"Eh! nobody says so, yet everybody thinks so. For my part, I believe the Contessa capable of anything. At all events, Morone died very suddenly, and was duly buried in that old ancestral vault to which his devoted wife, a year after his death, paid a visit. Well, before he died, Morone grew suspicious of the Contessa, and as he had just invented or rediscovered a poison which left no trace of having been used, and also an antidote to the same, he determined not to give the Signora an opportunity of exercising it on him, so this toxicological secret was buried with him."
"Ah! I see now why she went to the graveyard. It was to get this poison."
"Exactly! Whether it was put in the coffin of the dead man, or merely hidden in the vault, I don't know, but we will go and see."
"To what end? She has the poison!"
"Certainly! I believe that, after seeing it exercised upon Pallanza; but she has not got the antidote."
"How do you know that, Beltrami."
"Because the Contessa knows nothing of the existence of the antidote. Morone talked enough about the poison itself, but he only mentioned the antidote to one man, and that was myself. You see, Hugo, he thought madame might try a little of his own poison on himself, in which case I would be able to give him the antidote."
"Couldn't he have taken it himself?"
"No! this poison does not kill unless given in a large quantity; five drops make you feel chill and listless; ten drops take away your senses and converts you into what I may paradoxically call a breathing corpse; but fifteen drops kill. So, if madame had given her husband fifteen drops he would have lapsed into a stupor and died, unless the antidote was given, so that is why he bestowed it on me."
"Well, but she killed him after all?"