On the 16th of May; the marquise, who for a month or two had not been well, determined to take medicine; she therefore informed the chemist of what she wanted, and asked him to make her up something at his discretion and send it to her the next day. Accordingly, at the agreed hour in the morning, the draught was brought to the marquise; but it looked to her so black and so thick that she felt some doubt of the skill of its compounder, shut it up in a cupboard in her room without saying anything of the matter, and took from her dressing- case some pills, of a less efficacious nature indeed, but to which she was accustomed, and which were not so repugnant to her.
The hour in which the marquise was to take this medicine was hardly over when the abbe and the chevalier sent to know how she was
