us?"

"I think so, madame, because I myself have made use of them, that I
might not be poisoned at Naples, at Palermo, and at Smyrna--that is to
say, on three several occasions when, but for these precautions, I must
have lost my life."

"And your precautions were successful?"

"Completely so."

"Yes, I remember now your mentioning to me at Perugia something of this
sort."

"Indeed?" said the count with an air of surprise, remarkably well
counterfeited; "I really did not remember."

"I inquired of you if poisons acted equally, and with the same effect,
on men of the North as on men of the South; and you answered me that the
cold and sluggish habits of the North did not present the same aptitude
as the rich and energetic temperaments of the natives of the South."

"And that is the case," observed Monte Cristo. "I have seen Russians
devour, without being visibly inconvenienced, vegetable substances which
would infallibly have killed a Neapolitan or an Arab."

"And you really believe the result would be still more sure with us
than in the East, and in the midst of our fogs and rains a man
would habituate himself more easily than in a warm latitude to this
progressive absorption of poison?"

"Certainly; it being at the same time perfectly understood that he
should have been duly fortified against the poison to which he had not
been accustomed."

"Yes, I understand that; and how would you habituate yourself, for
instance, or rather, how did you habituate yourself to it?"

"Oh, very easily. Suppose you knew beforehand the poison that would
be made use of against you; suppose the poison was, for instance,
brucine"--

"Brucine is extracted from the false angostura [*] is it not?" inquired
Madame de Villefort.

"Precisely, madame," replied Monte Cristo; "but I perceive I have not
much to teach you. Allow me to compliment you on your knowledge; such
learning is very rare among ladies."

* Brucoea ferruginea.

"Oh, I am aware of that," said Madame de Villefort; "but I have a
passion for the occult sciences, which speak to the imagination like
poetry, and are reducible to figures, like an algebraic equation; but go
on, I beg of you; what you say interests me to the greatest degree."

"Well," replied Monte Cristo "suppose, then, that this poison was
brucine, and you were to take a milligramme the first day, two
milligrammes the second day, and so on. Well, at the end of ten days you
would have taken a centi