One of the medical witnesses called for the defence, M. Chaussier, had volunteered the remark that the absence of any trace of poison in the portions of Auguste Ballet's body submitted to analysis, constituted an absence of the corpus delicti. To this the President replied that that was a question of criminal law, and no concern of his. But in his speech for the prosecution the Avocat-General dealt with the point raised at some length--a point which, if it had held good as a principle of English law, would have secured the acquittal of so wicked a poisoner as Palmer. He quoted from the famous French lawyer d'Aguesseau: "The corpus delicti is no other thing than the delictum itself; but the proofs of the delictum are infinitely variable according to the nature of things; they may be general or special, principal or accessory, direct or indirect; in a word, they form that general effect (ensemble) which goes to determine the conviction of an honest man." If such a contention as M. Chaussier's were correct, said the Avocat-General, then it would be impossible in a case of poisoning to convict a prisoner after his victim's death, or, if his victim survived, to convict him of the attempt to poison. He reminded the jury of that paragraph in the Code of Criminal Procedure which instructed them as to their duties: "The Law does not ask you to give the reasons that have convinced you; it lays down no rules by which you are to decide as to the fullness or sufficiency of proof... it only asks you one question: 'Have you an inward conviction?'" "If," he said, "the actual traces of poison are a material proof of murder by poison, then a new paragraph must be added to the Criminal Code--'Since, however, vegetable poisons leave no trace, poisoning by such means may be committed with impunity.'" To poisoners he would say in future: "Bunglers that you are, don't use arsenic or any mineral poison; they leave traces; you will be found out. Use vegetable poisons; poison your fathers, poison your mothers, poison all your families, and their inheritance will be yours--fear nothing; you will go unpunished! You have committed murder by poisoning, it is true; but the corpus delicti will not be there because it can't be there!" This was a case, he urged, of circumstantial evidence. "We have," he said, "gone through a large number of facts. Of these there is not one that does not go directly to the proof of poisoning, and that can only be explained on the supposition of poisoning; whereas, if the theory of the defence be admitted, all these facts, from the first to the last, become meaningless and absurd. They can only be refuted by arguments or explanations that are childish and ridiculous."