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Basterga exclaimed, and had the other ascribed supernatural virtues to the cinders or the bellows he could not have thrown greater scorn into his words. "Do you think I ply this base mechanic art for aught but to profit by the ignorance of the vulgar? Or think by pots and pans and mixing vile substances to make this, which by nature is this, into that which by nature it is not! I, a scholar?
"I look to you as a good citizen to afford such information as the State requires. The matter is more important than you think. I ask you what you know of that man." "Messer Basterga!" "Yes." Claude stared. "I know no good," he answered, more and more surprised. "I do not like him, Messer Syndic." "But he is a learned man, I believe. He passes for such, does he not?" "Yes."
"And I have that disease! I!" the Syndic cried, standing before him a piteous figure. He raised his hands above his head in a gesture which challenged the compassion of gods and men. "I! In two years " His voice failed, he could not go on. "Believe me, Messer Blondel," Basterga answered after a long and sorrowful pause, "I am grieved.
"I will tell you everything! Everything!" Louis whined, clinging to his arm. "Do you hear what he says?" Basterga replied. "In the meantime, I tell you to keep your distance, young man. I am not used to be jostled!" Claude hesitated a moment, scowling. Then, "Very well!" he said, drawing off with a gesture of menace. "It is only put off: I shall pay him another time.
The fear was not the fear of Basterga, the bully and cynic, whom he had known and fawned on and flattered; but of Basterga the dark and dangerous conspirator, of whom he now heard, ready to repay with the dagger the least attempt to penetrate his secrets!
"He had under his hand the papers," looking at them a little askance as if he doubted whether the explanation would pass, "that we need! The papers that would convict Basterga. And because they did not wear the appearance he expected because they were disguised, you understand they were in a bottle in fact and were not precisely what he expected " "He left them?" "He left them."
Knock at my door at eight this evening and I may have news for you." "You don't think to resolve him to-night?" Grio muttered with a look of incredulity. "It may be. I do not know. In the meantime silence, and keep sober!" "Ay, ay!" "But it is more than ay, ay!" Basterga retorted with irritation; with something of the temper, indeed, which he had betrayed at the beginning of the interview.
"To take some risk to gain a real advantage," Blondel retorted, correcting him with an eye to Fabri; whom alone, as the one impartial hearer, he feared. "For to what does the course which you are so eager to take amount? You seize Basterga: later, you will release him at the Grand Duke's request. What are we the better? What is gained?" "Safety." "No, on the other hand, danger. Danger!
"Then, Messer Blondel, it remains with you to say what is to be done." The Fourth Syndic hesitated, and with reason; had Baudichon, had the Inquisitor known the whole, they could hardly have placed him in a more awkward dilemma. If he took the course that prudence in his own interests dictated, and shielded Basterga, his action might lay him open to future criticism.
But this superiority of the scholar, this aloofness, not from the treachery, but from the handicraft, was beyond him. For that reason it imposed on him the more. Not the less, however, was he importunate to know wherein Basterga trusted.
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