This apparently sealed the doom of the accused woman, and served to strengthen the bias of the jury. But now another actor appeared in the drama in the person of Raspail, another famous French chemist, who had watched the case from the beginning with interest. On hearing the result of Orfila's examination, he had taken the trouble to trace the zinc wire with which Orfila had experimented, to the shop where the great toxicologist had procured the article, and he found on analysis that the _zinc itself_ contained more arsenic than Orfila had detected by his examination. Orfila had used Marsh's test, which is infallible so long as the reagents used are free from arsenic themselves. Raspail, having placed the result of his discovery of arsenic in Orfila's reagent, at the service of the defence, was on his way to Tulle, where the Assizes were being held, when an unfortunate accident delayed his progress, and the unhappy Marie Cappelle Lafarge, after a trial which lasted sixteen days, was found guilty meanwhile, and condemned to imprisonment for life with hard labour, and exposure in the pillory. Raspail, however, would not let the matter rest, and at once set to work to save the condemned woman. He at length got Orfila to fairly admit his error and join him in a professional report to the authorities to that effect. After being imprisoned for twelve years, in the end the sentence on this unhappy woman was reduced to five years in the Montpellier house of detention, after which the Government sent her to the Convent of St. Rémy, from whence she was liberated in 1852, but only to end her wretched life a few months afterwards. There appeared in the _Edinburgh Review_ for 1842 a careful examination of this interesting case from a legal point of view, in which the writer states the strongest evidence indicated Denis and not Madame Lafarge as the perpetrator of the crime. It was proved this man lived by forgery, and assisted Lafarge in some very shady transactions to cover the latter's insolvency. He was further known to harbour a deadly hatred for Madame Lafarge. He was with his master in Paris when he was seized with the sudden illness, and it transpired that out of the 25,000 francs the ironmaster had succeeded in borrowing from his wife's relatives, only 3,900 could be found when he returned to Glandier. On his own statement he was in the possession of a quantity of arsenic, and he was the first to direct suspicion against his master's wife. Yet all these facts appear to have been overlooked in the efforts of the prosecution to fasten the guilt on the unfortunate woman. That Lafarge died from the effects of arsenical poisoning there seems little doubt, but by whom it was administered has never been conclusively proved, and the tragedy still remains among the unsolved poisoning mysteries. CHAPTER VIII THE CASE OF MADELINE SMITH