While St. Croix was in the Bastile, he had formed an acquaintance with an Italian of the name of Exili, to whom he communicated his views. Exili excited him to vengeance, and taught him the way to obtain it with impunity. Poisoning may be called, _par excellence_, an Italian art. With many fine qualities, vindictiveness and subtlety must be acknowledged to be strong features in the character of that people; and hence their early superiority in this art of taking the most deadly, and at the same time the safest, revenge on their enemies. It appears, accordingly, (as we have already said,) that it was from the Italians that the poisoners of other countries derived their skill. They acquired the art of composing poisons so disguised in their appearance and subtle in their effects, that they baffled the penetration and art of the physicians of that age. Some were slow, and consumed the vitals of the victim by almost imperceptible degrees; others were sudden and violent in their action; but few of them left any traces of their real nature, for the symptoms they produced were generally so equivocal, that they might be ascribed to many ordinary diseases. St. Croix greedily devoured the instructions of his fellow-prisoner, and left the Bastile prepared to exercise his infernal art. His first object of vengeance was M. d'Aubray himself; and he soon found means to persuade the daughter to become the agent in the destruction of her father. The old gentleman had a house in the country, where he used to spend his vacations. All his fondness for his daughter, whom he now believed to have been "more sinned against than sinning," had returned; and she, on her part, behaved to him with an appearance of affectionate duty. She anxiously attended to his every comfort; and, as his health had suffered from the fatigues of his office, she employed herself in superintending the preparation of nice and nourishing broths, which she gave him herself with every appearance of tender care. It is needless to say that these aliments contained some articles of Italian cookery; and the wretch, as she sat by his bed-side, witnessing his sufferings and listening to his groans, shed abundance of crocodile tears, while she eagerly administered to him remedies calculated to insure the accomplishment of her object. But neither the agonies of the poor old man, nor his touching expressions of love and gratitude to the fiend at his side, could turn her for a moment from her fell purpose. He was carried back to Paris, where in a few days he sunk under the effects of the poison.