About eight o'clock, after the gas had been lighted, he asked for pen, ink, and paper, and a small table to write on. These having been supplied him, he sat and wrote, slowly and laboriously, for nearly a couple of hours, finally putting what he had written inside an envelope and sealing and directing it. Then, after having taken off his shoes and coat, he wrapped himself in the blanket which had been supplied him and lay down to sleep. The gas was lowered, and silence reigned throughout the prison. Once every hour during the night a warder went the round of the cells and peered into each of them that was occupied through a grating in the door. All through the night Picot apparently slept an unbroken sleep. When the warder visited him at one o'clock he found that he had turned over and was now lying with his face to the wall, after which he seemed never to have stirred between one visit and another. At seven o'clock another warder, who had just come on duty, went into his cell to rouse him. To his dismay, he could not succeed in doing so. He turned the unconscious man over on his back, and then the drawn, ghastly face told its own tale.
"Ah," remarked the doctor, who was quickly on the spot, as he held up to the light a tiny phial only about half the size of a man's little finger and smelt at its contents, "five drops of this would kill the strongest man in three seconds."
Jules Picot had been carefully searched before being locked up in his cell, and it was an utter puzzle to the jail officials how he had contrived to conceal about him even so insignificant an article as the tiny phial of poison so as to evade detection. One of the warders, however, of a more inquiring turn of mind than his fellows succeeded, a day or two later, in solving the mystery. The mountebank wore very high-heeled shoes, as many of his countrymen make a practice of doing. The heel of one of his shoes had been so made that it could be unscrewed at will, while inside it was a cavity just large enough to hold the phial. Picot had evidently prepared himself beforehand for a contingency the like of that which had at length befallen him. The letter written a few hours before his death was in French, and was addressed to "Madame Brouke." The following is a translation of it: