Was it
not strange that even those painted men should not have cried out at
the sight of so pitiless a murder?
Caroline lay amid them all, the flush of joy still on her cheek, the
smile not yet vanished from her lips. A pity for all the world,
could it have seen her; but in that lonely chamber no eye pitied
her.
But now a more cruel thing supervened. The sight of Caroline's
lifeless form, instead of pity or remorse, roused all the innate
furies that belonged to the execrable race of La Corriveau. The
blood of generations of poisoners and assassins boiled and rioted in
her veins. The spirits of Beatrice Spara and of La Voisin inspired
her with new fury. She was at this moment like a pantheress that
has brought down her prey and stands over it to rend it in pieces.
Caroline lay dead, dead beyond all doubt, never to be resuscitated,
except in the resurrection of the just. La Corriveau bent over her
and felt her heart; it was still. No sign of breath flickered on
lip or nostril.
The poisoner knew she was dead, but something still woke her
suspicions, as with a new thought she drew back and looked again at
the beauteous form before her.
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