my inquiries informed me that this had happened at least thirty-six hours since! i had but one hope of saving him—derived from experiments on animals, which had shown me the very gradual progress of the deadly action of the poison.
"what i felt when i returned to the suffering man, i shall not attempt to describe. you will understand how completely i was overwhelmed, when i tell you that i meanly concealed my own disgraceful thoughtlessness from my brethren in the university. i was afraid that my experiments might be prohibited as dangerous, and my want of common prudence be made the subject of public reprimand by the authorities. the medical professors were permitted by me to conclude that it was a case of illness entirely new in their experience.
"in administering the antidote, i had no previous experiments to guide me, except my experiments with rabbits and dogs. whether i miscalculated or whether i was deluded by my anxiety to save the man's life, i cannot say. this at least is certain, i gave the doses too copiously and at too short intervals.
"the patient recovered—but it was after sustaining some incomprehensibly deteriorating change in the blood, which destroyed his complexion, and turned his hair gray. i have since modified the doses; and in dread of losing the memorandum, i have attached a piece of notched paper to the bottle, so as to render any future error of judgment impossible. at the same time, i have facilitated the future administration of the antidote by adding a label to the bottle, stating the exact quantity of the poison taken by my servant, as calculated by myself.
"i ought, by the way, to have mentioned in the cipher that experience has shown me the necessity, if the antidote is to be preserved for any length of time, of protecting it in blue glass from the influence of light.
"let me also tell you that i found a vegetable diet of use in perfecting the effect of the treatment. that mean dread of discovery, which i have already acknowledged, induced me to avail myself of my wife's help in nursing the man. when he began to talk of what had happened to him, i could trust madame fontaine to keep the secret. when he was well enough to get up, the poor harmless creature disappeared. he was probably terrified at the prospect of entering the laboratory again. in any case, i have never seen him or heard of him since.
"if you have had patience to read as far as this, you will understand that i am not sure enough yet of my own discoveries to risk communicating them to any other person than yourself. favor me with any chemical suggestions which may strike you—and then, in case of accidents, destroy the cipher. for the present farewell."
note to doctor fontaine's letter
"alexander's wine" refers to the infamous roderic borgia, historically celebrated as pope alexander the sixth. he was accidentally, and most deservedly, killed by drinking one of the borgia poisons, in a bowl of wine which he had prepared for another person.
the formula for "the looking-glass drops" is supposed to have been found hidden on removing the wooden lining at the back of a looking-glass, which had been used by lucrezia borgia. hence the name.
iii
the third and last letter which i present is written by me, and was addressed to mrs. wagner during her stay at frankfort:—
"i exaggerate nothing, my dear aunt, when i say that i write in great distress. let me beg you to prepare yourself for very sad news.
"it was late yesterday evening before i arrived at bingen. a servant was waiting to take my portmanteau, when i got out of the coach. after first asking my name, he communicated to me the melancholy tidings of dear mr. engelman's death. he had sunk under a fit of apoplexy, at an early hour that morning.
"medical help was close at hand, and was (so far as i can hear) carefully and intelligently exercised. but he never rallied in the least. the fit appears to have killed him, as a bullet might have killed him.
"he had been very dull and heavy on the previous day. in the few words that he spoke before retiring to rest, my name was on his lips. he said, "if i get better i should like to have david here, and to go on with him to our house of business in london." he was very much flushed, and complained of feeling giddy; but he would not allow the doctor to be sent for. his brother assisted him to ascend the stairs to his room, and asked him some questions about his affairs. he replied impatiently, 'keller knows all about it—leave it to keller.'
"when i think of the good old man's benevolent and happy life, and when i remember that it was accidentally through me that he first met madame fontaine, i feel a bitterness of spirit which makes my sense of the loss of him more painful than i can describe. i call to mind a hundred little instances of his kindness to me—and (don't be offended) i wish you had sent some other person than myself to represent you at frankfort.
"he is to be buried here, in two days' time. i hope you will not consider me negligent of your interest in accepting his brother's invitation to follow him to the grave. i think it will put me in a better frame of mind, if i can pay the last tribute of affection and respect to my old friend. when all is over, i will continue the journey to london, without stopping on the road night or day.
"write to me at london, dear aunt; and give my love to minna and fritz—and ask them to write to me also. i beg my best respects to mr. keller. please assure him of my true sympathy; i know, poor man, how deeply he will be grieved."
