She poisoned her husband, her father,
her brother, and at last, carried away by a mania for murder,
administered on all sides the fatal poudre de succession, which
brought death to house, palace, and hospital, and filled the
capital, nay, the whole kingdom, with suspicion and terror.
This fatal poison history describes as either a light and almost
impalpable powder, tasteless, colorless, and inodorous, or a liquid
clear as a dewdrop, when in the form of the aqua tofana. It was
capable of causing death either instantaneously or by slow and
lingering decline at the end of a definite number of days, weeks,
or even months, as was desired. Death was not less sure because
deferred, and it could be made to assume the appearance of dumb
paralysis, wasting atrophy, or burning fever, at the discretion of
the compounder of the fatal poison.
The ordinary effect of the aqua tofana was immediate death. The
poudre de succession was more slow in killing. It produced in its
pure form a burning heat, like that of a fiery furnace in the chest,
the flames of which, as they consumed the patient, darted out of his
eyes, the only part of the body which seemed to be alive, while the
rest was little more than a dead corpse.
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