But it was a bad sign (she thought) that her sense of caution had been completely suspended, in the eagerness of her curiosity to know if Mr. Keller's message of invitation referred to the wedding day. "I lose my best treasure," she said to herself sadly, "if I am beginning to lose my steadiness of mind. If this should happen again——"
She left the expression of the idea uncompleted; locked the door of the room; and returned to the place on which she had left the box.
Seating herself, she rested the box on her knee and opened it.
Certain tell-tale indentations, visible where the cover fitted into the lock, showed that it had once been forced open. The lock had been hampered on some former occasion; and the key remained so fast fixed in it that it could neither be turned nor drawn out. In her newly-aroused distrust of her own prudence, she was now considering the serious question of emptying the box, and sending it to be fitted with a lock and key.
"Have I anything by me," she thought to herself, "in which I can keep the bottles?"
She emptied the box, and placed round her on the floor those terrible six bottles which had been the special subjects of her husband's precautionary instructions on his death-bed. Some of them were smaller than others, and were manufactured in glass of different colors—the six compartments in the medicine-chest being carefully graduated in size, so as to hold them all steadily. The labels on three of the bottles were unintelligible to Madame Fontaine; the inscriptions were written in barbarously abridged Latin characters.
The bottle which was the fourth in order, as she took them out one by one, was wrapped in a sheet of thick cartridge-paper, covered on its inner side with characters written in mysterious cipher. But the label pasted on the bottle contained an inscription in good readable German, thus translated:
"The Looking-Glass Drops. Fatal dose, as discovered by experiment on animals, the same as in the case of 'Alexander's Wine.' But the effect, in producing death, more rapid, and more indistinguishable, in respect of presenting traces on post-mortem examination."
The lines thus written were partially erased by strokes of the pen—drawn through them at a later date, judging by the color of the ink. In the last blank space left at the foot of the label, these words were added—also in ink of a fresher color:
"After many patient trials, I can discover no trustworthy antidote to this infernal poison. Under these circumstances, I dare not attempt to modify it for medical use. I would throw it away—but I don't like to be beaten. If I live a little longer I will try once more, with my mind refreshed by other studies."