Whatever the sociopolitical roots of the phenomenon, one factor certainly contributed to the prevalence of poison murders in the 1800s. Back then, arsenic was everywhere, as readily available to aspiring Borgias as aspirin is today.

Deploying state-of-the-art MRIs and other high-tech devices to scan the brains of imprisoned psychopatic killers, researchers such as Kent Kiehl of the University of New Mexico and Jim Fallon of the University of California have become convinced that damage to those areas of the brain responsible for compassion, inhibition, and moral choice can significantly reduce a person's reluctance to harm others.
Even proponents of this theory, however, concede that other factors have to be present to turn someone into a serial killer.
Extreme parental maltreatment is prominent among them. (...) Some genetic component might also be at work.
In short, it appears to require a witch's brew of three toxic ingredients to produce a serial murderer: damage to particular brain areas, extreme childhood abuse, and an inheritance of specifi genes thought to be associated with aggression and violence.

As Whorton documents, arsenic was also a common ingredient in paints, clothing fabrics, toys, wallpaper, candles and countless other commercial items. In short - for all the infamous Borgias that the Victorian era produces - the average person was far more likely to suffer arsenic poisoning from a household product than from a homicidal maniac.

(...) il n'y a pas vraiment de demi-mesure dans l'attitude des adultes quand ils croisent le chemin d'enfants qui ne sont pas les leurs : ou ils les aident, ou ils les exploitent.

En février, nous étions même allés jusqu'à céder aux instances d'une vieille dame qui nous suppliait de lui ramener son iguane disparu. L'animal – une bestiole hideuse d'un vert iridescent mesurant environ trente centimètres de long – s'appelait Puffy et manifestait d'après sa propriétaire « des dispositions négatives envers le genre humain ».

On s'est entretenus avec tous les voisins d'Helene, à leur domicile, pas seulement pour savoir ce qu'ils auraient pu voir ou entendre cette nuit-là, mais aussi pour essayer de repérer une trace de la petite chez eux. Résultat, on est maintenant capables de dire qui prend de la coke, qui boit, qui bat sa femme ou son mari, mais on n'a pas le moindre indice permettant de relier une de ces personnes à la disparition d'Amanda McCready.

Le monde est cruel, mademoiselle Gennaro, il n'a jamais fait de cadeaux aux enfants.

Mais je connaissais aussi en lui l'homme capable de lorgner un type dans un bar un soir avec tant de malveillance calculée que l'on devinait aussitôt l'espérance de vie du malheureux réduite brutalement à environ une minute et demie.

Pour moi, ce qui nous distingue des animaux, c'est la possibilité de choisir.

People always gossiped about us, even as children. We created a strange sort of hostility wherever we went. In those days, during and after the First World War, when other children were well-mannered and conventional, we were ill-disciplined and wild. Those dreadful Delaneys.

“It’s queer,” she said, “but I don’t feel this is happening to me at all. This is some other person going through my day. It’s a dreadful feeling. I can’t explain it”

It was a mistake to separate us. We should have stayed together. Once a family breaks up and splits, it never comes together again. Not in the old way. If there had been a settled home to which we could have gone, it would have been different. Children need a settled home, a place that smells familiar. A life that goes on, with the same toys, the same walks, the same faces day after day. Where, wet or fine, existence can be a pattern, a routine. We had no pattern.

We would make all sorts of promises to the cuisinière, and to the daily femme de chambre, saying, “We’ll be back again next year,” knowing in our hearts that it would not be so. We never took the same villa twice. Next year it would be the Riviera perhaps, or Italy, and the cliffs and the sea of Brittany would become no more than a memory.

That dusty, musty theater smell, how it still haunts each one of us in turn, and Maria at least will never shake it free.

“I do remember,” said Niall. “I remember everything. That’s the trouble. I remember much too much”

She had the cold, angry face that spelled trouble, the face that sent servants flying, stage managers running for their lives, and ourselves to whatever distant room we might possess.

It was Charles who called us the parasites. The way he said it was surprising, and sudden; he was one of those quiet reserved sort of men, not given to talking much or stating his opinion, unless upon the most ordinary facts of day by day, so that his outburst—coming, as it did, towards the end of the long, wet Sunday afternoon, when we had none of us done anything but read the papers and yawn and stretch before the fire—had the force of an explosion.

Grown-up people… How suddenly would it happen, the final plunge into their world? Did it really come about overnight, as Pappy said, between sleeping and waking? A day would come, a day like any other day, and looking over your shoulder you would see the shadow of the child that was, receding; and there would be no going back, no possibility of recapturing the shadow. You had to go on; you had to step forward into the future, however much you dreaded the thought, however much you were afraid.

Vaughan was the footman. He stood to attention behind Maria.
"What a disappointment," said Freada, a shade too loud. "I hoped the servants would be powdered. A fine-looking creature all the same."
She stepped out of the car, but in doing so, her heel caught in a piece of loose rubber on the running-board, ans she fell full length at the footman's feet, her arms spread wide as in a swallow-dive.
"That was effective," said Pappy. "Do it again."

At three in the morning a crash in the corridor brought him to the door. Pappy could not sleep either. But not for the same reason. Disturbed by Lord Wyndham's staircase clock, he had tried to stop it, forcing back the hands, and the pane of glass lay shattered at his feet.

How happy were we, when we were young? Perhaps it was all illusion. Perhaps, looking back now, with the forties close upon all three of us, the hours passed then much as they do today, but they took a little longer in the passing.

Abandonnés, ignorés, oubliés, moqués, pourris, recyclés… Digitalisés. Mais qu’ont-ils fait ? Ils ont détruit les livres. Tous les livres. Ou plutôt, il n’en reste qu’un. Il s’appelle DATA. DATA est Dieu. Et Dieu est DATA.

" Lecteur, tout est ta faute… "

La traduction est un exercice fort difficile ; la qualité en tient moins dans la connaissance de la langue que dans la capacité à restituer un souffle, une poésie. Elle s’apparente donc à l’écriture. Comme l’écrivain ou le poète, le traducteur doit transcrire l’émotion ou la pensée dans une forme qui la sert et l’honore.

It was not only the sight of the garden that so moved, so deeply pleased and satisfied me; the smell of the night air, coming through the open window, was indescribably sweet, quite unlike the hot, heady smell of the night air we had grown used to in what I now automatically thought of as our exile.

We had fled from England more than ten years ago, had begun our flight on the night of the fire. Maxim had simply turned the car and driven away from the flames of Manderley, and from the past and all its ghosts.