The Express.
London, England, 1864-05-17 00:00:00

EXPRESS FROM PARIS.

THE POISONING CASE.

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PARIS, Itonay EvErnra.

The great Is Pommeraia trial is approaching its
conclusion ; it may possibly be over at a late hour
to-night, but at all events it will be; finished to-
morrow. This morning K Oscar de Valhi°, the
First Advocate-General, made his speech for the
prosecution. He began by a declaration of his
oppressive sense of responsibility to society, of
which he was the representative, but at the same
time expressed a confident hope that he should be
equal to his task. Although he stood there as the
stern advocate of justice, he did not shrink from
avowing that be entertained a certain feeling of
pity for the prisoner. Formerly public pro-
secutors were apt to see in an accused
party only a criminal, and to forget that
he was a man ; but now, thank God, there was no
thirsting for blood in the tribune from which he
spoke. He was fulfilling au impartial duty only,
and should be the first to rejoice if he could think ,
the prisoner innocent. But unfortunately his
guilt was incontestable. After defending the
memory of Madame Pauw against the asper-
sions of the prisoner, wbo had represented her as a
libidinous woman ready to throw herself into the
arms of the first corner, the Advocate-General
affirmed that she bad never quitted the paths of
virtue except with the prisoner, and then not till
after her husband's death. It appeared from the
prisoner's books that the sum total of his
liberality to her did not amount to more
than 680 fr., and there was no doubt that
at the time of her death and long before she was
in a state of the most distressing poverty. That I
she died of poison was beyond all doubt—that
fact had been proved by two scientific men in the
most irrefutable manner. The chemist and drug-
gist, K Hebert, whom the prisoner had dubbed a
savant, had given evidence which but served to give
relief to the conclusive testimony of the medical
men called by the prosecution. The main points
were :
L That the deceased died of poison.

2. That the poison was of the nature of those
which, belonging to the vegetable kingdom, might
leave no characteristic traced in the organs, and
might not be eliminated by chemical analysis, but
which revealed their presence by their effects,
and were discovered by the deadly action which
they exercised upon living animals.

3. The experts extracted not only from the
matter vomited by Madame Pauw on the floor-
ing of her room, but also from the organs which
were analysed, a toxical principle which, being
tried upon animals, produced effects analogous to
those experienced by Madame Pauw.

4. These effects and this action greaUy re-
semble those known to be produced by digitalis,
and the medical men, without positively affirming
that digitalis was the poison used, say there is a
strong presumption that Madame Pauw's death
was caused by that substance.

5. Madame Pauw was in no way ill till the
day before her death ; the alleged affection of the
heart and stomach for which she consulted several
doctors was like the fall she said she bad had—
fables invented by her, or to which she lent her-
self,

6. The autopsy showed conclusively that she
neither died from a fall nor from internal hemorr-
hage, nor acute or chronic gastritis, nor from a