'I know that the toad cannot do anybody any harm; what I did with the silver cups and trenchers was done solely to get hold of such cups and trenchers.' His skill, nevertheless, enjoyed a very substantial reputation. At the same date the magician Blessis was believed to know how to manipulate mirrors in such a way that any one who looked in them received his deathblow. These facts seem mere childish folly under scientific investigation. The knowledge people had of poisons in the eighteenth century was limited to arsenic, antimony, and sublimate; it did not enable them so to poison a cup as to cause sudden death to the person using it, without his being aware of the poison at the moment of drinking it. The opinion of Professor Brouardel on this point is explicit; and Dr. Legué, convinced as he is of the poisoning of Madame, admits that the story of the cup can only make any well-informed man smile. The conclusion is that as Madame could not have been poisoned by the water she drank, or by the cup containing the water, she could not have been poisoned at all. IV 'Her body was opened,' writes Bossuet, 'among a large concourse of physicians and surgeons and all sorts of people, because, having begun to feel extreme pain when drinking three mouthfuls of chicory water, given her by the dearest and most intimate of her women, she said at once that she was poisoned.' It was with the same idea that the English ambassador attended the operation along with an English physician and surgeon.