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Updated: June 5, 2025
The Court took the alarm when a gilded vial of the aqua tofana was found one day upon the table of the Duchesse de la Valliere, having been placed there by the hand of some secret rival, in order to cast suspicion upon the unhappy Louise, and hasten her fall, already approaching.
It is prepared from opium and Spanish flies, combined with some other ingredients, which, however, are only known to the makers of it. That the Acqua Tofana is made from the foam sometimes found upon the lips of the dying, is an idle tale. Allessandro Borgia was the first to bring it into use. On the following day there was a solemn high office in St. Peter's.
"Death drops on whomsoever I send it," said she, "so secretly and so subtly that the very spirits of air cannot detect the trace of the aqua tofana." Angelique listened with amaze, yet trembled with eagerness to hear more. "What! La Corriveau, have you the secret of the aqua tofana, which the world believes was burnt with its possessors two generations ago, on the Place de Greve?"
"And is it possible that this frightful combination of crimes has been invented by a woman?" "Do you recollect in the arbor of the Hotel des Postes, at Perugia, seeing a man in a brown cloak, whom your stepmother was questioning upon aqua tofana? Well, ever since then, the infernal project has been ripening in her brain."
"Tush! it is your weak imagination!" replied La Corriveau; "your sickly conscience frightens you! You will need to cast off both to rid Beaumanoir of the presence of your rival! The aqua tofana in the hands of a coward is a gift as fatal to its possessor as to its victim." Angelique with a strong effort tried to master her fear, but could not. She would not again handle the casket.
Lorenzo, would you know what signifies this consuming fire, this weariness and relaxation of my limbs? It is the effect of Acqua Tofana!" "Oh, my God," shrieked Lorenzo, "you are poisoned!" "Irretrievably," calmly responded the pope; "Brunelli says it, and I feel in my burning entrails that he speaks the truth." "And are there no remedies?" lamented Lorenzo, wringing his hands.
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.
But the terrible secret of the agua tofana and of the poudre de succession, Exili learned from Beatrice Spara, a Sicilian, with whom he had a liaison, one of those inscrutable beings of the gentle sex whose lust for pleasure or power is only equalled by the atrocities they are willing to perpetrate upon all who stand in the way of their desires or their ambition.
It had once belonged to Antonio Exili, who had caused it to be made, ostensibly for the safe-keeping of his cabalistic formulas and alchemic preparations, when searching for the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life, really for the concealment of the subtle drugs out of which his alembics distilled the aqua tofana and his crucibles prepared the poudre de succession.
The passions of his ancestors burned low in Odo's breast: though he felt Bracciaforte's fury in his veins he could taste no answering gratification of revenge. And the spirit on which he would have spent his hatred was not here or there, as an embodied faction, but everywhere as an intangible influence. The acqua tofana of his enemies had pervaded every fibre of the state.
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