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.

VANINKA

About the end of the reign of the Emperor Paul I--that is to say, towards
the middle of the first year of the nineteenth century--just as four
o'clock in the afternoon was sounding from the church of St. Peter and
St. Paul, whose gilded vane overlooks the ramparts of the fortress, a
crowd, composed of all sorts and conditions of people, began to gather in
front of a house which belonged to General Count Tchermayloff, formerly
military governor of a fair-sized town in the government of Pultava. The
first spectators had been attracted by the preparations which they saw
had been made in the middle of the courtyard for administering torture
with the knout. One of the general's serfs, he who acted as barber, was
to be the victim.

Although this kind of punishment was a common enough sight in St.
Petersburg, it nevertheless attracted all passers-by when it was publicly
administered. This was the occurrence which had caused a crowd, as just
mentioned, before General Tchermayloff's house.

The spectators, even had they been in a hurry, would have had no cause to
complain of being kept waiting, for at half-past four a young man of
about five-and-twenty, in the handsome uniform of an aide-de-camp, his
breast covered with decorations, appeared on the steps at the farther end
of the court-yard in front of the house. These steps faced the large
gateway, and led to the general's apartments.

Arrived on the steps, the young aide-de-camp stopped a moment and fixed
his eyes on a window, the closely drawn curtains of which did not allow
him the least chance of satisfying his curiosity, whatever may have been
its cause. Seeing that it was useless and that he was only wasting time
in gazing in that direction, he made a sign to a bearded man who was
standing near a door which led to the servants' quarters. The door was
immediately opened, and the culprit was seen advancing in the middle of a
body of serfs and followed by the executioner. The serfs were forced to
attend the spectacle, that it might serve as an example to them. The
culprit was the general's barber, as we have said, and the executioner
wa