One day my aunt Aurora told me and my parents that the pharmacist from her village had been apprehended by the police a couple of weeks ago. “Imagine,” she said excitedly, “he was poisoning his wife for years by putting something or other in the marmalade she used to eat for breakfast!” I do not remember what ultimately happened to this woman, but it appears that she not only survived this clever device, but that she also contributed to her husband’s demise. The emphasis of this story was elsewhere, according to aunt Aurora. She concluded it by exclaiming: “In the marmalade, of all places!” Her customary cackle followed, and we all joined her against our will. She was not concerned with the alleged poisoning itself, nor with the reasons for it. She apparently understood everything about this provincial scandal, and yet the significance of marmalade eluded her infinite wisdom. And this wisdom strikes me now as the only puzzle here, for she has been around for many a year, and she has thus had more than ample time to sift the essential from the unessential.