'I will, however,' continued Madame Mantalini, drying her eyes, and
speaking with great indignation, 'say before you, and before everybody
here, for the first time, and once for all, that I never will supply
that man's extravagances and viciousness again. I have been a dupe and a
fool to him long enough. In future, he shall support himself if he
can, and then he may spend what money he pleases, upon whom and how he
pleases; but it shall not be mine, and therefore you had better pause
before you trust him further.'
Thereupon Madame Mantalini, quite unmoved by some most pathetic
lamentations on the part of her husband, that the apothecary had not
mixed the prussic acid strong enough, and that he must take another
bottle or two to finish the work he had in hand, entered into a
catalogue of that amiable gentleman's gallantries, deceptions,
extravagances, and infidelities (especially the last), winding up with
a protest against being supposed to entertain the smallest remnant
of regard for him; and adducing, in proof of the altered state of her
affections, the circumstance of his having poisoned himself in private
no less than six times within the last fortnight, and her not having
once interfered by word or deed to save his life.
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