The case created great excitement, not only in Paris, but throughout the country. Another poisoning case had not long before this occupied the minds of the public very greatly--that of the hypocritical Castaing for the murder of Auguste Ballet. Indeed, there had been a lot of poisoning going on in French society about this period. Political and religious controversy, moreover, was rife. The populace were in a mood either to praise extravagantly or just as extravagantly to condemn. It happened that rumour convinced them of the guilt of the Veuve Boursier and Kostolo, and the couple were condemned in advance. Such was the popular spite against Mme Boursier and Kostolo that, it is said, Maitre Couture at first refused the brief for the widow's defence. He had already made a success of his defence of a Mme Lavaillaut, accused of poisoning, and was much in demand in cases where women sought judicial separation from their husbands. People were calling him "Providence for women." He did not want to be nicknamed "Providence for poisoners." But Mme Boursier's case being more clearly presented to him he took up the brief. The accused were brought into court. Kostolo was about thirty years of age. He was tall, distinctly good-looking in an exotic sort of way, with his dark hair, complexion, and flashing eyes. He carried himself grandly, and was elegantly clad in a frac noir. Not quite, as Army men were supposed once to say, "the clean potato," it was easy enough to see that women of a kind would be his ready victims. It was plain, in the court, that Master Nicolas thought himself the hero of the occasion. There was none of this flamboyance about the Widow Boursier. She was dressed in complete mourning, and covered her face with a handkerchief. It was manifest that, in the phrase of the crime reporters, "she felt her position keenly." The usual questions as to her name and condition she answered almost inaudibly, her voice choked with sobs. Kostolo, on the contrary, replied in organ tones. He said that he was born in Constantinople, and that he had no estate. The acte d'accusation was read. It set forth the facts of the adulterous association of the two accused, of the money lent by Mme Boursier to Kostolo, of their meetings, and all the suspicious circumstances previous to the death of the epicier. The cook-girl, Josephine Blin, had prepared the potage au riz in the kitchen, using the small iron pan that it was her wont to employ. Having made the soup, she conveyed it in its terrine to a small secretaire in the dining-room. This secretaire stood within the stretch of an arm from the door of the comptoir in which Mme Boursier usually worked. According to custom, Josephine had divided the potage in two portions--one for Boursier and the other for the youngest child. The youngster and she had eaten the second portion between them, and neither had experienced any ill-effects.