murderous
inventions. As she searched for the ingredients her design had
pre-selected, something heavier than those small packets she deranged
fell to the bottom of the box with a low and hollow sound. She started
at the noise, and then smiled, in scorn of her momentary fear, as she
took up the ring that had occasioned the sound,--a ring plain and solid,
like those used as signets in the Middle Ages, with a large dull opal
in the centre. What secret could that bauble have in common with
its ghastly companions in Death's crypt? This had been found amongst
Olivier's papers; a note in that precious manuscript, which had given
to the hands of his successors the keys of the grave, had discovered
the mystery of its uses. By the pressure of the hand, at the touch of a
concealed spring, a barbed point flew forth steeped in venom more deadly
than the Indian extracts from the bag of the cobar de capello,--a venom
to which no antidote is known, which no test can detect. It corrupts the
whole mass of the blood; it mounts in frenzy and fire to the brain; it
rends the soul from the body in spasm and convulsion. But examine the
dead, and how divine the effect of the cause! How go back to the records
of the Borgias, and amidst all the scepticisms of times in which,
happily, such arts are unknown, unsuspected, learn from the hero of
Machiavel how a clasp of the hand can get rid of a foe! Easier and more
natural to point to the living puncture in the skin, and the swollen
flesh round it, and dilate on the danger a rusty nail--nay, a pin--can
engender when the humours are peccant and the blood is impure! The
fabrication of that bauble, the discovery of Borgia's device, was the
masterpiece in the science of Dalibard,--a curious and philosophical
triumph of research, hitherto unused by its inventor and his heirs; for
that casket is rich in the choice of more gentle materials: but the use
yet may come. As she gazed on the ring, there was a complacent and proud
expression on Lucretia's face.

"Dumb token of Caesar Borgia," she murmured,--"him of the wisest head
and the boldest hand that ever grasped at empire, whom Machiavel, the
virtuous, rightly praised as the model of accomplished ambition! Why
should I falter in the paths which he trod with his royal step, only
because my goal is not a throne? Every circle is as complete in itself,
whether rounding a globule or a star. Why groan in the belief that
the mind defiles itself by the darkness