All Natural by Kaylie Simons — April 7
M. Lefevre worked as the clerk of an old Broker who made his business in the Yvetot region.
On a cold evening of January, he was found dead in the living room of his poor house, eyes dilated in a desperate plight, and his face white as the fluttering snow.
In the afternoon he had told his wife that he felt a bitterness in his tongue that could not simply fade; he then cried that he was thirsty, and asked for a jug of water, which he drank hastily without any sign of recovery. His wife thought that he was ill, therefore let him comfort himself on the sofa.
In the morning he came home from the Cafe down the boulevard, where he and his friends insisted upon a gathering. He passed through the room, greeted his beloved, and decided to write a letter to M. Brevard, his employer, about some merchandise that had just arrived the day before yesterday from Paris.
In breakfast M. Lefevre shared a batch of bread on the terrace of the Cafe with his following companions. Putting their hand on the table they chanted some monotonous and lamentious conversations before departing home. On the edge of the road he allowed one of his friends to advise: “Watch out for the horses!”
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Before dawn the Cafe owner made a brief visit to the local pharmacist, as he had suddenly suffered a great lung pain. His agonies lead the physician, who was barely awake, to prescribe a potion. At his occupation he found that his finger had a powdery dust; he scratched it off on a nearby table and washed his hand.
On the evening prior to the death of the unfortunate clerk, the assistant of the pharmacist, while cleaning the medicine shelf, accidentally pushed a glass beaker, and it broke and scattered the white powder which it contained on the adjacent potion bottle. He inquired about his employer and discovered it was only sugar. He swept the shelf and threw away the beaker.
On the previous afternoon the Pharmacist wanted to perform some experiment that was described in a journal. He went to the attic, where he put his chemicals, and took out a beaker. While he stepped, a patient who had blood all over his leg was asking for him. He dropped the beaker on a shelf for medicines and went to the man in need. He never seemed to think of the experiment again.
On the morning of that day M. Lefevre was ordering the carriage driver to load out fresh merchandise M.Brevard bought. There were some women’s dresses, curtains, fabrics, along with a few pieces of furniture. The driver was sending a chair to the floor when suddenly the clerk yelled. There was an agitation among the horses. Stuned for a moment, the chair fell from the driver’s hand, hit his knees, and made a large wound.
Some weeks earlier, a second-rate scientific journal in Paris published a recipe which called for the substance potassium and arsenic.
