These vehement words were received with loud murmurs.
“You know that poisoner,” cried the quarryman, seizing the Jesuit by the collar; “then perhaps you are a poisoner too.
“Wretch,” exclaimed Father d’Aigrigny, endeavoring to shake himself loose from the grasp, “do you dare to lay hand upon me?”
“Yes, I dare do anything,” answered the quarryman.
“He knows him: he’s a poisoner like the other,” cried the crowd, pressing round the two adversaries; whilst Goliath, who had fractured his skull in the fall, uttered a long death-rattle.
At a sudden movement of Father d’Aigrigny, who disengaged himself from the quarryman, a large glass phial of peculiar form, very thick, and filled with a greenish liquor, fell from his pocket, and rolled close to the dying Goliath. At sight of this phial, many voices exclaimed together: “It is poison! Only see! He had poison upon him.”
The clamor redoubled at this accusation, and they pressed so close to Abbe d’Aigrigny, that he exclaimed: “Do not touch me! do not approach me!”
“If he is a poisoner,” said a voice, “no more mercy for him than for the other.”
“I a poisoner?” said the abbe, struck with horror.
Ciboule had darted upon the phial; the quarryman seized it from her, uncorked it and presenting it to Father d’Aigrigny, said to him: “Now tell us what is that?”