inimical to the young wife. It was proved she had bought arsenic; the servant deposed to seeing her pour a colourless fluid into her husband's food. When he was absent, it was declared, she had sent him poisoned cakes; and the first set of doctors called in after the exhumation of the corpse, deposed to the detection of arsenic in the intestines of the deceased. The war between the two sides—the one who believed her innocent and the one who believed her guilty—raged fast and furious, converting the Court of Justice into a scene of violence and abuse, that was only possible amongst so excitable and passionate a people as the French. The party against her brought charges of offences committed before her marriage, declaring she had stolen some diamonds; they painted her character in the blackest colours, she was not given the benefit of any excuse for her crime; while the party in her favour declared her to be an angel, surrounded by enemies, who were endeavouring to procure her condemnation to satisfy their own private animosity. Their excitement in her cause was fanned into fever-heat by the declaration of a second set of doctors that there was no arsenic to be detected in the body of the deceased. The result of the trial was that Marie Capelle, veuve Lafarge, was proved guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for life. It was during this imprisonment that she wrote her celebrated Mémoires, in which she gives such a piteous account of her slow death by consumption.
The following letter of Rachel, describing her visit to the unfortunate woman, is very curious, showing the horror she felt at the sight of sufferings similar to those she was herself destined to undergo. It is addressed to her sister Sarah:—
