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That was the fear in Blondel's mind; the alarm was growing louder each moment, and drawing nearer. And then in a twinkling, in two or three sentences, Basterga put that fear into the second place, and set in its seat emotions that brooked no rival. "Why not both?" he said, jeering. "Live and be Syndic, both? Because you had the scholar's ill, eh, Messer Blondel?
Petitot, it is true, limited himself to a smile, and Baudichon shrugged his shoulders. But for the moment the challenge silenced them. The game passed to Blondel's hands, and his spirits rose. "If M. Baudichon wants to know more about him," he said contemptuously, "I dare say that the information can be obtained." "The point is," Fabri answered, "what are we to do?" "As to what?"
"No." "Why?" "The substance was exhausted." Blondel gasped. "Why did he not make more?" he cried. His voice was querulous, almost savage. "The experiment," Basterga answered, "of which it was the product was costly." Blondel's face turned purple. "Costly?" he cried. "Costly? When the lives of men hung in the balance."
"Yes," Basterga replied in a sorrowful voice. "I, too. No wonder I feel for you. I have not known it long, nor has it proceeded far in my case. I have even hopes, at least there are times when I have hopes, that the physicians may be mistaken." Blondel's small eyes bulged suddenly larger. "In that event?" he cried hoarsely. "In that event surely "
The band struck up a favorite air from one of the new operas, "Peut-on affliger ce qu'on aime?" which those who saw the anxiety which recent events had already stamped upon the queen's majestic brow could hardly avoid applying to their royal mistress; and when it followed it up by Blondel's lamentation for Richard, "O Richard, O mon roi, l'univers t'abandonne," the first notes of the well-known song touched a chord in every heart, and the whole company, courtiers, ladies, soldiers, and deputies, were all carried away in a perfect delirium of loyal rapture.
In the silence which followed Blondel's fingers tapped restlessly on the table. He cleared his throat and voice. "But there, I tell you there are no risks," he said. He was moved nevertheless. Petitot bowed, humbly for him. "Very good," he said. "I do not say that you are not right. But " "And moment by moment I expect news.
"No, I mean at all!" "I want to know," Baudichon added the parrot phrase began to carry to Blondel's ears the note of fate "what you know about him." This time a pause betrayed Blondel's hesitation. Should he admit that he had been to Basterga's lodging; or dared he deny a fact that might imply an intimacy greater than he had acknowledged?
It was Blondel's song from Grétry's "Richard Coeur de Lion," about which all Paris was crazy and which Garat sang nightly with a prodigious success at the Opéra. This aria Monsieur de St. Aulaire essayed in faithful imitation of the great tenor's manner and in a voice which showed traces of having once been beautiful, but which age and excesses had now broken and rendered harsh and forced.
Blondel's thin lips were warrant to such of the world as had eyes to see that in the ordinary things of life he would have been one of the last to put faith in a man of Basterga's stamp: and one of the first, had the case been other than his own, to laugh at the credulity he was displaying.
Yet no melody that Richard ever heard again was likely to seem as sweet to him as did that song of Blondel's when it came stealing so helpfully through the narrow slits that served as windows in his dungeon cell. This is the legend. Possibly it is true.
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