"I am no peasant-woman," replied La Corriveau, with a touch of pride, "I come of a race ancient and terrible as the Roman Caesars! But pshaw!

what have you to do with that? Give me the pledge of your good faith and I will help you."

Angelique rose instantly, and, opening the drawer of an escritoire, took out a long silken purse filled with louis d'or, which peeped and glittered through the interstices of the net-work. She gave it with the air of one who cared nothing for money.

La Corriveau extended both hands eagerly, clutching as with the claws of a harpy. She pressed the purse to her thin bloodless lips, and touched with the ends of her bony fingers the edges of the bright coin visible through the silken net.

"This is indeed a rare earnest-penny!" exclaimed La Corriveau. "I will do your whole bidding, Mademoiselle; only I must do it in my own way. I have guessed aright the nature of your trouble and the remedy you seek.

But I cannot guess the name of your false lover, nor that of the woman whose doom is sealed from this hour."

"I will not tell you the name of my lover," replied Angelique. She was reluctant to mention the name of Bigot as her lover. The idea was hateful to her. "The name of the woman I cannot tell you, even if I would," added she.

"How, Mademoiselle? you put the death-mark upon one you do not know?"

"I do not know her name. Nevertheless, La Corriveau, that gold, and ten times as much, are yours, if you relieve me of the torment of knowing that the secret chamber of Beaumanoir contains a woman whose life is death to all my hopes, and disappointment to all my plans."

The mention of Beaumanoir startled La Corriveau.

"The lady of Beaumanoir!" she exclaimed, "whom the Abenaquis brought in from Acadia? I saw that lady in the woods of St. Valier, when I was gathering mandrakes one summer day. She asked me for some water in God's name. I cursed her silently, but I gave her milk. I had no water.

She thanked me. Oh, how she thanked me! nobody ever before thanked La Corriveau so sweetly as she did! I, even I, bade her a good journey, when she started on afresh with her Indian guides, after asking me the distance and direction of Beaumanoir."

This unexpected touch of sympathy surprised and revolted Angelique a little.

"You know her then! That is rare fortune, La Corriveau," said she; "she will remember you, you will have less difficulty in gaining access to her and winning her confidence."

La Corriveau clapped her hands, laughing a strange laugh, that sounded as if it came from a deep well.

"Know her? That is all I know; she thanked me sweetly. I said so, did I not? but I cursed her in my heart when she was gone. I saw she was both beautiful and good,--two things I hate."

"Do you call her beautiful? I care not whether she be good, that will avail nothing with him; but is she beautiful, La Corriveau? Is she fairer than I, think you?"

La Corriveau looked at Angelique intently and laughed. "Fairer than you?

Listen! It was as if I had seen a vision. She was very beautiful, and very sad. I could wish it were another than she, for oh, she spoke to me the sweetest I was ever spoken to since I came into the world."

Angelique ground her teeth with anger. "What did you do, La Corriveau?

Did you not wish her dead? Did you think the Intendant or any man could not help loving her to the rejection of any other woman in the world?

What did you do?"

"Do? I went on picking my mandrakes in the forest, and waited for you to send for La Corriveau. You desire to punish the Intendant for his treachery in forsaking you for one more beautiful and better!"

It was but a bold guess of La Corriveau, but she had divined the truth.

The Intendant Bigot was the man who was playing false with Angelique.

Her words filled up the measure of Angelique's jealous hate, and confirmed her terrible resolution. Jealousy is never so omnipotent as when its rank suspicions are fed and watered by the tales of others.

"There can be but one life between her and me!" replied the vehement girl; "Angelique des Meloises would die a thousand deaths rather than live to feed on the crumbs of any man's love while another woman feasts at his table. I sent for you, La Corriveau, to take my gold and kill that woman!"

"Kill that woman! It is easily said, Mademoiselle; but I will not forsake you, were she the Madonna herself! I hate her for her goodness, as you hate her for her beauty. Lay another purse by the side of this, and in thrice three days there shall be weeping in the Chateau of Beaumanoir, and no one shall know who has killed the cuckquean of the Chevalier Intendant!"

Angelique sprang up with a cry of exultation, like a pantheress seizing her prey. She clasped La Corriveau in her arms and kissed her dark, withered cheek, exclaiming, "Yes, that is her name! His cuckquean she is; his wife she is not and never shall be!--Thanks, a million golden thanks, La Corriveau, if you fulfil your prophecy! In thrice three days from this hour, was it not that you said?"

"Understand me!" said La Corriveau, "I serve you for your money, not for your liking! but I have my own joy in making my hand felt in a world which I hate and which hates me!" La Corriveau held out her hands as if the ends of her fingers were trickling poison. "Death drops on whomsoever I send it," said she, "so secretly and so subtly that the very spirits of air cannot detect the trace of the aqua tofana."

Angelique listened with amaze, yet trembled with eagerness to hear more.

"What! La Corriveau, have you the secret of the aqua tofana, which the world believes was burnt with its possessors two generations ago, on the Place de Greve?"

"Such secrets never die," replied the poisoner; "they are too precious!

Few men, still fewer women, are there who would not listen at the door of hell to learn them. The king in his palace, the lady in her tapestried chamber, the nun in her cell, the very beggar on the street, would stand on a pavement of fire to read the tablets which record the secret of the aqua tofana. Let me see your hand," added she abruptly, speaking to Angelique.

Angelique held out her hand; La Corriveau seized it. She looked intently upon the slender fingers and oval palm. "There is evil enough in these long, sharp spatulae of yours," said she, "to ruin the world. You are worthy to be the inheritrix of all I know. These fingers would pick fruit off the forbidden tree for men to eat and die! The tempter only is needed, and he is never far off! Angelique des Meloises, I may one day teach you the grand secret; meantime I will show you that I possess it."

CHAPTER XXXV. "FLASKETS OF DRUGS, FULL TO THEIR WICKED LIPS."

La Corriveau took the ebony casket from her bosom and laid it solemnly on the table. "Do not cross yourself," she exclaimed angrily as she saw Angelique mechanically make the sacred sign. "There can come no blessings here. There is death enough in that casket to kill every man and woman in New France."

Angelique fastened her gaze upon the casket as if she would have drawn out the secret of its contents by the very magnetism of her eyes. She laid her hand upon it caressingly, yet tremblingly--eager, yet fearful, to see its contents.

"Open it!" cried La Corriveau, "press the spring, and you will see such a casket of jewels as queens might envy. It was the wedding-gift of Beatrice Spara, and once belonged to the house of Borgia--Lucrezia Borgia had it from her terrible father; and he, from the prince of demons!"

Angelique pressed the little spring,--the lid flew open, and there flashed from it a light which for the moment dazzled her eyes with its brilliancy. She thrust the casket from her in alarm, and retreated a few steps, imagining she smelt the odor of some deadly perfume.

"I dare not approach it," said she. "Its glittering terrifies me; its odor sickens me."

"Tush! it is your weak imagination!" replied La Corriveau; "your sickly conscience frightens you! You will need to cast off both to rid Beaumanoir of the presence of your rival! The aqua tofana in the hands of a coward is a gift as fatal to its possessor as to its victim."

Angelique with a strong effort tried to master her fear, but could not.

She would not again handle the casket.

La Corriveau looked at her as if suspecting this display of weakness.

She then drew the casket to herself and took out a vial, gilt and chased with strange symbols. It was not larger than the little finger of a delicate girl. Its contents glittered like a diamond in the sunshine.

La Corriveau shook it up, and immediately the liquid was filled with a million sparks of fire. It was the aqua tofana undiluted by mercy, instantaneous in its effect, and not medicable by any antidote. Once administered, there was no more hope for its victim than for the souls of the damned who have received the final judgment. One drop of that bright water upon the tongue of a Titan would blast him like Jove's thunderbolt, would shrivel him up to a black, unsightly cinder!

This was the poison of anger and revenge that would not wait for time, and braved the world's justice. With that vial La Borgia killed her guests at the fatal banquet in her palace, and Beatrice Spara in her fury destroyed the fair Milanese who had stolen from her the heart of Antonio Exili.

This terrible water was rarely used alone by the poisoners; but it formed the basis of a hundred slower potions which ambition, fear, avarice, or hypocrisy mingled with the element of time, and colored with the various hues and aspects of natural disease.

Angelique sat down and leaned towards La Corriveau, supporting her chin on the palms of her hands as she bent eagerly over the table, drinking in every word as the hot sand of the desert drinks in the water poured upon it. "What is that?" said she, pointing to a vial as white as milk and seemingly as harmless.

"That," replied La Corriveau, "is the milk of mercy. It brings on painless consumption and decay. It eats the life out of a man while the moon empties and fills once or twice. His friends say he dies of quick decline, and so he does! ha! ha!--when his enemy wills it! The strong man becomes a skeleton, and blooming maidens sink into their graves blighted and bloodless, with white lips and hearts that cease gradually to beat, men know not why. Neither saint nor sacrament can arrest the doom of the milk of mercy."

"This vial," continued she, lifting up another from the casket and replacing the first, licking her thin lips with profound satisfaction as she did so,--"this contains the acrid venom that grips the heart like the claws of a tiger, and the man drops down dead at the time appointed.

Fools say he died of the visitation of God. The visitation of God!"

repeated she in an accent of scorn, and the foul witch spat as she pronounced the sacred name. "Leo in his sign ripens the deadly nuts of the East, which kill when God will not kill. He who has this vial for a possession is the lord of life." She replaced it tenderly. It was a favorite vial of La Corriveau.

"This one," continued she, taking up another, "strikes with the dead palsy; and this kindles the slow, inextinguishable fires of typhus. Here is one that dissolves all the juices of the body, and the blood of a man's veins runs into a lake of dropsy. This," taking up a green vial, "contains the quintessence of mandrakes distilled in the alembic when Scorpio rules the hour. Whoever takes this liquid"--La Corriveau shook it up lovingly--"dies of torments incurable as the foul disease of lust which it simulates and provokes."