Upon this answer Kostolo was taken to task by the President of the court. M. Hardouin pointed out that Kostolo lived with a woman who kept and fed him, giving him money, but that at the same time he was taking money from Mme Boursier as her lover, protesting the while that he loved her. What could the Greek say in justification of such conduct?
"Excuse me, please, everybody," Kostolo replied, unabashed. "I don't know quite how to express myself, but surely what I have done is quite the common thing? I had no means of living but from what Mme Boursier gave me."
The murmurs evoked by the reply Kostolo treated with lofty disdain. He seemed to find his audience somewhat prudish.
To further questioning he answered that he had never proposed marriage to the Veuve Boursier. Possibly something might have been said in fun. He knew, of course, that the late Boursier had made a lot of money.
The cook, Josephine Blin, was called. At one time she had been suspect. Her version of the potage incidents, though generally in agreement with that of the accused widow, differed from it in two essential points. When she took Boursier's soup into the dining-room, she said, Mme Boursier was in the comptoir, three or four paces away from the desk on which she put the terrine. This Mme Boursier denied. She said she had been in the same comptoir as her husband. Josephine declared that Mme Boursier had ordered her to clean the soup-dish out with sand, but her mistress maintained she had bade the girl do no more than clean it. For the rest, Josephine thought about fifteen minutes elapsed before Boursier came to take the soup. During that time she had seen Mme Boursier writing and making up accounts.
Toupie, the medical student, said he had nursed Boursier during the previous year. Boursier was then suffering much in the same way as he had appeared to suffer during his fatal illness. He had heard Mme Boursier consulting with friends about an autopsy, and her refusal had been on their advice.
The doctors called were far from agreeing on the value of the experiments they had made. Orfila, afterwards to intervene in the much more universally notorious case of Mme Lafarge, stuck to his opinion of death by arsenic. If his evidence in the Lafarge case is read it will be seen that in the twenty years that had passed from the Boursier trial his notions regarding the proper routine of analysis for arsenic in a supposedly poisoned body had undergone quite a change. But by then the Marsh technique had been evolved. Here, however, he based his opinion on experiments properly described as "very equivocal;" and stuck to it. He was supported by a colleague named Lesieur.
M. Gardy said he had observed that the greater part of the grains about the ileum, noted on the 1st of August, had disappeared next day. The analysis had been made with quantities too small. He now doubted greatly if the substance taken to be arsenic oxide would account for death.
M. Barruel declared that from the glareous matter removed from the body only a grain of the supposed arsenic had been extracted, and that with difficulty. He had put the substance on glowing charcoal, but, in his opinion, the experiment was VERY EQUIVOCAL. It was at first believed that there was a big amount of arsenic, but he felt impelled to say that the substance noted was nothing other than small clusters of fat. The witness now refused to conclude, as he had concluded on the 1st of August, that enough poison had been in the body to cause death.
It would almost seem that the medical evidence should have been enough to destroy the case for the prosecution, but other witnesses were called.