; and tapping the walls, to make sure nothing had been overlooked,
they detected a hollow sound that indicated the presence of some
unsuspected cavity. With picks and bars they broke the wall open,
and when several stones had come out they found a large closet like
a laboratory, containing furnaces, chemical instruments, phials
hermetically sealed full of an unknown liquid, and four packets of
powders of different colours. Unluckily, the people who made these
discoveries thought them of too much or too little importance; and
instead of submitting the ingredients to the tests of modern science,
they made away with them all, frightened at their probably deadly
nature.

Thus was lost this great opportunity--probably the last--for finding and
analysing the substances which composed the poisons of Sainte-Croix and
Madame de Brinvilliers.