La Corriveau looked out of the window and saw a corner of the rock lit up with the last ray of the setting sun. She knew it was time to prepare for her journey. She loosened her long black and gray elfin locks, and let them fall dishevelled over her shoulders. Her thin, cruel lips were drawn to a rigid line, and her eyes were filled with red fire as she drew the casket of ebony out of her bosom and opened it with a reverential touch, as a devotee would touch a shrine of relics. She took out a small, gilded vial of antique shape, containing a clear, bright liquid, which, as she shook it up, seemed filled with a million sparks of fire.
Before drawing the glass stopper of the vial, La Corriveau folded a handkerchief carefully over her mouth and nostrils, to avoid inhaling the volatile essence of its poisonous contents. Then, holding the bouquet with one hand at arm's length, she sprinkled the glowing roses with the transparent liquid from the vial which she held in the other hand, repeating, in a low, harsh tone, the formula of an ancient incantation, which was one of the secrets imparted to Antonio Exili by the terrible Beatrice Spara.
La Corriveau repeated by rote, as she had learned from her mother, the ill-omened words, hardly knowing their meaning, beyond that they were something very potent, and very wicked, which had been handed down through generations of poisoners and witches from the times of heathen Rome:
“'Hecaten voco!
Voco Tisiphonem!
Spargens avernales aquas,
Te morti devoveo, te diris ago!”'
The terrible drops of the aqua tofana glittered like dew on the glowing flowers, taking away in a moment all their fragrance, while leaving all their beauty unimpaired. The poison sank into the very hearts of the roses, whence it breathed death from every petal and every leaf, leaving them fair as she who had sent them, but fatal to the approach of lip or nostril, fit emblems of her unpitying hate and remorseless jealousy.
La Corriveau wrapped the bouquet in a medicated paper of silver tissue, which prevented the escape of the volatile death, and replacing the roses carefully in the basket, prepared for her departure to Beaumanoir.
CHAPTER XL. QUOTH THE RAVEN, “NEVERMORE!”
It was the eve of St. Michael. A quiet autumnal night brooded over the forest of Beaumanoir. The moon, in her wane, had risen late, and struggled feebly among the broken clouds that were gathering slowly in the east, indicative of a storm. She shed a dim light through the glades and thickets, just enough to discover a path where the dark figure of a woman made her way swiftly and cautiously towards the Château of the Intendant.
She was dressed in the ordinary costume of a peasant-woman, and carried a small basket on her arm, which, had she opened it, would have been found to contain a candle and a bouquet of fresh roses carefully covered with a paper of silver tissue,—nothing more. An honest peasant-woman would have had a rosary in her basket, but this was no honest-peasant woman, and she had none.