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The fault lay with him if he made the position worse instead of better. Whether, do what he would, his feelings made themselves known for the shoulders can speak, and eloquently, on occasion or the reverse was the case, and his failure to rise to the bait disappointed the tormentor, the big man, Basterga, presently resumed the attack.
But he reached, he came to that point at last; and his silence and agitation were more eloquent than words. The Syndic, who had not shot his bolt wholly at a venture for to accuse Basterga of the black art had passed through his mind before saw that he had hit the mark; and he pushed his advantage. "Have you noted aught," he asked, "to bear out the idea that he is given to such practices?"
The man pinned against the wall, with the point of a knife flickering before his eyes, begged piteously for his life. "Then silence!" Basterga answered for the foremost who had entered was he. "A word and you die!" "Better let me finish him at once!" Grio growled. The prisoner's face was ashen, his eyes were starting from his head. "Dead men give no alarms." "Mercy! Mercy!" the man gasped.
"Then do you mean," Blondel resumed after a while, "that all your work there" he indicated by a nod the chemical half of the room "has been thrown away?" "Well " "Not quite, I think?" the Syndic said, his small eyes twinkling. "Eh, Messer Basterga, not quite? Now be candid."
A dying man!" rang in his ears and urged him on. Messer Blondel's sagacity in forbearing completely and for so long a period the neighbourhood of Basterga proved an unpleasant surprise to one man; and that was the man most concerned.
But Basterga belonged rather to the fifteenth century, the century of the south, which was expiring, than to the century of the north which was opening.
The Syndic wondered that he had not discerned that point before: and still in sanguine humour he retired to bed, and slept better than he had slept for weeks, ay, for months. The elixir was his, as good as his; if he did not presently have Messer Basterga by the nape he was much mistaken. He had had the scholar watched and knew whither he was gone and that he would not return before noon.
As he awoke to those two facts, he stood blinking in dismayed silence, swallowing his rage, and hating the girl and hating the man with a dumb hatred. Though the reasons which weighed with him were unknown to the two, they could not be blind to his fear and his baffled mien; and had he been alone they might have taken victory for certain. But Basterga was not one to be so lightly thwarted.
"In substance?" he muttered hoarsely, "There was more then?" Basterga shrugged his shoulders. "There was. Save, the Grand Duke added, on the condition but the condition which followed was inadmissible." Blondel gave vent to a cackling laugh. "Inadmissible?" he muttered. "Inadmissible." And then, "You are not a dying man, Messer Basterga, or you would think few things inadmissible."
He knew that Basterga would not believe in his courage, if he swore to it. "No, I said I would be silent," he answered. "And I should have been," he continued with candour, "if I had not run into your arms." "But if you assented to his wish," Basterga retorted, eyeing him keenly, "why did he depart after that fashion?" "Something happened to him," Louis said. "I do not know what.
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