Elettra stuck the little slip of paper, on which the recipe was written, into her shabby pocket-book without looking at it. She could read and write fairly well, and had been used to helping her husband the under-steward with his accounts at Muro, but even if she had looked at the recipe she would have understood nothing of the doctor's hieroglyphics and abbreviated Latin words. The prescription was for a preparation of arsenic, which Matilde had formerly taken for some time. The chemist would not make any difficulty about preparing twenty doses of it for the Countess Macomer, though the whole quantity of arsenic contained in so many would probably be sufficient to kill one not accustomed to the medicine, if taken all at once. But though Matilde was so anxious to have the stuff before luncheon, she had a number of doses of it put away in a drawer, which she took out and counted, after Elettra had gone. She opened one of the little folded papers and looked at the fine white powder it contained, took a little on the end of her finger and tasted it. Then, from the same drawer, she took a package done up in coarser paper, and opened it likewise, looked at it, smelt it, and touched it with the tip of her tongue very cautiously indeed. It was white, too, but coarser than the medicine. She was very careful in tasting it, and she immediately rinsed her mouth with water, before she tied up the package again, shut the drawer, and put the key into her pocket.

Whose husband was an under-steward?

From Babylon, Alexander went to Susa, one of the Achaemenid capitals, and captured its legendary treasury. He sent the bulk of his army to the Persian ceremonial capital of Persepolis via the Royal Road. Alexander himself took selected troops on the direct route to the city. He had to storm the pass of the Persian Gates (in the modern Zagros Mountains) which had been blocked by a Persian army under Ariobarzanes and then hurried to Persepolis before its garrison could loot the treasury. On entering Persepolis, Alexander allowed his troops to loot the city for several days. Alexander stayed in Persepolis for five months. During his stay a fire broke out in the eastern palace of Xerxes and spread to the rest of the city. Possible causes include a drunken accident or deliberate revenge for the burning of the Acropolis of Athens during the Second Persian War.

How did Alexander take Persepolis?

Tokhtakhounov, whose age was given by Comey as 53 or 62, is a "major figure in international Eurasian organized crime," Comey said. Born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and now a Russian citizen, he is known as Taivanchik, or Little Taiwanese, for his Central Asian ethnic background. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, he has been implicated in arms trading and Russian art smuggling, and in the Russian news media he was accused of complicity in a plot to extort $10 million from the head of a Russian sports foundation. He appears to have moved to France in 1989, according to news media reports, and is reported to have Israeli citizenship also. Comey said Tokhtakhounov had three residences in Italy: Forte dei Marmi, Rome and Milan. The complaint against Tokhtakhounov's traces his contact with figure skating to 2000, when he proposed to Gailhaguet the creation of a professional hockey team in Paris that would provide revenue for the French Skating Federation. ( Gailhaguet and Anissina are not referred to by name in an accompanying FBI agent's affidavit, but by their descriptions their identities are obvious.) In return, Gailhaguet told the FBI on Feb. 23 as the Olympics were taking place, Tokhtakhounov asked for Gailhaguet's help in renewing his French visa, which was about to expire. But when Gailhaguet sought guidance from a French government official, he was told that "Tokhtakhounov's money is bad," the affidavit said. The federal complaint offers many details of the alleged conspiracy, including excerpts from a transcript of the Italian wiretaps. later suspended Le Gougne and Gailhaguet for three years. The federal complaint did not describe the possibility of a wider conspiracy or any contact between Tokhtakhounov, or his unnamed co-conspirators, with Le Gougne. "We have alleged no connection between this man with any officials other than with Russian federation officials," James B. Comey, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a news conference. He said that Tokhtakhounov "reached out to a co-conspirator, somebody connected to the Russian Skating Federation, who did the legwork for him."
Which countries did Tokhtakhounov extort money from which countries?