Madame de Villefort listened with avidity to these appalling maxims and horrible paradoxes, delivered by the count with that ironical simplicity which was peculiar to him. After a moment’s silence, the lady inquired, “Do you know, my dear count,” she said, “that you are a very terrible reasoner, and that you look at the world through a somewhat distempered medium? Have you really measured the world by scrutinies, or through alembics and crucibles? For you must indeed be a great chemist, and the elixir you administered to my son, which recalled him to life almost instantaneously” —
“Oh, do not place any reliance on that, madame; one drop of that elixir sufficed to recall life to a dying child, but three drops would have impelled the blood into his lungs in such a way as to have produced most violent palpitations; six would have suspended his respiration, and caused syncope more serious than that in which he was; ten would have destroyed him. You know, madame, how suddenly I snatched him from those phials which he so imprudently touched?”
“Is it then so terrible a poison?”
“Oh, no. In the first place, let us agree that the word poison does not exist, because in medicine use is made of the most violent poisons, which become, according as they are employed, most salutary remedies.”
“What, then, is it?”
“A skilful preparation of my friend’s the worthy Abbe Adelmonte, who taught me the use of it.”
“Oh,” observed Madame de Villefort, “it must be an admirable anti-spasmodic.”
“Perfect, madame, as you have seen,” replied the count; “and I frequently make use of it — with all possible prudence though, be it observed,” he added with a smile of intelligence.
“Most assuredly,” responded Madame de Villefort in the same tone. “As for me, so nervous, and so subject to fainting fits, I should require a Doctor Adelmonte to invent for me some means of breathing freely and tranquillizing my mind, in the fear I have of dying some fine day of suffocation. In the meanwhile, as the thing is difficult to find in France, and your abbe is not probably disposed to make a journey to Paris on my account, I must continue to use Monsieur Planche’s anti-spasmodics; and mint and Hoffman’s drops are among my favorite remedies. Here are some lozenges which I have made up on purpose; they are compounded doubly strong.” Monte Cristo opened the tortoise-shell box, which the lady presented to him, and inhaled the odor of the lozenges with the air of an amateur who thoroughly appreciated their composition. “They are indeed exquisite,” he said; “but as they are necessarily submitted to the process of deglutition — a function which it is frequently impossible for a fainting person to accomplish — I prefer my own specific.”
“Undoubtedly, and so should I prefer it, after the effects I have seen produced; but of course it is a secret, and I am not so indiscreet as to ask it of you.”
“But I,” said Monte Cristo, rising as he spoke —“I am gallant enough to offer it you.”
“How kind you are.”
“Only remember one thing — a small dose is a remedy, a large one is poison. One drop will restore life, as you have seen; five or six will inevitably kill, and in a way the more terrible inasmuch as, poured into a glass of wine, it would not in the slightest degree affect its flavor. But I say no more, madame; it is really as if I were prescribing for you.” The clock struck half-past six, and a lady was announced, a friend of Madame de Villefort, who came to dine with her.
“If I had had the honor of seeing you for the third or fourth time, count, instead of only for the second,” said Madame de Villefort; “if I had had the honor of being your friend, instead of only having the happiness of being under an obligation to you, I should insist on detaining you to dinner, and not allow myself to be daunted by a first refusal.”
“A thousand thanks, madame,” replied Monte Cristo “but I have an engagement which I cannot break. I have promised to escort to the Academie a Greek princess of my acquaintance who has never seen your grand opera, and who relies on me to conduct her thither.”