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Title: The Long Night

Author: Stanley Weyman

Release Date: October 7, 2006 [EBook #19485]

Language: English

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THE LONG NIGHT

BY
STANLEY WEYMAN

  AUTHOR OF "A GENTLEMAN OF FRANCE," ETC.

  _SECOND IMPRESSION_

  LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
  39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
  AND BOMBAY
  1903




  WORKS BY STANLEY WEYMAN.


  The House of the Wolf.
  The New Rector.
  The Story of Francis Cludde.
  A Gentleman of France.
  The Man in Black.
  Under the Red Robe.
  My Lady Rotha.
  The Red Cockade.
  Shrewsbury.
  Sophia.
  The Castle Inn.
  From the Memoirs of a Minister of France.
  Count Hannibal.
  In Kings' Byways.
  The Long Night.




  CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                       PAGE

  I.     A Student of Theology                     1
  II.    The House on the Ramparts                16
  III.   The Quintessential Stone                 31
  IV.    Cæsar Basterga                           45
  V.     The Elixir Vitæ                          59
  VI.    To Take or Leave                         74
  VII.   A Second Tissot                          88
  VIII.  On the Threshold                        102
  IX.    Melusina                                116
  X.     Auctio Fit: Venit Vita                  129
  XI.    By This or That                         143
  XII.   The Cup and the Lip                     157
  XIII.  A Mystery Solved                        172
  XIV.   "And Only One Dose in all the World!"   185
  XV.    On the Bridge                           200
  XVI.   A Glove and What Came of It             215
  XVII.  The _Remedium_                          227
  XVIII. The Bargain Struck                      242
  XIX.   The Departure of the Rats               257
  XX.    In the Darkened Room                    271
  XXI.   The _Remedium_                          285
  XXII.  Two Nails in the Wall                   301
  XXIII. In Two Characters                       318
  XXIV.  Armes! Armes!                           335
  XXV.   Basterga at Argos                       350
  XXVI.  The Dawn                                365




CHAPTER I.

A STUDENT OF THEOLOGY.


They were about to shut the Porte St. Gervais, the north gate of Geneva.
The sergeant of the gate had given his men the word to close; but at the
last moment, shading his eyes from the low light of the sun, he happened
to look along the dusty road which led to the Pays de Gex, and he bade
the men wait. Afar off a traveller could be seen hurrying two donkeys
towards the gate, with now a blow on this side, and now on that, and now
a shrill cry. The sergeant knew him for Jehan Brosse, the bandy-legged
tailor of the passage off the Corraterie, a sound burgher and a good man
whom it were a shame to exclude. Jehan had gone out that morning to
fetch his grapes from Möens; and the sergeant had pity on him.

He waited, therefore; and presently he was sorry that he had waited.
Behind Jehan, a long way behind him, appeared a second wayfarer; a young
man covered with dust who approached rapidly on long legs, a bundle
jumping and bumping at his shoulders as he ran. The favour of the gate
was not for such as he--a stranger; and the sergeant anxious to bar, yet
unwilling to shut out Jehan, watched his progress with disgust. As he
feared, too, it turned out. Young legs caught up old ones: the stranger
overtook Jehan, overtook the donkeys. A moment, and he passed under the
arch abreast of them, a broad smile of acknowledgment on his heated
face. He appeared to think that the gate had been kept open out of
kindness to him.

And to be grateful. The war with Savoy--Italian Savoy which, like an
octopus, wreathed clutching arms about the free city of Geneva--had come
to an end some months before. But a State so small that the frontier of
its inveterate enemy lies but two short leagues from its gates, has need
of watch and ward, and curfews and the like, so that he was fortunate
who found the gates of Geneva open after sunset in that year, 1602; and
the stranger seemed to know this.

As the great doors clanged together and two of the watch wound up the
creaking drawbridge, he turned to the sergeant, the smile still on his
face. "I feared that you would shut me out!" he panted, still holding
his sides. "I would not have given much for my chance of a bed a minute
ago."

The sergeant answered only by a grunt.

"If this good fellow had not been in front----"

This time the sergeant cut him short with an imperious gesture, and the
young man seeing that the guard also had fallen stiffly into rank,
turned to the tailor. He was overflowing with good nature: he must speak
to some one. "If you had not been in front," he began, "I----"

But the tailor also cut him short--frowning and laying his finger to his
lip and pointing mysteriously to the ground. The stranger stooped to
look more closely, but saw nothing: and it was only when the others
dropped on their knees that he understood the hint and hastened to
follow the example. The soldiers bent their heads while the sergeant
recited a prayer for the safety of the city. He did this reverently,
while the evening light--which fell grey between walls and sobered those
who had that moment left the open sky and the open country--cast its
solemn mantle about the party.

Such was the pious usage observed in that age at the opening and the
closing of the gates of Geneva: nor had it yet sunk to a form. The
nearness of the frontier and the shadow of those clutching arms, ever
extended to smother the free State, gave a reality to the faith of those
who opened and shut, and with arms in their hands looked back on ten
years of constant warfare. Many a night during those ten years had
Geneva gazed from her watch-towers on burning farms and smouldering
homesteads; many a day seen the smoke of Chablais hamlets float a dark
trail across her lake. What wonder if, when none knew what a night might
bring forth, and the fury of Antwerp was still a new tale in men's ears,
the Genevese held Providence higher and His workings more near than men
are prone to hold them in happier times?

Whether the stranger's reverent bearing during the prayer gained the
sergeant's favour, or the sword tied to his bundle and the bulging
corners of squat books which stuffed out the cloak gave a new notion of
his condition, it is certain that the officer eyed him more kindly when
all rose from their knees. "You can pass in now, young sir," he said
nodding. "But another time remember, if you please, the earlier here the
warmer welcome!"

"I will bear it in mind," the young traveller answered, smiling.
"Perhaps you can tell me where I can get a night's lodging?"

"You come to study, perhaps?" The sergeant puffed himself out as he
spoke, for the fame of Geneva's college and its great professor,
Theodore Beza, was a source of glory to all within the city walls.
Learning, too, was a thing in high repute in that day. The learned
tongues still lived and were passports opening all countries to
scholars. The names of Erasmus and Scaliger were still in the mouths of
men.

"Yes," the youth answered, "and I have the name of a lodging in which I
hope to place myself. But for to-night it is late, and an inn were more
convenient."

"Go then to the 'Bible and Hand,'" the sergeant answered. "It is a
decent house, as are all in Geneva. If you think to find here a
roistering, drinking, swearing tavern, such as you'd find in Dijon----"

"I come to study, not to drink," the young man answered eagerly.

"Well, the 'Bible and Hand,' then! It will answer your purpose well.
Cross the bridge and go straight on. It is in the Bourg du Four."

The youth thanked him with a pleased air, and turning his back on the
gate proceeded briskly towards the heart of the city. Though it was not
Sunday the inhabitants were pouring out from the evening preaching as
plentifully as if it had been the first day of the week; and as he
scanned their grave and thoughtful faces--faces not seldom touched with
sternness or the scars of war--as he passed between the gabled
steep-roofed houses and marked their order and cleanliness, as he saw
above him and above them the two great towers of the cathedral, he felt
a youthful fervour and an enthusiasm not to be comprehended in our age.

To many of us the name and memory of Geneva stand for anything but
freedom. But to the Huguenot of that generation and day, the name of
Geneva stood for freedom; for a fighting aggressive freedom, a full
freedom in the State, a sober measured freedom in the Church. The city
was the outpost, southwards, of the Reformed religion and the Reformed
learning; it sowed its ministers over half Europe, and where they went,
they spread abroad not only its doctrines but its praise and its honour.
If, even to the men of that day there appeared at times a something too
stiff in its attitude, a something too near the Papal in its decrees,
they knew with what foes and against what odds it fought, and how little
consistent with the ferocity of that struggle were the compromises of
life or the courtesies of the lists.

At any rate, in some such colours as these, framed in such a halo,
Claude Mercier saw the Free City as he walked its narrow streets that
evening, seeking the "Bible and Hand". In some such colours had his
father, bred under Calvin to the ministry, depicted it: and the young
man, half French, half Vaudois, sought nothing better, set nothing
higher, than to form a part of its life, and eventually to contribute to
its fame. Good intentions and honest hopes tumbled over one another in
his brain as he walked. The ardour of a new life, to be begun this day,
possessed him. He saw all things through the pure atmosphere of his own
happy nature: and if it remained to him to discover how Geneva would
stand the test of a closer intimacy, at this moment, the youth took the
city to his heart with no jot of misgiving. To follow in the steps of
Theodore Beza, a Frenchman like himself and gently bred, to devote
himself, in these surroundings to the Bible and the Sword, and find in
them salvation for himself and help for others--this seemed an end
simple and sufficing: the end too, which all men in Geneva appeared to
him to be pursuing that summer evening.

By-and-by a grave citizen, a psalm-book in his hand, directed him to the
inn in the Bourg du Four; a tall house turning the carved ends of two
steep gables to the street. On either side of the porch a long low
casement suggested the comfort that was to be found within; nor was the
pledge unfulfilled. In a trice the student found himself seated at a
shining table before a simple meal and a flagon of cool white wine with
a sprig of green floating on the surface. His companions were two
merchants of Lyons, a vintner of Dijon, and a taciturn, soberly clad
professor. The four elders talked gravely of the late war, of the
prevalence of drunkenness in Zurich, of a sad case of witchcraft at
Basle, and of the state of trade in Lausanne and the Pays de Vaud; while
the student, listening with respect, contrasted the quietude of this
house, looking on the grey evening street, with the bustle and chatter
and buffoonery of the inns at which he had lain on his way from
Chatillon. He was in a mood to appraise at the highest all about him,
from the demure maid who served them to the cloaked burghers who from
time to time passed the window wrapped in meditation. From a house hard
by the sound of the evening psalms came to his ears. There are moods and
places in which to be good seems of the easiest; to err, a thing
well-nigh impossible.

The professor was the first to rise and retire; on which the two
merchants drew up their seats to the table with an air of relief. The
vintner looked after the retreating figure. "Of Lausanne, I should
judge?" he said, with a jerk of the elbow.

"Probably," one of the others answered.

"Is he not of Geneva, then?" our student asked. He had listened with
interest to the professor's talk and between whiles had wondered if it
would be his lot to sit under him.

"No, or he would not be here!" one of the merchants replied, shrugging
his shoulders.

"Why not, sir?"

"Why not?" The merchant fixed the questioner with eyes of surprise.
"Don't you know, young man, that those who live in Geneva may not
frequent Geneva taverns?"

"Indeed?" Mercier answered, somewhat startled. "Is that so?"

"It is very much so," the other returned with something of a sneer.

"And they do not!" quoth the vintner with a faint smile.

"Well, professors do not!" the merchant answered with a grimace. "I say
nothing of others. Let the Venerable Company of Pastors see to it. It is
their business."

At this point the host brought in lights. After closing the shutters he
was in the act of retiring when a door near at hand--on the farther side
of the passage if the sound could be trusted--flew open with a clatter.
Its opening let out a burst of laughter, nor was that the worst: alas,
above the laughter rang an oath--the ribald word of some one who had
caught his foot in the step.

The landlord uttered an exclamation and went out hurriedly, closing the
door behind him. A moment and his voice could be heard, scolding and
persuading in the passage.

"Umph!" the vintner muttered, looking from one to the other with a
humorous eye. "It seems to me that the Venerable Company of Pastors have
not yet expelled the old Adam."

Open flew the door and cut short the word. But it had been heard,
"Pastors?" a raucous voice cried. "Passers and Flinchers is what I call
them!" And a stout heavy man, whose small pointed grey beard did but
emphasise the coarse virility of the face above it, appeared on the
threshold, glaring at the four. "Pastors?" he repeated defiantly.
"Passers and Flinchers, I say!"

"In Heaven's name, Messer Grio!" the landlord protested, hovering at his
shoulder, "these are strangers----"

"Strangers? Ay, and flinchers, they too!" the intruder retorted,
heedless of the remonstrance. And he lurched into the room, a bulky,
reeling figure in stained green and tarnished lace. "Four flinchers! But
I'll make them drink a cup with me or I'll prick their hides! Do you
think we shed blood for you and are to be stinted of our liquor!"

"Messer Grio! Messer Grio!" the landlord cried, wringing his hands. "You
will be my ruin!"

"No fear!"

"But I do fear!" the host retorted sharply, going so far as to lay a
hand on his shoulder. "I do fear." Behind the man in green his
boon-fellows, flushed with drink, had gathered, and were staring half
curious, half in alarm into the room. The landlord turned and appealed
to them. "For Heaven's sake get him away quietly!" he muttered. "I shall
lose my living if this be known. And you will suffer too! Gentlemen," he
turned to the party at the table, "this is a quiet house, a quiet house
in general, but----"

"Tut-tut!" said the vintner good-naturedly. "We'll drink a cup with the
gentleman if he wishes it!"

"You'll drink or be pricked!" quoth Messer Grio; he was one of those who
grow offensive in their cups. And while his friends laughed, he swished
out a sword of huge length, and flourished it. "Ça! Ça! Now let me see
any man refuse his liquor!"

The landlord groaned, but thinking apparently that soonest broken was
soonest mended, he vanished, to return in a marvellously short space of
time with four tall glasses and a flask of Neuchatel. "'Tis good wine,"
he muttered anxiously. "Good wine, gentlemen, I warrant you. And Messer
Grio here has served the State, so that some little indulgence----"

"What art muttering?" cried the bully, who spoke French with an accent
new and strange in the student's ears. "Let be! Let be, I say! Let them
drink, or be pricked!"

The merchants and the vintner took their glasses without demur: and,
perhaps, though they shrugged their shoulders, were as willing as they
looked. The young man hesitated, took with a curling lip the glass which
was presented to him, and then, a blush rising to his eyes, pushed it
from him.

"'Tis good wine," the landlord repeated. "And no charge. Drink, young
sir, and----"

"I drink not on compulsion!" the student answered.

Messer Grio stared. "What?" he roared. "You----"

"I drink not on compulsion," the young man repeated, and this time he
spoke clearly and firmly. "Had the gentleman asked me courteously to
drink with him, that were another matter. But----"

"Sho!" the vintner muttered, nudging him in pure kindness. "Drink, man,
and a fico for his courtesy so the wine be old! When the drink is in,
the sense is out, and," lowering his voice, "he'll let you blood to a
certainty, if you will not humour him."

But the grinning faces in the doorway hardened the student in his
resolution. "I drink not on compulsion," he repeated stubbornly. And he
rose from his seat.

"You drink not?" Grio exclaimed. "You drink not? Then by the living----"

"For Heaven's sake!" the landlord cried, and threw himself between them.
"Messer Grio! Gentlemen!"

But the bully, drunk and wilful, twitched him aside. "Under compulsion,
eh!" he sneered. "You drink not under compulsion, don't you, my lad? Let
me tell you," he continued with ferocity, "you will drink when I please,
and where I please, and as often as I please, and as much as I please,
you meal-worm! You half-weaned puppy! Take that glass, d'you hear, and
say after me, Devil take----"

"Messer Grio!" cried the horrified landlord.

"Devil take"--for a moment a hiccough gave him pause--"all flinchers!
Take the glass, young man. That is well! I see you will come to it! Now
say after me, Devil take----"

"That!" the student retorted, and flung the wine in the bully's face.

The landlord shrieked; the other guests rose hurriedly from their seats,
and got aside. Fortunately the wine blinded the man for a moment, and he
recoiled, spitting curses and darting his sword hither and thither in
impotent rage. By the time he had cleared his eyes the youth had got to
his bundle, and, freeing his blade, placed himself in a posture of
defence. His face was pale, but with the pallor of excitement rather
than of fear; and the firm set of his mouth and the smouldering fire in
his eyes as he confronted the drunken bravo, no less than the manner in
which he handled his weapon, showed him as ready to pursue as he had
been hardy to undertake the quarrel.

He gave proof of forethought, too. "Witness all, he drew first!" he
cried; and his glance quitting Grio for the briefest instant sought to
meet the merchants' eyes. "I am on my defence. I call all here to
witness that he has thrust this quarrel upon me!"

The landlord wrung his hands. "Oh dear! oh dear!" he cried. "In Heaven's
name, gentlemen, put up! put up! Stop them! Will no one stop them!" And
in despair, seeing no one move to arrest them, he made as if he would
stand between them.

But the bully flourished his blade about his ears, and with a cry the
goodman saved himself "Out, skinker!" Grio cried grimly. "And you, say
your prayers, puppy. Before you are five minutes older I will spit you
like a partridge though I cross the frontier for it. You have basted me
with wine! I will baste you after another fashion! On guard! On guard,
and----"

"_What is this?_"

The voice stayed Grio's tongue and checked his foot in the very instant
of assault. The student, watching his blade and awaiting the attack, was
surprised to see his point waver and drop. Was it a trick, he wondered?
A stratagem? No, for a silence fell on the room, while those who held
the floor hastened to efface themselves against the wall, as if they at
any rate had nothing to do with the fracas. And next moment Grio
shrugged his shoulders, and with a half-stifled curse stood back.

"What is this?"

The same question in the same tone. This time the student saw whose
voice it was had stayed Grio's arm. Within the door a pace in front of
two or three attendants, who had displaced the roisterers on the
threshold, appeared a spare dry-looking man of middle height, wearing
his hat, and displaying a gold chain of office across the breast of his
black velvet cloak. In age about sixty, he had nothing that at a first
glance seemed to call for a second: his small pinched features, and the
downward curl of the lip, which his moustache and clipped beard failed
to hide, indicated a nature peevish and severe rather than powerful. On
nearer observation the restless eyes, keen and piercing, asserted
themselves and redeemed the face from insignificance. When, as on this
occasion, their glances were supported by the terrors of the State, it
was not difficult to understand why Messer Blondel, the Syndic, though
no great man to look upon, had both weight with the masses, and a hold
not to be denied over his colleagues in the Council.

No one took on himself to answer the question he had put, and in a voice
thin and querulous, but with a lurking venom in its tone, "What is
this?" the great man repeated, looking from one to another. "Are we in
Geneva, or in Venice? Under the skirts of the scarlet woman, or where
the magistrates bear not the sword in vain? Good Mr. Landlord, are
these your professions? Your bailmen should sleep ill to-night, for they
are likely to answer roundly for this! And whom have we sparking it
here? Brawling and swearing and turning into a profligate's tavern a
place that should be for the sober entertainment of travellers? Whom
have we here--eh! Let me see them! Ah!"

He paused rather suddenly, as his eyes met Grio's: and a little of his
dignity fell from him with the pause. His manner underwent a subtle
change from the judicial to the paternal. When he resumed, he wagged his
head tolerantly, and a modicum of sorrow mingled with his anger. "Ah,
Messer Grio! Messer Grio!" he said, "it is you, is it? For shame! For
shame! This is sad, this is lamentable! Some indulgence, it is true"--he
coughed--"may be due after late events, and to certain who have borne
part in them. But this goes too far! Too far by a long way!"

"It was not I began it!" the bully muttered sullenly, a mixture of
bravado and apology in his bearing. He sheathed his blade, and thrust
the long scabbard behind him. "He threw a glass of wine in my face,
Syndic--that is the truth. Is an old soldier who has shed blood for
Geneva to swallow that, and give God thanks?"

The Syndic turned to the student, and licked his lips, his features more
pinched than usual. "Are these your manners?" he said. "If so, they are
not the manners of Geneva! Your name, young man, and your dwelling
place?"

"My name is Claude Mercier, last from Chatillon in Burgundy," the young
man answered firmly. "For the rest, I did no otherwise than you, sir,
must have done in my case!"

The magistrate snorted. "I!"

"Being treated as I was!" the young man protested. "He would have me
drink whether I would or no! And in terms no man of honour could bear."

"Honour?" the Syndic retorted, and on the word exploded in great wrath.
"Honour, say you? Then I know who is in fault. When men of your race
talk of honour 'tis easy to saddle the horse. I will teach you that we
know naught of honour in Geneva, but only of service! And naught of
punctilios but much of modest behaviour! It is such hot blood as yours
that is at the root of brawlings and disorders and such-like, to the
scandal of the community: and to cool it I will commit you to the town
jail until to-morrow! Convey him thither," he continued, turning sharply
to his followers, "and see him safely bestowed in the stocks. To-morrow
I will hear if he be penitent, and perhaps, if he be in a cooler
temper----"

But the young man, aghast at this sudden disgrace, could be silent no
longer. "But, sir," he broke in passionately, "I had no choice. It was
no quarrel of my beginning. I did but refuse to drink, and when he----"

"Silence, sirrah!" the Syndic cried, and cut him short. "You will do
well to be quiet!" And he was turning to bid his people bear their
prisoner out without more ado when one of the merchants ventured to put
in a word.

"May I say," he interposed timidly, "that until this happened, Messer
Blondel, the young man's conduct was all that could be desired?"

"Are you of his company?"

"No, sir."

"Then best keep out of it!" the magistrate retorted sharply.

"And you," to his followers, "did you hear me? Away with him!"

But as the men advanced to execute the order, the young man stepped
forward. "One moment!" he said. "A moment only, sir. I caught the name
of Blondel. Am I speaking to Messer Philibert Blondel?"

The Syndic nodded ungraciously. "Yes," he said, "I am he. What of it?"

"Only this, that I have a letter for him," the student answered, groping
with trembling fingers in his pouch. "From my uncle, the Sieur de
Beauvais of Nocle, by Dijon."

"The Sieur de Beauvais?"

"Yes."

"He is your uncle?"

"Yes."

"So! Well, I remember now," Blondel continued, nodding. "His name was
Mercier. Certainly, it was. Well, give me the letter." His tone was
still harsh, but it was not the same; and when he had broken the seal
and read the letter--with a look half contemptuous, half uneasy--his
brow cleared a little. "It were well young people knew better what
became them," he cried, peevishly shrugging his shoulders. "It would
save us all a great deal. However, for this time as you are a stranger
and well credited, I find, you may go. But let it be a lesson to you, do
you hear? Let it be a lesson to you, young man. Geneva," pompously, "is
no place for brawling, and if you come hither for that, you will quickly
find yourself behind bars. See that you go to a fit lodging to-morrow,
and do you, Mr. Landlord, have a care that he leaves you."

The young man's heart was full, but he had the wisdom to keep his temper
and to say no more. The Syndic on his part was glad, on second thoughts,
to be free of the matter. He was turning to go when it seemed to strike
him that he owed something more to the bearer of the letter. He turned
back. "Yes," he said, "I had forgotten. This week I am busy. But next
week, on some convenient day, come to me, young sir, and I may be able
to give you a word of advice. In the forenoon will be best. Until
then--see to your behaviour!"

The young man bowed and waited, standing where he was, until the bustle
attending the Syndic's departure had quite died away. Then he turned.
"Now, Messer Grio," he said briskly, "for my part I am ready."

But Messer Grio had slipped away some minutes before.




CHAPTER II.

THE HOUSE ON THE RAMPARTS.


The affair at the inn which had threatened to turn out so unpleasantly
for our hero, should have gone some way towards destroying the illusions
with which he had entered Geneva. But faith is strong in the young, and
hope stronger. The traditions of his boyhood and his fireside, and the
stories, animate with affection for the cradle of the faith, to which he
had listened at his father's knee, were not to be over-ridden by the
shadow of an injustice, which in the end had not fallen. When the young
man went abroad next morning and viewed the tall towers of St. Peter, of
which his father had spoken--when, from those walls which had defied
through so many months the daily and nightly threats of an ever-present
enemy, he looked on the sites of conflicts still famous and on
farmsteads but half risen from their ruins--when, above all, he
remembered for what those walls stood, and that here, on the borders of
the blue lake, and within sight of the glittering peaks which charmed
his eyes--if in any one place in Europe--the battle of knowledge and
freedom had been fought, and the rule of the monk and the Inquisitor
cast down, his old enthusiasm revived. He thirsted for fresh conflicts,
for new occasions: and it is to be feared dreamt more of the Sword than
of the sacred Book, which he had come to study, and which, in Geneva,
went hand in hand with it.

In the fervour of such thoughts and in the multitude of new interests
which opened before him, he had well-nigh forgotten the Syndic's tyranny
before he had walked a mile: nor might he have given a second thought to
it but for the need which lay upon him of finding a new lodging before
night. In pursuit of this he presently took his way to the Corraterie, a
row of gabled houses, at the western end of the High Town, built within
the ramparts, and enjoying over them a view of the open country, and the
Jura. The houses ran for some distance parallel with the rampart, then
retired inwards, and again came down to it; in this way enclosing a
triangular open space or terrace. They formed of themselves an inner
line of defence, pierced at the point farthest from the rampart by the
Porte Tertasse: a gate it is true, which was often open even at night,
for the wall in front of the Corraterie, though low on the town side,
looked down from a great height on the ditch and the low meadows that
fringed the Rhone. Trees planted along the rampart shaded the triangular
space, and made it a favourite lounge from which the inhabitants of that
quarter of the town could view the mountains and the sunset while
tasting the freshness of the evening air.

A score of times had Claude Mercier listened to a description of this
row of lofty houses dominating the ramparts. Now he saw it, and, charmed
by the position and the aspect, he trembled lest he should fail to
secure a lodging in the house which had sheltered his father's youth.
Heedless of the suspicious glances shot at him by the watch at the Porte
Tertasse, he consulted the rough plan which his father had made for
him--consulted it rather to assure himself against error than because he
felt doubt. The precaution taken, he made for a house a little to the
right of the Tertasse gate as one looks to the country. He mounted by
four steep steps to the door and knocked on it.

It was opened so quickly as to disconcert him. A lanky youth about his
own age bounced out and confronted him. The lad wore a cap and carried
two or three books under his arm as if he had been starting forth when
the summons came. The two gazed at one another a moment: then, "Does
Madame Royaume live here?" Claude asked.

The other, who had light hair and light eyes, said curtly that she did.

"Do you know if she has a vacant room?" Mercier asked timidly.

"She will have one to-night!" the youth answered with temper in his
tone: and he dashed down the steps and went off along the street without
ceremony or explanation. Viewed from behind he had a thin neck which
agreed well with a small retreating chin.

The door remained open, and after hesitating a moment Claude tapped once
and again with his foot. Receiving no answer he ventured over the
threshold, and found himself in the living-room of the house. It was
cool, spacious and well-ordered. On the left of the entrance a wooden
settle flanked a wide fireplace, in front of which stood a small heavy
table. Another table a little bigger occupied the middle of the room; in
one corner the boarded-up stairs leading to the higher floors bulked
largely. Two or three dark prints--one a portrait of Calvin--with a
framed copy of the Geneva catechism, and a small shelf of books, took
something from the plainness and added something to the comfort of the
apartment, which boasted besides a couple of old oaken dressers, highly
polished and gleaming, with long rows of pewter ware. Two doors stood
opposite the entrance and appeared to lead--for one of them stood
open--to a couple of closets: bedrooms they could hardly be called, yet
in one of them Claude knew that his father had slept. And his heart
warmed to it.

The house was still; the room was somewhat dark, for the windows were
low and long, strongly barred, and shaded by the trees, through the cool
greenery of which the light filtered in. The young man stood a moment,
and hearing no footstep or movement wondered what he should do. At
length he ventured to the door of the staircase and, opening it,
coughed. Still no one answered or came, and unwilling to intrude farther
he turned about and waited on the hearth. In a corner behind the settle
he noticed two half pikes and a long-handled sword; on the seat of the
settle itself lay a thin folio bound in stained sheepskin. A log
smouldered on the hearth, and below the great black pot which hung over
it two or three pans and pipkins sat deep among the white ashes. Save
for these there was no sign in the room of a woman's hand or use. And he
wondered. Certainly the young man who had departed so hurriedly had said
it was Madame Royaume's. There could be no mistake.

Well, he would go and come again. But even as he formed the resolution,
and turned towards the outer door--which he had left open--he heard a
faint sound above, a step light but slow. It seemed to start from the
uppermost floor of all, so long was it in descending; so long was it
before, waiting on the hearth cap in hand, he saw a shadow darken the
line below the staircase door. A second later the door opened and a
young girl entered and closed it behind her. She did not see him;
unconscious of his presence she crossed the floor and shut the outer
door.

There was a something in her bearing which went to the heart of the
young man who stood and saw her for the first time; a depression, a
dejection, an I know not what, so much at odds with her youth and her
slender grace, that it scarcely needed the sigh with which she turned
to draw him a pace nearer. As he moved their eyes met. She, who had not
known of his presence, recoiled with a low cry and stared wide-eyed: he
began hurriedly to speak.

"I am the son of M. Gaston Mercier, of Chatillon," he said, "who lodged
here formerly. At least," he stammered, beginning to doubt, "if this be
the house of Madame Royaume, he lodged here. A young man who met me at
the door said that Madame lived here, and had a room."

"He admitted you? The young man who went out?"

"Yes."

She gazed hard at him a moment, as if she doubted or suspected him.
Then, "We have no room," she said.

"But you will have one to-night," he answered

"I do not know."

"But--but from what he said," Claude persisted doggedly, "he meant that
his own room would be vacant, I think."

"It may be," she answered dully, the heaviness which surprise had lifted
for a moment settling on her afresh. "But we shall take no new lodgers.
Presently you would go," with a cold smile, "as he goes to-day."

"My father lodged here three years," Claude answered, raising his head
with pride. "He did not go until he returned to France. I ask nothing
better than to lodge where my father lodged. Madame Royaume will know my
name. When she hears that I am the son of M. Gaston Mercier, who often
speaks of her----"

"He fell sick here, I think?" the girl said. She scanned him anew with
the first show of interest that had escaped her. Yet reluctantly, it
seemed; with a kind of ungraciousness hard to explain.

"He had the plague in the year M. Chausse, the pastor of St. Gervais,
died of it," Claude answered eagerly. "When it was so bad. And Madame
nursed him and saved his life. He often speaks of it and of Madame with
gratitude. If Madame Royaume would see me?"

"It is useless," she answered with an impatient shrug. "Quite useless,
sir. I tell you we have no room. And--I wish you good-morning." On the
word she turned from him with a curt gesture of dismissal, and kneeling
beside the embers began to occupy herself with the cooking pots;
stirring one and tasting another, and raising a third a little aslant at
the level of her eyes that she might peer into it the better. He
lingered, watching her, expecting her to turn. But when she had skimmed
the last jar and set it back, and screwed it down among the embers, she
remained on her knees, staring absently at a thin flame which had sprung
up under the black pot. She had forgotten his presence, forgotten him
utterly; forgotten him, he judged, in thoughts as deep and gloomy as the
wide dark cavern of chimney which yawned above her head and dwarfed the
slight figure kneeling Cinderella-like among the ashes.

Claude Mercier looked and looked, and wondered, and at last longed:
longed to comfort, to cherish, to draw to himself and shelter the
budding womanhood before him, so fragile now, so full of promise for the
future. And quick as the flame had sprung up under her breath, a magic
flame awoke in his heart, and burned high and hot. If he did not lodge
here,

    The sky might fall, fish fly, and sheep pursue
    The tawny monarch of the Libyan strand!

But he would lodge here. He coughed.

She started and turned, and seeing him, seeing that he had not gone, she
rose with a frown. "What is it?" she said. "For what are you waiting,
sir?"

"I have something in charge for Madame Royaume," he answered.

"I will give it her," she returned sharply. "Why did you not say so at
once?" And she held out her hand.

"No," he said hardily. "I have it in charge for her hand only."

"I am her daughter."

He shook his head stubbornly.

What she would have done on that--her face was hard and promised
nothing--is uncertain. Fortunately for the young man's hopes, a dull
report as of a stick striking the floor in some room above reached their
ears; he saw her eyes flicker, alter, grow soft. "Wait!" she said
imperiously; and stooping to take one of the pipkins from the fire, she
poured its contents into a wooden bowl which stood beside her on the
table. She added a horn-spoon and a pinch of salt, fetched a slice of
coarse bread from a cupboard in one of the dressers, and taking all in
skilled steady hands, hands childishly small, though brown as nuts, she
disappeared through the door of the staircase.

He waited, looking about the room, and at this, and at that, with a new
interest. He took up the book which lay on the settle: it was a learned
volume, part of the works of Paracelsus, with strange figures and
diagrams interwoven with the crabbed Latin text. A passage which he
deciphered, abashed him by its profundity, and he laid the book down,
and went from one to another of the black-framed engravings; from these
to an oval piece in coarse Limoges enamel, which hung over the little
shelf of books. At length he heard a step descending from the upper
floors, and presently she appeared in the doorway.

"My mother will see you," she said, her tone as ungracious as her look.
"But you will say nothing of lodging here, if it please you. Do you
hear?" she added, her voice rising to a more imperious note.

He nodded.

She turned on the lowest step. "She is bed-ridden," she muttered, as if
she felt the need of explanation. "She is not to be disturbed with house
matters, or who comes or goes. You understand that, do you?"

He nodded, with a mental reservation, and followed her up the confined
staircase. Turning sharply at the head of the first flight he saw before
him a long narrow passage, lighted by a window that looked to the back.
On the left of the passage which led to a second set of stairs, were two
doors, one near the head of the lower flight, the other at the foot of
the second. She led him past both--they were closed--and up the second
stairs and into a room under the tiles, a room of good size but with a
roof which sloped in unexpected places.

A woman lay there, not uncomely; rather comely with the beauty of
advancing years, though weak and frail if not ill. It was the woman of
whom he had so often heard his father speak with gratitude and respect.
It was neither of his father, however, nor of her, that Claude Mercier
thought as he stood holding Madame Royaume's hand and looking down at
her. For the girl who had gone before him into the room had passed to
the other side of the bed, and the glance which she and her mother
exchanged as the daughter leant over the couch, the message of love and
protection on one side, of love and confidence on the other--that
message and the tone, wondrous gentle, in which the girl, so curt and
abrupt below, named him--these revealed a bond and an affection for
which the life of his own family furnished him with no precedent.

For his mother had many children, and his father still lived. But these
two, his heart told him as he held Madame Royaume's shrivelled hand in
his, were alone. They had each but the other, and lived each in the
other, in this room under the tiles with the deep-set dormer windows
that looked across the Pays de Gex to the Jura. For how much that
prospect of vale and mountain stood in their lives, how often they rose
to it from the same bed, how often looked at it in sunshine and shadow
with the house still and quiet below them, he seemed to know--to guess.
He had a swift mental vision of their lives, and then Madame Royaume's
voice recalled him to himself.

"You are newly come to Geneva?" she said, gazing at him.

"I arrived yesterday."

"Yes, yes, of course," she answered. She spoke quickly and nervously.
"Yes, you told me so." And she turned to her daughter and laid her hand
on hers as if she talked more easily so. "Your father, Monsieur
Mercier," with an obvious effort, "is well, I hope?"

"Perfectly, and he begged me to convey his grateful remembrances. Those
of my mother also," the young man added warmly.

"Yes, he was a good man! I remember when, when he was ill, and M.
Chausse--the pastor, you know"--the reminiscence appeared to agitate
her--"was ill also----"

The girl leant over her quickly. "Monsieur Mercier has brought something
for you, mother," she said.

"Ah?"

"His grateful remembrances and this letter," Claude murmured with a
blush. He knew that the letter contained no more than he had already
said; compliments, and the hope that Madame Royaume might be able to
receive the son as she had received the father.

"Ah!" Madame Royaume repeated, taking the letter with fingers that shook
a little.

"You shall read it when Monsieur Mercier is gone," her daughter said.
With that she looked across at the young man. Her eyes commanded him to
take his leave.

But he was resolute. "My father expresses the hope," he said, "that you
will grant me the same privilege of living under your roof, Madame,
which was so highly prized by him."

"Of course, of course," she answered eagerly, her eyes lighting up. "I
am not myself, sir, able to overlook the house--but, Anne, you will see
to--to this being done?"

"My dear mother, we have no room!" the girl replied; and stooping, hid
her face while she whispered in her mother's ear. Then aloud, "We are so
full, so--it goes so well," she continued gaily. "We never have any
room. I am sure, sir,"--again she faced him across the bed--"it is a
disappointment to my mother, but it cannot be helped."

"Dear, dear, it is unfortunate!" Madame Royaume exclaimed; and then with
a fond look at her daughter, "Anne manages so well!"

"Yet if there be a room at any time vacant?"

"You shall assuredly have it."

"But, mother dear," the girl cried, "M. Grio and M. Basterga are
permanent on the floor below. And Esau and Louis are now with us, and
have but just entered on their course at college. And you know," she
continued softly, "no one ever leaves your house before they are obliged
to leave it, mother dear!"

The mother patted the daughter's hand. "No," she said proudly. "It is
true. And we cannot turn any one away. And yet," looking up at Anne,
"the son of Messer Mercier? You do not think--do you think that we could
put him----"

"A closet however small!" Claude cried.

"Unfortunately the room beyond this can only be entered through this
one."

"It is out of the question!" the girl responded quickly; and for the
first time her tone rang a little hard. The next instant she seemed to
repent of her petulance; she stooped and kissed the thin face sunk in
the pillow's softness. Then, rising, "I am sorry," she continued stiffly
and decidedly. "But it is impossible!"

"Still--if a vacancy should occur?" he pleaded.

Her eyes met his defiantly. "We will inform you," she said.

"Thank you," he answered humbly. "Perhaps I am fatiguing your mother?"

"I think you are a little tired, dear," the girl said, stooping over
her. "A little fatigues you."

Madame's cheeks were flushed; her eyes shone brightly, even feverishly.
Claude saw this, and having pushed his plea and his suit as far as he
dared, he hastened to take his leave. His thoughts had been busy with
his chances all the time, his eyes with the woman's face; yet he bore
away with him a curiously vivid picture of the room, of the bow-pot
blooming in the farther dormer, of the brass skillet beside the green
boughs which filled the hearth, of the spinning wheel in the middle of
the floor, and the great Bible on the linen chest beside the bed, of the
sloping roof, and a queer triangular cupboard which filled one corner.

At the time, as he followed the girl downstairs, he thought of none of
these things. He only asked himself what mystery lay in the bosom of
this quiet house, and what he should say when he stood in the room below
at bay before her. Of one thing he was still sure--sure, ay and surer,
since he had seen her with her mother,

    The sky might fall, fish fly, and sheep pursue
    The tawny monarch of the Libyan strand!

but he lodged here. The mention of his adversary of last night, which
had not escaped his ear, had only hardened him in his resolution. The
room of Esau--or was it Louis' room--must be his! He must be Jacob the
Supplanter.

She did not speak as she preceded him down the stairs, and before they
emerged one after the other into the living-room, which was still
unoccupied, he had formed his plan. When she moved towards the outer
door to open it he refused to follow: he stood still. "Pardon me," he
said, "would you mind giving me the name of the young man who admitted
me?"

"I do not see----"

"I only want his name."

"Esau Tissot."

"And his room? Which was it?"

Grudgingly she pointed to the nearer of the two closets, that of which
the door stood open.

"That one?"

"Yes."

He stepped quickly into it, and surveyed it carefully. Then he laid his
cap on the low truckle-bed. "Very good," he said, raising his voice and
speaking through the open door, "I will take it." And he came out again.

The girl's eyes sparkled. "If you think," she cried, her temper showing
in her face, "that that will do you any good----"

"I don't think," he said, cutting her short, "I take it. Your mother
undertook that I should have the first vacant room. Tissot resigned this
room this morning. I take it. I consider myself fortunate--most
fortunate."

Her colour came and went. "If you were a boor," she cried, "you could
not behave worse!"

"Then I am a boor!"

"But you will find," she continued, "that you cannot force your way
into a house like this. You will find that such things are not done in
Geneva. I will have you put out!"

"Why?" he asked, craftily resorting to argument. "When I ask only to
remain and be quiet? Why, when you have, or to-night will have, an empty
room? Why, when you lodged Tissot, will you not lodge me? In what am I
worse than Tissot or Grio," he continued, "or--I forget the other's
name? Have I the plague, or the falling sickness? Am I Papist or Arian?
What have I done that I may not lie in Geneva, may not lie in your
house? Tell me, give me a reason, show me the cause, and I will go."

Her anger had died down while he spoke and while she listened. Instead,
the lowness of heart to which she had yielded when she thought herself
alone before the hearth showed in every line of her figure. "You do not
know what you are doing," she said sadly. And she turned and looked
through the casement. "You do not know what you are asking, or to what
you are coming."

"Did Tissot know when he came?"

"You are not Tissot," she answered in a low tone, "and may fare worse."

"Or better," he answered gaily. "And at worst----"

"Worse or better you will repent it," she retorted. "You will repent it
bitterly!"

"I may," he answered. "But at least you never shall."

She turned and looked at him at that; looked at him as if the curtain of
apathy fell from her eyes and she saw him for the first time as he was,
a young man, upright and not uncomely. She looked at him with her mind
as well as her eyes, and seeing felt curiosity about him, pity for him,
felt her own pulses stirred by his presence and his aspect. A faint
colour, softer than the storm-flag which had fluttered there a minute
before, rose to her cheeks; her lips began to tremble. He feared that
she was going to weep, and "That is settled!" he said cheerfully.
"Good!" and he went into the little room and brought out his cap. "I lay
last night at the 'Bible and Hand,' and I must fetch my cloak and pack."

She stayed him by a gesture. "One moment," she said. "You are determined
to--to do this? To lodge here?"

"Firmly," he answered, smiling.

"Then wait." She passed by him and, moving to the fireplace, raised the
lid of the great black pot. The broth inside was boiling and bubbling to
within an inch of the lip, the steam rose from it in a fragrant cloud.
She took an iron spoon and looked at him, a strange look in her eyes.
"Stand where you are," she said, "and I will try you, if you are fit to
come to us or no. Stand, do you hear," she repeated, a note of
excitation, almost of mockery, in her voice, "where you are whatever
happens! You understand?"

"Yes, I am to stand here, whatever happens," he answered, wondering.
What was she going to do?

She was going to do a thing outside the limits of his imagination. She
dipped the iron spoon in the pot and, extending her left arm,
deliberately allowed some drops of the scalding liquor to fall on the
bare flesh. He saw the arm wince, saw red blisters spring out on the
white skin, he caught the sharp indraw of her breath, but he did not
move. Again she dipped the spoon, looking at him with defiant eyes, and
with the same deliberation she let the stuff fall on the living flesh.
This time the perspiration sprang out on her brow, her face burned
suddenly hot, her whole frame shrank under the torture.

"Don't!" he cried hoarsely. "I will not bear it! Don't!" And he uttered
a cry half-articulate, like a beast's.

"Stand there!" she said. And still he stood: stood, his hands clenched
and his lips drawn back from his teeth, while she dipped the spoon
again, and--though her arm shook now like an aspen and there were tears
of pain in her eyes--let the dreadful stuff fall a third time.

She was white when she turned to him. "If you do it again," he cried
furiously, "I will upset--the cursed pot."

"I have done," she said, smiling faintly. "I am not very brave--after
all!" And going to the dresser, her knees trembling under her, she
poured out some water and drank it greedily. Then she turned to him, "Do
you understand?" she said with a long tense look. "Are you prepared? If
you come here, you will see me suffer worse things, things a hundred
times, a thousand times worse than that. You will see me suffer, and you
will have to stand and see it. You will have to stand and suffer it. You
will have to stand! If you cannot, do not come."

"I stood it," he answered doggedly. "But there are things flesh and
blood cannot stand. There is a limit----"

"The limit I shall fix," she said proudly. "Not you."

"But you will fix it?"

"Perhaps. At any rate, that is the bargain. You may accept or refuse.
You do not know where I stand, and I do. You must see and be blind, feel
and be dumb, hear and make no answer, unless I speak--if you are to come
here."

"But you will speak--sometime?"

"I do not know," she answered wearily, and her whole form wilting she
looked away from him. "I do not know. Go now, if you please--and
remember!"




CHAPTER III.

THE QUINTESSENTIAL STONE.


The old town of Geneva, pent in the angle between lake and river, and
cramped for many generations by the narrow corselet of its walls, was
not large; it was still high noon when Mercier, after paying his
reckoning at the "Bible and Hand," and collecting his possessions, found
himself again in the Corraterie. A pleasant breeze stirred the leafy
branches which shaded the ramparts, and he stood a moment beside one of
the small steep-roofed watch-towers, and resting his burden on the
breast-high wall, gazed across the hazy landscape to the mountains,
beyond which lay Chatillon and his home.

Yet it was not of his home he was thinking as he gazed; nor was it his
mother's or his father's face that the dancing heat of mid-day mirrored
for him as he dreamed. Oh, happy days of youth when an hour and a face
change all, and a glance from shy eyes, or the pout of strange lips
blinds to the world and the world's ambitions! Happy youth! But alas for
the studies this youth had come so far to pursue, for the theology he
had crossed those mountains to imbibe--at the pure source and fount of
evangelical doctrine! Alas for the venerable Beza, pillar and pattern of
the faith, whom he had thirsted to see, and the grave of Calvin, aim and
end of his pilgrimage! All Geneva held but one face for him now, one
presence, one gracious personality. A scarlet blister on a round white
arm, the quiver of a girl's lip a-tremble on the verge of tears--these
and no longing for home, these and no memory of father or mother or the
days of childhood, filled his heart to overflowing. He dreamed with his
eyes on the hills, but it was not

    Of Providence, foreknowledge, will and fate,
    Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,

the things he had come to study; but of a woman's trouble and the secret
life of the house behind him, of which he was about to form part.

At length the call of a sentry at the Porte Tertasse startled him from
his thoughts. He roused himself, and uncertain how long he had lingered
he took up his cloak and bag and, turning, hastened across the street to
the door at the head of the four steps. He found it on the latch, and
with a confident air, which belied his real feelings, he pushed it open
and presented himself.

For a moment he fancied that the room held only one person. This was a
young man who sat at the table in the middle of the room and, surprised
by the appearance of a stranger, suspended his spoon in the air that he
might the better gaze at him. But when Claude had set down his bag
behind the door, and turned to salute the other, he discovered his
error; and despite himself he paused in the act of advancing, unable to
hide his concern. At the table on the hearth, staring at him in silence,
sat two other men. And one of the two was Grio.

Mercier paused we have said; he expected an outburst of anger if not an
assault. But a second glance at the old ruffian's face relieved him: a
stare of vacant wonder made it plain that Grio sober retained little of
the doings of Grio drunk. Nevertheless, the silent gaze of the
three--for no one greeted him--took Claude aback; and it was but
awkwardly and with embarrassment that he approached the table, and
prepared to add himself to the party. Something in their looks as well
as their silence whispered him unwelcome. He blushed, and addressing the
young man at the larger table--

"I have taken Tissot's room," he said shyly. "This is his seat, I
suppose. May I take it?" And indicating an empty bowl and spoon on the
nearer side of the table, he made as if he would sit down before them.

In place of answering, the young man looked from him to the two on the
hearth, and laughed--a foolish, frightened laugh. The sound led
Mercier's eyes in the same direction, and he appreciated for the first
time the aspect of the man who sat with Grio; a man of great height and
vast bulk, with a large plump face and small grey eyes. It struck
Mercier as he met the fixed stare of those eyes, that he had entered
with less ceremony than was becoming, and that he ought to make amends
for it; and, in the act of sitting down in the vacant seat, he turned
and bowed politely to the two at the other table.

"Tissotius timuit, jam peregrinus adest!" the big man murmured in a
voice at once silky and sonorous. Then ignoring Mercier, but looking
blandly at the young man who sat facing him at the table, "What is this
of Tissot?" he continued. "Can it be," with a side-glance at the
newcomer, "that we have lost our--I may not call him our quintessence or
alcahest--rather shall I say our baser ore, that at the virgin touch of
our philosophical stone blushed into ruddy gold? And burned ever
brighter and hotter in her presence! Tissot gone, and with him all those
fair experiments! Is it possible?"

The young man's grin showed that he savoured a jest. But, "I know
nothing," he muttered sheepishly. "'Tis new to me."

"Tissot gone!" the big man repeated in a tone humorously melancholy. "No
more shall we

    Upon his viler metal test our purest pure,
    And see him transmutations three endure!

Tissot gone! And you, sir, come in his place. What change is here! A
stranger, I believe?"

"In Geneva, yes," Claude answered, wondering and a little abashed. The
man spoke with an air of power and weight.

"And a student, doubtless in our Academia? Like our Tissot? Yes. It may
be," he continued in the same smooth tones wherein ridicule and
politeness appeared to be so nicely mingled that it was difficult to
judge if he spoke in jest or earnest, "like him in other things! It may
be that we have gained and not lost. And that qualities finer and more
susceptible underlie an exterior more polished and an ease more
complete," he bowed, "than our poor Tissot could boast! But here is

    Our stone angelical whereby
    All secret potencies to light are brought!

Doubtless"--with a wave of the hand he indicated the girl who had that
moment entered--"you have met before?"

"I could not otherwise," Claude answered coldly--he began to resent both
the man and his manner--"have engaged the lodging." And he rose to take
from the girl's hand the broth she was bringing him. She, on her side,
made no sign that she noticed a change, or that it was no longer Tissot
she served. She gave him what he needed, mechanically and without
meeting his eyes. Then turning to the others, she waited on them after
the same fashion. For a minute or two there was silence in the room.

A strange silence, Claude thought, listening and wondering: as strange
and embarrassing as the talk of the man who shared with Grio the table
by the fireplace: as strange as the atmosphere about them, which hung
heavy, to his fancy, and oppressive, fraught with unintelligible
railleries, with subtle jests and sneers. The girl went to and fro, from
one to another, her face pale, her manner quiet. And had he not seen her
earlier with another look in her eyes, had he not detected a sinister
something underlying the big man's good humour, he would have learned
nothing from her; he would have fancied that all was as it should be in
the house and in the company.

As it was he understood nothing. But he felt that a something was wrong,
that a something overhung the party. Seated as he was he could not
without turning see the faces of the two at the other table, nor watch
the girl when she waited on them. But the suspicion of a smile which
hovered on the lips of the young man who sat opposite him--whom he could
see--kept him on his guard. Was a trick in preparation? Were they about
to make him pay his footing? No, for they had no notice of his coming.
They could not have laid the mine. Then why that smile? And why this
silence?

On a sudden he caught the sound of a movement behind him, the swirl of a
petticoat, and the clang of a pewter plate as it fell noisily to the
floor. His companion looked up swiftly, the smile on his face broadening
to a snigger. Claude turned too as quickly as he could and looked, his
face hot, his mind suspecting some prank to be played on him; to his
astonishment he discovered nothing to account for the laugh. The girl
appeared to be bending over the embers on the hearth, the men to be
engaged with their meal; and baffled and perplexed he turned again and,
his ears burning, bent over his plate. He was glad when the stout man
broke the silence for the second time.

"Agrippa," he said, "has this of amalgams. That whereas gold, silver,
tin are valuable in themselves, they attain when mixed with mercury to a
certain light and sparkling character, as who should say the bubbles on
wine, or the light resistance of beauty, which in the one case and the
other add to the charm. Such to our simple pleasures"--he continued with
a rumble of deep laughter--"our simple pleasures, which I must now also
call our pleasures of the past, was our Tissot! Who, running fluid
hither and thither, where resistance might be least of use, was as it
were the ultimate sting of enjoyment. Is it possible that we have in our
friend a new Tissot?"

The young man at the table giggled. "I did not know Tissot!" Claude
replied sharply and with a burning face--they were certainly laughing at
him. "And therefore I cannot say."

"Mercury, which completes the amalgam," the stout man muttered absently
and as if to himself, "when heated sublimes over!" Then turning after a
moment's silence to the girl, "What says our Quintessential Stone to
this?" he continued. "Her Tissot gone will she still work her wonders?
Still of base Grios and the weak alloys red bridegrooms make?
Still--kind Anne, your hand!"

Silence! Silence again. What were they doing? Claude, full of suspicion,
turned to see what it meant; turned to learn what it was on which the
greedy eyes of his table-fellow were fixed so intently. And now he saw,
more or less. The stout man and Grio had their heads together and their
faces bent over the girl's hand, which the former held. On them,
however, Claude scarcely bestowed a glance. It was the girl's face which
caught and held his eyes, nay, made them burn. Had it blushed, had it
showed white, he had borne the thing more lightly, he had understood it
better. But her face showed dull and apathetic; as she stood looking
down at the men, suffering them to do what they would with her hand, a
strange passivity was its sole expression. When the big man (whose name
Claude learned later was Basterga), after inspecting the palm, kissed it
with mock passion, and so surrendered it to Grio, who also pressed his
coarse lips to it, while the young man beside Claude laughed, no change
came over her. Released, she turned again to the hearth, impassive. And
Claude, his heart beating, recognised that this was the hundredth
performance; that so far from being a new thing it was a thing so old as
to be stale to her, moving her less, though there were insult and
derision in every glance of the men's eyes, than it moved him.

And noting this he began in a dim way to understand. This was the thing
which Tissot had not been able to bear; which in the end had driven the
young man with the small chin from the house. This was the pleasantry to
which his feeble resistance, his outbursts of anger, of jealousy, or of
protest had but added piquancy, the ultimate sting of pleasure to the
jaded palate of the performers. This was the obsession under which she
lay, the trial and persecution which she had warned him he would find it
hard to witness.

Hard? He believed her, trifling as was the thing he had seen. For behind
it he had a glimpse of other and worse things, and behind all of some
shadowy brooding mystery which compelled her to suffer them and forbade
her to complain. What that was he could not conceive, what it could be
he could not conceive: nor had he long to consider the question. He
found the shifty eyes of his table-fellow fixed upon him, and, though
the moment his own eyes met them they were averted, he fancied that they
sped a glance of intelligence to the table behind him, and he hastened
to curb, if not his feelings, at least the show of them. He had his
warning. It was not as Tissot he must act if he would help her, but more
warily, more patiently, biding her time, and letting the blow, when the
time came, precede the word. Unwarned, he had acted it is probable as
Tissot had acted, weakly and stormily: warned, he had no excuse if he
failed her. Young as he was he saw this. 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.

"Tissotius pereat, Tissotianus adest!" he muttered with a sneer. "But
perhaps, young sir, Latinity is not one of your subjects. The tongue of
the immortal Cicero----"

"I speak it a little," Claude answered quietly. "It were foolish to
approach the door of learning without the key."

"Oh, you are a wit, young sir! Well, with your wit and your Latinity can
you construe this:--

    Stultitiam expellas, furca tamen usque recurret
      Tissotius periit terque quaterque redit!"

"I think so," Claude replied gravely.

"Good, if it please you! And the meaning?"

"Tissot was a fool, and you are another!" the young man returned. "Will
you now solve me one, reverend sir, with all submission?"

"Said and done!" the big man answered disdainfully.

"Nec volucres plumæ faciunt nec cuspis Achillem! Construe me that then
if you will!"

Basterga shrugged his shoulders. "Fine feathers do not make fine birds!"
he said. "If you apply it to me," he continued with a contemptuous face,
"I----"

"Oh, no, to your company," Claude answered. Self-control comes hardly to
the young, and he had already forgotten his _rôle_. "Ask him what
happened last night at the 'Bible and Hand,'" he continued, pointing to
Grio, "and how he stands now with his friend the Syndic!"

"The Syndic?"

"The Syndic Blondel!"

The moment the words had passed his lips, Claude repented. He saw that
he had struck a note more serious than he intended. The big man did not
move, but over his fat face crept a watching expression; he was plainly
startled. His eyes, reduced almost to pin-points, seemed for an instant
the eyes of a cat about to spring. The effect was so evident indeed that
it bewildered Claude and so completely diverted his attention from Grio,
the real target, that when the bully, who had listened stupidly to the
exchange of wit, proved by a brutal oath his comprehension of the
reference to himself, the young man scarcely heard him.

"The Syndic Blondel?" Basterga muttered after a pregnant pause. "What
know you of him, pray?"

Before the young man could answer, Grio broke in. "So you have followed
me here, have you?" he cried, striking his jug on the table and glaring
across the board at the offender. "You weren't content to escape last
night it seems. Now----"

"Enough!" Basterga muttered, the keen expression of his face unchanged.
"Softly! Softly! Where are we? I don't understand. What is this? Last
night----"

"I want not to rake up bygones if you will let them be," Claude answered
with a sulky air, half assumed. "It was you who attacked me."

"You puppy!" Grio roared. "Do you think----"

"Enough!" Basterga said again: and his eyes leaving the young man fixed
themselves on his companion. "I begin to understand," he murmured, his
voice low, but not the less menacing for that, or for the cat-like purr
in it. "I begin to comprehend. This is one of your tricks, Messer Grio.
One of the clever tricks you play in your cups! Some day you'll do that
in them will--No!" repressing the bully as he attempted to rise. "Have
done now and let us understand. The 'Bible and Hand,' eh? 'Twas there, I
suppose, you and this youth met, and----"

"Quarrelled," said Claude sullenly. "That's all."

"And you followed him hither?"

"No, I did not."

"No? Then how come you here?" Basterga asked, his eyes still watchful.
"In this house, I mean? 'Tis not easy to find."

"My father lodged here," Claude vouchsafed. And he shrugged his
shoulders, thinking that with that the matter was clear.

But Basterga continued to eye him with something that was not far
removed from suspicion. "Oh," he said. "That is it, is it? Your father
lodged here. And the Syndic--Blondel, was it you said? How comes he into
it? Grio was prating of him, I suppose?" For an instant, while he waited
the answer to the question, his eyes shrank again to pin-points.

"He came in and found us at sword-play," Claude answered. "Or just
falling to it. And though the fault was not mine, he would have sent me
to prison if I had not had a letter for him."

"Oh!" And returning with a manifest effort to the tone and manner of a
few minutes before:--

    "Impiger, Iracundus, Inexorabilis, acer
    Jura neget sibi nata, nihil non arroget armis,"

he hummed. "I doubt if such manners will be appreciated in Geneva, young
man," and furtively he wiped his brow. "To old stagers like my friend
here who has given his proofs of fidelity to the State, some indulgence
is granted----"

"I see that," Claude answered with sarcasm.

"I am saying it. But you, if you will not be warned, will soon find or
make the town too hot for you."

"He will find this house too hot for him!" growled his companion, who
had made more than one vain attempt to assert himself. "And that to-day!
To-day! Perdition, I know him now," he continued, fixing his bloodshot
eyes on the young man, "and if he crows here as he crowed last night,
his comb must be cut! As well soon as late, for there will be no living
with him! There, don't hold me, man! Let me at him!" And he tried to
rise.

"Fool, have done!" Basterga replied, still restraining him, but only by
the exertion of considerable force. And then in a lower tone but one
partially audible, "Do you want to draw the eyes of all Geneva this
way?" he continued. "Do you want the house marked and watched and every
gossip's tongue wagging about it? You did harm enough last night, I'll
answer, and well if no worse comes of it! Have done, I say, or I shall
speak, you know to whom!"

"Why does he come here? Why does he follow me?" the sot complained.

"Cannot you hear that his father lodged here?"

"A lie!" Grio cried vehemently. "He is spying on us! First at the 'Bible
and Hand' last night, and then here! It is you who are the fool, man.
Let me go! Let me at him, I say!"

"I shall not!" the big man answered firmly. And he whispered in the
other's ear something which Claude could not catch. Whatever it was it
cooled Grio's rage. He ceased to struggle, nodded sulkily and sat back.
He stretched out his hand, took a long draught, and having emptied his
jug, "Here's Geneva!" he said, wiping his lips with the air of a man who
had given a toast. "Only don't let him cross me! That is all. Where is
the wench?"

"She has gone upstairs," Basterga answered with one eye on Claude. He
seemed to be unable to shake off a secret doubt of him.

"Then let her come down," Grio answered with a grin, half drunken, half
brutal, "and make her show sport. Here, you there," to the young man who
shared Claude's table, "call her down and----"

"Sit still!" Basterga growled, and he trod--Claude was almost sure of
it--on the bully's foot. "It is late, and these young gentlemen should
be at their themes. Theology, young sir," he turned to Claude with the
slightest shade of over-civility in his pompous tone, "like the pursuit
of the Alcahest, which some call the Quintessence of the Elements,
allows no rival near its throne!"

"I attend my first lecture to-morrow," Claude answered drily. And he
kept his seat. His face was red and his hand trembled. They would call
her down for their sport, would they! Not in his presence, nor again in
his absence, if he could avoid it.

Grio struck the table. "Call her down!" he ordered in a tone which
betrayed the influence of his last draught. "Do you hear!" And he looked
fiercely at Louis Gentilis, the young man who sat opposite Claude.

But Louis only looked at Basterga and grinned.

And Basterga it was plain was not in the mood to amuse himself. Whatever
the reason, the big man was no longer at his ease in Mercier's company.
Some unpleasant thought, some suspicion, born of the incident at the
"Bible and Hand," seemed to rankle in his mind, and, strive as he
would, betrayed its presence in the tone of his voice and the glance of
his eye. He was uneasy, nor could he hide his uneasiness. To the look
which Gentilis shot at him he replied by one which imperatively bade the
young man keep his seat. "Enough fooling for to-day," he said, and
stealthily he repressed Grio's resistance. "Enough! Enough! I see that
the young gentleman does not altogether understand our humours. He will
come to them in time, in time," his voice almost fawning, "and see we
mean no harm. Did I understand," he continued, addressing Claude
directly, "that your father knew Messer Blondel?"

"Who is now Syndic? My uncle did," Claude answered rather curtly. He was
more and more puzzled by the change in Basterga's manner. Was the big
man a poltroon whom the bold front shown to Grio brought to heel? Or was
there something behind, some secret upon which his words had unwittingly
touched?

"He is a good man," Basterga said. "And of the first in Geneva. His
brother too, who is Procureur-General. Their father died for the State,
and the sons, the Syndic in particular, served with high honour in the
war. Savoy has no stouter foe than Philibert Blondel, nor Geneva a more
devoted son." And he drank as if he drank a toast to them.

Claude nodded.

"A man of great parts too. Probably you will wait on him?"

"Next week. I was near waiting on him after another fashion," Claude
continued rather grimly. "Between him and your friend there," with a
glance at Grio, who had relapsed into a moody glaring silence, "I was
like to get more gyves than justice."

The big man laughed. "Our friend here has served the State," he
remarked, "and does what another may not. Come, Messer Grio," he
continued, clapping him on the shoulder, as he rose from his seat. "We
have sat long enough. If the young ones will not stir, it becomes the
old ones to set an example. Will you to my room and view the
precipitation of which I told you?"

Grio gave a snarling assent, and got to his feet; and the party broke up
with no more words. Claude took his cap and prepared to withdraw, well
content with himself and the line he had taken. But he did not leave the
house until his ears assured him that the two who had ascended the
stairs together had actually repaired to Basterga's room on the first
floor, and there shut themselves up.




CHAPTER IV.

CÆSAR BASTERGA.


Had it been Mercier's eye in place of his ear which attended the two men
to the upper room, he would have remarked--perhaps with surprise, since
he had gained some knowledge of Grio's temper--that in proportion as
they mounted the staircase, the toper's crest drooped, and his arrogance
ebbed away; until at the door of Basterga's chamber, it was but a
sneaking and awkward man who crossed the threshold.

Nor was the reason far to seek. Whatever the standpoint of the two men
in public, their relations to one another in private were delivered up,
stamped and sealed in that moment of entrance. While Basterga, leaving
the other to close the door, strode across the room to the window and
stood gazing out, his very back stern and contemptuous, Grio fidgeted
and frowned, waiting with ill-concealed penitence, until the other chose
to address him. At length Basterga turned, and his gleaming eyes, his
moon-face pale with anger, withered his companion.

"Again! Again!" he growled--it seemed he dare not lift his voice. "Will
you never be satisfied until we are broken on the wheel? You dog, you!
The sooner you are broken the better, were that all! Ay, and were that
all, I could watch the bar fall with pleasure! But do you think I will
see the fruit of years of planning, do you think that I will see the
reward of this brain--this! this, you brainless idiot, who know not
what a brain is"--and he tapped his brow repeatedly with an earnestness
almost grotesque--"do you think that I will see this cast away, because
you swill, swine that you are! Swill and prate in your cups!"

"'Fore God, I said nothing!" Grio whined. "I said nothing! It was only
that he would not drink and I----"

"Made him?"

"No, he would not, I say, and we were coming to blows. And then----"

"He gave back, did he?"

"No, Messer Blondel came in."

Cæsar Basterga stretched out his huge arms. "Fool! Fool! Fool!" he
hissed, with a gesture of despair. "There it is! And Blondel, who should
have sent you to the whipping-post, or out of Geneva, has to cloak you!
And men ask why, and what there is between our most upright Syndic and a
drunken, bragging----"

"Softly," Grio muttered, with a flash of sullen resentment. "Softly,
Messer Basterga! I----"

"A drunken, swilling, prating pig!" the other persisted. "A broken
soldier living on an hour of chance service? Pooh, man," with contempt,
"do not threaten me! Do you think that I do not know you more than half
craven? The lad below there would cut your comb yet, did I suffer it.
But that is not the point. The point is that you must needs advertise
the world that you and the Syndic, who has charge of the walls, are
hail-fellows, and the world will ask why! Or he must deal with you as
you deserve and out you go from Geneva!"

"Per Bacco! I am not the only soldier," Grio muttered, "who ruffles it
here!"

"No! And is not that half our battle?" Basterga rejoined, gazing on him
with massive scorn. "To make use of them and their grumbling, and their
distaste for the Venerable Company of Pastors who rule us! Such men are
our tools; but tools only, and senseless tools, for Geneva won for the
Grand Duke, and what will they be the better, save in the way of a
little more licence and a little more drink? But for you I had something
better! Is the little farm in Piedmont not worth a month's abstinence?
Is drink-money for your old age, when else you must starve or stab in
the purlieus of Genoa, not worth one month's sobriety? But you must
needs for the sake of a single night's debauch ruin me and get yourself
broken on the wheel!"

Grio shrank under his eye. "There is no harm done," he muttered at last.
"Nobody suspects what is between us."

"How do you know that?" came the retort. "What? You think it is natural
Blondel should favour such as you?"

"It will not be the first time Geneva cloak has covered Genoa velvet!"

"Velvet!" Basterga repeated with a sneer. "Rags rather!" And then more
quickly, "But that is not all, nor the half. Do you think Blondel, who
is on the point, Blondel, who will and will not and on whom all must
turn, Blondel the upright, the impeccable, the patriotic, without whom
we can do nothing, and who, I tell you, hangs in the balance--do you
think he likes it, blockhead? Or is the more inclined to trust his life
with us when he sees us brawlers, toss-pots, common swillers? Do you
think he on whom I am bringing to bear all the resources of this
brain--this!"--and again the big man tapped his forehead with tragic
earnestness--"and whom you could as much move to side with us as you
could move yonder peak of the Jura from its base--do you think he will
deem better of our part for this?"

"Well, no."

"No! No, a thousand times!"

"But I count drunk the same as sober for that!" Grio cried, plucking up
spirit and speaking with a gleam of defiance in his eye. "For it is my
opinion that you have no more chance of moving him than I have! And so
to be plain you have it, Messer Basterga. For how are you going to move
him? With what? Tell me that!"

"Ah!"

"With money?" Grio continued with a fluency which showed he spoke on a
subject to which he had given much thought. "He is rich and ten thousand
crowns would not buy him. And the Grand Duke, much as he craves Geneva,
will not spend over boldly."

"No, I shall not move him with money."

"With power and rank, then? Will the Grand Duke make him Governor of
Geneva? No, for he dare not trust him. And less than that, what is it to
Syndic Blondel, whose word to-day is all but law in Geneva?"

"No, nor with power," Basterga answered quietly.

"Is it with revenge, then? There are men I know who love revenge. But he
is not of the south, and at such a risk revenge were dearly bought."

"No, nor with revenge," Basterga replied.

"A woman, then? For that is all that is left," Grio rejoined in triumph.
Once he had spoken out, he had put himself on a level with his master;
he had worsted him, or he was much mistaken. "Perhaps, from the way you
have played with the little prude below, it is a woman. But they are
plenty, even in Geneva, and he is rich and old."

"No, nor with a woman."

"Then with what?"

"With this!" Basterga replied. And for the third time, drawing himself
up to his full height, he tapped his brow. "Do you doubt its power?"

For answer Grio shrugged his shoulders, his manner sullen and
contemptuous.

"You do?"

"I don't see how it works, Messer Basterga," the veteran muttered. "I
say not you have not good wits. You have, I grant it. But the best of
wits must have their means and method. It is not by wishing and
willing----"

"How know you that?"

"Eh?"

"How know you that?" Basterga repeated with sudden energy, and he shook
a massive finger before the other's eyes. "But how know you anything,"
he continued with disdain, as he dropped the hand again, and turned on
his heel, "dolt, imbecile, rudiment that you are? Ay, and blind to boot,
for it was but the other day I worked a miracle before you, and you
learned nothing from it."

"It is no question of miracles," the other muttered doggedly. "But of
how you will persuade the Syndic Blondel to betray Geneva to Savoy!"

"Is it so? Then tell me this: the girl below who smacked your face a
month back because you laid a hand upon her wrist, and who would have
had you put to the door the same day--how did I tame her? Can you answer
me that?"

Grio's face fell remarkably. "No, master," he said, nodding
thoughtfully. "I grant it. I cannot. A wilder filly was never handled."

"So! And yet I tamed her. And she suffers you! She's sport for us within
bounds. Yet do you think she likes it when you paw her hand or lay your
dirty arm about her waist, or steal a kiss? Think you the blood mounts
and ebbs for nothing? Or the tears rise and the lip trembles and the
limbs shake for sheer pleasure. I tell you, if eyes could slay, you had
breathed your last some weeks ago."

"I know," Grio answered, nodding thoughtfully. "I have wondered and
wondered, ay, many a time, how you did it."

"Yet I did it? You grant that?"

"Yes."

"And you do not understand--with what?"

Grio shook his head.

"Then why mistrust me now, blockhead," the other retorted, "when I say
that as I charmed her, I can charm Blondel? Ay, and more easily. You
know not how I did the one, nor how I shall do the other," the big man
continued. "But what of that?" And in a louder voice, and with a gusto
which showed how genuine was his delight in the metre,

                "Pauci quos æquus amavit
    Jupiter aut ardens evexit ad æthera virtus
    Dis geniti potuere,"

he mouthed. "But that," he added, looking scornfully at his confederate,
"is Greek to you!"

Grio's altered aspect, his crestfallen air owned the virtue of the
argument if not of the citation; which he did not understand. He drew a
deep breath. "Per Bacco," he said, "if you succeed in doing it, Messer
Basterga----"

"I shall do it," Basterga retorted, "if you do not spoil all with your
drunken tricks!"

Grio was silent a moment, sunk plainly in reflection. Presently his
bloodshot eyes began to travel respectfully and even timidly over the
objects about him. In truth the room in which he found himself was
worthy of inspection, for it was no common room, either in aspect or
furnishing. It boasted, it is true, none of the weird properties, the
skulls and corpse-lights, dead hands, and waxen masks with which the
necromancer of that day sought to impress the vulgar mind. But in place
of these a multitude of objects, quaint, curious, or valuable, filled
that half of the room which was farther from the fire-hearth. On the
wall, flanked by a lute and some odd-looking rubrical calendars, were
three or four silver discs, engraved with the signs of the Zodiac; these
were hung in such a position as to catch the light which entered through
the heavily leaded casement. On the window-seat below them, a pile of
Plantins and Elzevirs threatened to bury a steel casket. On the table,
several rolls of vellum and papyrus, peeping from metal cylinders, leant
against a row of brass-bound folios. A handsome fur covering masked the
truckle-bed, but this, too, bore its share of books, as did two or three
long trunks covered with stamped and gilded leather which stood against
the wall and were so long that the ladies of the day had the credit of
hiding their gallants in them. On stools lay more books, and yet more
books, with a medley of other things: a silver flagon, and some weapons,
a chess-board, an enamelled triptych and the like.

In a word, this half of the room wore the aspect of a library,
low-roofed, dark and richly furnished. The other half, partly divided
from it by a curtain, struck the eye differently. A stove of peculiar
fashion, equipped with a powerful bellows, cumbered the hearth; before
this on a long table were ranged a profusion of phials and retorts,
glass vessels of odd shapes, and earthen pots. Crucibles and alembics
stood in the ashes before the stove, and on a sideboard placed under the
window were scattered a set of silver scales, a chemist's mask, and a
number of similar objects. Cards bearing abstruse calculations hung
everywhere on the walls; and over the fireplace, inscribed in gold and
black letters, the Greek word "EUREKA" was conspicuous.

The existence of such a room in the quiet house in the Corraterie was
little suspected by the neighbours, and if known would have struck them
with amazement. To Grio its aspect was familiar: but in this case
familiarity had not removed his awe of the unknown and the magical. He
looked about him now, and after a pause:--

"I suppose you do it--with these," he murmured, and with an almost
imperceptible shiver he pointed to the crucibles.

"With those?" 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? A
scholar? No, I tell you, there was never alchemist yet could transmute
but one thing--poor into rich, rich into poor!"

"But," Grio murmured with a look and in a voice of disappointment, "is
not that the true transmutation which a thousand have died seeking, and
one here and there, it is rumoured, has found? From lead to gold, Messer
Basterga?"

"Ay, but the lead is the poor alchemist, who gets gold from his patron
by his trick. And the gold is the poor fool who finds him in his living,
and being sucked, turns to lead! There you have your transmutation."

"Yet----"

"There is no yet!"

"But Agrippa," Grio persisted, "Cornelius Agrippa, who sojourned here in
Geneva and of whom, master, you speak daily--was he not a learned man?"

"Ay, even as I am!" Cæsar Basterga answered, swelling visibly with
pride. "But constrained, even as I am, to ply the baser trade and stoop
to that we see and touch and smell! Faugh! What lot more cursed than to
quit the pure ether of Latinity for the lower region of matter? And in
place of cultivating the _literæ humaniores_, which is the true
cultivation of the mind, and sets a man, mark you, on a level with
princes, to stoop to handle virgin milk and dragon's blood, as they
style their vile mixtures; or else grope in dead men's bodies for the
thing which killed them. Which is a pure handicraft and cheirergon,
unworthy a scholar, who stoops of right to naught but the goose-quill!"

"And yet, master, by these same things----"

"Men grow rich," Basterga continued with a sneer, "and get power? Ay,
and the bastard sits in the chair of the legitimate; and pure learning
goes bare while the seekers after the Stone and the Elixir (who, in
these days are descending to invent even lesser things and smaller
advantages that in the learned tongues have not so much as names) grow
in princes' favour and draw on their treasuries! But what says Seneca?
'It is not the office of Philosophy to teach men to use their hands. The
object of her lessons is to form the soul and the taste.' And Aldus
Manucius, vir doctissimus, magister noster," here he raised his hand to
his head as if he would uncover, "says also the same, but in a Latinity
more pure and translucent, as is his custom."

Grio scratched his head. The other's vehemence, whether he sneered or
praised, flew high above his dull understanding. He had his share of the
reverence for learning which marked the ignorant of that age: but to
what better end, he pondered stupidly, could learning be directed than
to the discovery of that which must make its owner the most enviable of
mortals, the master of wealth and youth and pleasure! It was not to
this, however, that he directed his objection: the _argumentum ad
hominem_ came more easily to him. "But you do this?" he said, pointing
to the paraphernalia about the stove.

"Ay," Basterga rejoined with vehemence. "And why, my friend? Because the
noble rewards and the consideration which former times bestowed on
learning are to-day diverted to baser pursuits! Erasmus was the friend
of princes, and the correspondent of kings. Della Scala was the
companion of an emperor; Morus, the Englishman, was the right arm of a
king. And I, Cæsar Basterga of Padua, bred in the pure Latinity of our
Master Manucius, yield to none of these. Yet am I, if I would live,
forced to stoop 'ad vulgus captandum!' I must kneel that I may rise! I
must wade through the mire of this base pursuit that I may reach the
firm ground of wealth and learned ease. But think you that I am the dupe
of the art wherewith I dupe others? Or, that once I have my foot on firm
ground I will stoop again to the things of matter and sense? No, by
Hercules!" the big man continued, his eye kindling, his form dilating.
"This scheme once successful, this feat that should supply me for life,
once performed, Cæsar Basterga of Padua will know how to add, to those
laurels which he has already gained,

    The bays of Scala and the wreath of More,
    Erasmus' palm and that which Lipsius wore."

And in a kind of frenzy of enthusiasm the scholar fell to pacing the
floor, now mouthing hexameters, now spurning with his foot a pot or an
alembic which had the ill-luck to lie in his path. Grio watched him, and
watching him, grew only more puzzled--and more puzzled. He could have
understood a moral shrinking from the enterprise on which they were both
embarked--the betrayal of the city that gave them shelter. He could have
understood--he had superstition enough--a moral distaste for alchemy and
those practices of the black art which his mind connected with it. 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. To rave of Scholarship and Scaliger was one thing, to bring
Blondel into the plot which was to transfer Geneva to Savoy and strike
the heaviest blow at the Reformed that had been struck in that
generation, was another thing and one remote. The Syndic was a trifle
discontented and inclined to intrigue; that was true, Grio knew it. But
to parley with the Grand Duke's emissaries, and strive to get and give
not, that was one thing; while to betray the town and deliver it tied
and bound into the hands of its arch-enemy, was another and a far more
weighty matter. One, too, to which in Grio's judgment--and in the dark
lanes of life he had seen and weighed many men--the magistrate would
never be brought.

"Shall you need my aid with him?" he asked after a while, seeing the
scholar still wrapt in thought. The question was not lacking in craft.

"Your aid? With whom?"

"With Messer Blondel."

"Pshaw, man," Basterga answered, rousing himself from his reverie. "I
had forgotten him and was thinking of that villain Scioppius and his
tract against Joseph Justus. Do you know," he continued with a snort of
indignation, "that in his _Hyperbolimæus_, not content with the
statement that Joseph Justus left his laundress's bill at Louvain
unpaid, he alleges that I--I, Cæsar Basterga of Padua--was broken on the
wheel at Munster a year ago for the murder of a gentleman!"

Grio turned a shade paler. "If this business miscarry," he said, "the
statement may prove within a year of the mark. Or nearer, at any rate,
than may please us."

Basterga smiled disdainfully. "Think it not!" he answered, extending his
arms and yawning with unaffected sincerity. "There was never scholar yet
died on the wheel."

"No?"

"No, friend, no. Nor will, unless it be Scioppius, and he is unworthy of
the name of scholar. No, we have our disease, and die of it, but it is
not that. Nevertheless," he continued with magnanimity, "I will not deny
that when Master Pert-Tongue downstairs put our names together so pat,
it scared me. It scared me. For how many chances were there against such
an accident? Or what room to think it an accident, when he spoke clearly
with the _animus pugnandi_? No, I'll not deny he touched me home."

Grio nodded grimly. "I would we were rid of him!" he growled. "The young
viper! I foresee danger from him."

"Possibly," Basterga replied. "Possibly. In that case measures must be
taken. But I hope there may be no necessity. And now, I expect Messer
Blondel in an hour, and have need, my friend, of thought and solitude
before he comes. 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. "Scholars die otherwise, but many a broken soldier has
come to the wheel! So do you have a care of it! If you do not----"

"I have said I will!" Grio cried sharply. "Enough scolding, master. I've
a notion you'll find your own task a little beyond your hand. See if I
am not right!" he added. And with this show of temper on his side, he
went out and shut the door loudly behind him.

Basterga stood a few moments in thought. At length,

    "Dimidium facti, qui bene c[oe]pit, habet!"

he muttered. And shrugging his shoulders he looked about him, judging
with an artistic eye the effect which the room would have on a stranger.
Apparently he was not perfectly content with it, for, stepping to one of
the long trunks, he drew from it a gold chain, some medals and a
jewelled dagger, and flung these carelessly on a box in a corner. He set
up the alembics and pipkins which he had overturned, and here and there
he opened a black-lettered folio, discovered an inch or two of crabbed
Hebrew, or the corner of an illuminated script. A cameo dropped in one
place, a clay figure of Minerva set up in another, completed the
picture.

His next proceeding was less intelligible. He unearthed from the pile of
duo-decimos on the window-seat the steel casket which has been
mentioned. It was about twelve inches long and as many wide; and as deep
as it was broad. Wrought in high relief on the front appeared an
elaborate representation of Christ healing the sick; on each end, below
a massive ring, appeared a similar design. The box had an appearance of
strength out of proportion to its size; and was furnished with two
locks, protected and partly hidden by tiny shields.

Basterga handling it gently polished it awhile with a cloth, then
bearing it to the inner end of the room he set it on a bracket beside
the hearth. This place was evidently made for it, for on either side of
the bracket hung a steel chain and padlock; with which, and the rings,
the scholar proceeded to secure the casket to the wall. This done, he
stepped back and contemplated the arrangement with a smile of
contemptuous amusement.

"It is neither so large as the Horse of Troy," he murmured complacently,
"nor so small as the Wafer that purchased Paris. It is neither so deep
as hell, nor so high as heaven, nor so craftily fastened a wise man may
not open it, nor so strong a fool may not smash it. But it may suffice.
Messer Blondel is no Solomon, and may swallow this as well as another
thing. In which event, Ave atque vale, Geneva! But here he comes. And
now to cast the bait!"




CHAPTER V.

THE ELIXIR VITÆ.


As the Syndic crossed the threshold of the scholar's room, he uncovered
with an air of condescension that, do what he would, was not free from
uneasiness. He had persuaded himself--he had been all the morning
persuading himself--that any man might pay a visit to a learned
scholar--why not? Moreover, that a magistrate in paying such a visit was
but in the performance of his duty, and might plume himself accordingly
on the act.

Yet two things like worms in the bud would gnaw at his peace. The first
was conscience: if the Syndic did not know he had reason to suspect that
Basterga bore the Grand Duke's commission, and was in Geneva to further
his master's ends. The second source of his uneasiness he did not
acknowledge even to himself, and yet it was the more powerful: it was a
suspicion--a strong suspicion, though he had met Basterga but
twice--that in parleying with the scholar he was dealing with a man for
whom he was no match, puff himself out as he might; and who secretly
despised him.

Perhaps the fact that the latter feeling ceased to vex him before he had
been a minute in the room, was the best testimony to Basterga's tact we
could desire. Not that the scholar was either effusive or abject. It was
rather by a frank address which took equality for granted, and by an
easy assumption that the visit had no importance, that he calmed Messer
Blondel's nerves and soothed his pride.

Presently, "If I do not the honour of my poor apartment so pressingly as
some," he said, "it is out of no lack of respect, Messer Syndic. But
because, having had much experience of visitors, I know that nothing
fits them so well as to be left at liberty, nothing irks them so much as
to be over-pressed. Here now I have some things that are thought to be
curious, even in Padua, but I do not know whether they will interest
you."

"Manuscripts?"

"Yes, manuscripts and the like. This," Basterga lifted one from the
table and placed it in his visitor's hands, "is a facsimile, prepared
with the utmost care, of the 'Codex Vaticanus,' the most ancient
manuscript of the New Testament. Of interest in Geneva, where by the
hands of your great printer, Stephens, M. de Beza has done so much to
advance the knowledge of the sacred text. But you are looking at that
chart?"

"Yes. What is it, if it please you?"

"It is a plan of the ancient city of Aurelia," Basterga replied, "which
Cæsar, in the first book of his Commentaries places in Switzerland, but
which, some say, should be rather in Savoy."

"Indeed, Aurelia?" the Syndic muttered, turning it about. It was a plan
beautifully and elaborately finished, but, like most of the plans of
that day, it was without names. "Aurelia?"

"Yes, Aurelia."

"But I seem to--is this water?"

"Yes, a lake," Basterga replied, stooping with a faint smile to the
plan.

"And this a river?"

"Yes."

"Aurelia? But--I seem to know the line of this wall, and these bastions.
Why, it is--Messer Basterga," in a tone of surprise, not unmingled with
anger--"you play with me! it is Geneva!"

Basterga permitted his smile to become more apparent. "Oh no, Aurelia,"
he said lightly and almost jocosely. "Aurelia in Savoy, I assure you.
Whatever it is, however, we have no need to take it to heart, Messer
Blondel. Believe me, it comes from, and is not on its way to, the Grand
Duke's library at Turin."

The Syndic showed his displeasure by putting the map from him.

"Your taste is rather for other things," Basterga continued, affecting
to misunderstand the act. "This illuminated manuscript, now, may
interest you? It is in characters which are probably strange to you?"

"Is it Hebrew?" the Syndic muttered stiffly, his temper still asserting
itself.

"No, it is in the ancient Arabic character; that into which the works of
Aristotle were translated as far back as the ninth century of our era.
It is a curious treatise by the Arabic sage, Ibn Jasher, who was the
teacher of Ibn Zohr, who was the teacher of Averroes. It was carried
from Spain to Rome about the year 1000 by the learned Pope Sylvester the
Second, who spoke Arabic and of whose library it formed part."

"Indeed!" Blondel responded, staring at it. "It must be of great value.
How came it into your possession, Messer Basterga?"

Basterga opened his mouth and shut it again. "I do not think I can tell
you that," he said.

"It contains, I suppose, many curious things?"

"Curious?" Basterga replied impulsively, "I should say so! Why, it was
in that volume I found----" And there in apparent confusion he broke
off. He laughed awkwardly, and then, "Well, you know," he resumed, "we
students find many things interest us which would fail to touch the man
of affairs". As if he wished to change the subject, he took the
manuscript from the Syndic's hand and threw it carelessly on the table.

Messer Blondel thought the carelessness overdone, and, his interest
aroused, he followed the manuscript, he scarcely knew why, with his
eyes. "I think I have heard the name of Averroes?" he said. "Was he not
a physician?"

"He was many things," Basterga answered negligently. "As a physician he
was, I believe, rather visionary than practical. I have his _Colliget_,
his most famous work in that line, but for my part, in the case of an
ordinary disease, I would rather trust myself," with a shrug of
contempt, "to the Grand Duke's physician."

"But in the case of an extraordinary disease?" the Syndic asked
shrewdly.

Basterga frowned. "I meant in any disease," he said. "Did I say
extraordinary?"

"Yes," Messer Blondel answered stoutly. The frown had not escaped him.
"But I take it, you are something of a physician yourself?"

"I have studied in the school of Fallopius, the chirurgeon of Padua,"
the scholar answered coldly. "But I am a scholar, Messer Blondel, not a
physician, much less a practitioner of the ancillary art, which I take
to be but a base and mechanical handicraft."

"Yet, chemistry--you pursue that?" the other rejoined with a glance at
the farther table and its load of strange-looking phials and retorts.

"As an amusement," Basterga replied with a gesture of haughty
deprecation. "A parergon, if you please. I take it, a man may dip into
the mystical writings of Paracelsus without prejudice to his Latinity;
and into the cabalistic lore of the school of Cordova without losing his
taste for the pure oratory of the immortal Cicero. Virgil himself, if
we may believe Helinandus, gave the weight of his great name to such
sports. And Cornelius Agrippa, my learned forerunner in Geneva----"

"Went something farther than that!" the Syndic struck in with a meaning
nod, twice repeated. "It was whispered, and more than whispered--I had
it from my father--that he raised the devil here, Messer Blondel; the
very same that at Louvain strangled one of Agrippa's scholars who broke
in on him before he could sink through the floor."

Basterga's face took on an expression of supreme scorn. "Idle tales!" he
said. "Fit only for women! Surely you do not believe them, Messer
Blondel?"

"I?"

"Yes, you, Messer Syndic."

"But this, at any rate, you'll not deny," Blondel retorted eagerly,
"that he discovered the Philosopher's Stone?"

"And lived poor, and died no richer?" Basterga rejoined in a tone of
increasing scorn.

"Well, for the matter of that," the Syndic answered more slowly, "that
may be explained."

"How?"

"They say, and you must have heard it, that the gold he made in that way
turned in three days to egg-shells and parings of horn."

"Yet having it three days," Basterga asked with a sneer, "might he not
buy all he wanted?"

"Well, I can only say that my father, who saw him more than once in the
street, always told me--and I do not know any one who should have known
better----"

"Pshaw, Messer Blondel, you amaze me!" the scholar struck in, rising
from his seat and adopting a tone at once contemptuous and dictatorial.
"Do you not know," he continued, "that the Philosopher's Stone was and
is but a figure of speech, which stands as some say for the perfect
element in nature, or as others say for the vital principle--that
vivifying power which evades and ever must evade the search of men? Do
you not know that the sages whose speculations took that direction were
endangered by accusations of witchcraft; and that it was to evade these
and to give their researches such an aspect as would command the
confidence of the vulgar, that they gave out that they were seeking
either the Philosopher's Stone, which would make all men rich, or the
Elixir Vitæ, which would confer immortality. Believe me, they were
themselves no slaves to these expressions; nor were the initiated among
their followers. But as time went on, tyros, tempted by sounds, and
caught by theories of transmutation, began to interpret them literally,
and, straying aside, spent their lives in the vain pursuit of wealth or
youth. Poor fools!"

Messer Blondel stared. Had Basterga, assailing him from a different
side, broached the precise story to which, in the case of Agrippa or
Albertus Magnus, the Syndic was prepared to give credence, he had
certainly received the overture with suspicion if not with contempt. He
had certainly been very far from staking good florins upon it. But when
the experimenter in the midst of the apparatus of science, and
surrounded by things which imposed on the vulgar, denied their value,
and laughed at the legends of wealth and strength obtained by their
means--this fact of itself went very far towards convincing him that
Basterga had made a discovery and was keeping it back.

The vital principle, the essential element, the final good, these were
fine phrases, though they had a pagan ring. But men, the Syndic argued,
did not spend money, and read much and live laborious days, merely to
coin phrases. Men did not surround themselves with costly apparatus only
to prove a theory that had no practical value. "He has discovered
something," Blondel concluded in his mind, "if it be not the
Philosopher's Stone or the Elixir of Life. I am sure he has discovered
something." And with eyes grown sharp and greedy, the magistrate raked
the room.

The scholar stood thoughtful where he had paused, and did not seem to
notice him.

"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."

"Well, I would not say," Basterga answered coldly, and as it seemed
unwillingly, "that I have not derived something from the researches with
which I have amused my leisure. But nothing of value to the general."

"Yet something of value to yourself," Blondel said, his head on one
side.

Basterga frowned, then shrugged his shoulders. "Well, yes," he said at
length, "as it happens, I have. But a thing of no use to any one else,
for the simple reason----"

"That you have only enough for yourself!"

The scholar looked astonished and a little offended.

"I do not know how you learned that," he said curtly, "but you are
right. I had no intention of telling you as much, but, as you have
guessed that, I do not mind adding that it is a remedy for a disease
which the most learned physicians do not pretend to cure."

"A remedy?"

"Yes, vital and certain."

"And you discovered it?"

"No, I did not discover it," Basterga replied modestly. "But the story
is so long that I will ask you to excuse me."

"I shall not excuse you if you do not favour me with it," the Syndic
answered eagerly. As he leaned forward there was a light in his eyes
that had not been in them a few minutes before. His hand, too, shook as
he moved it from the arm of his chair to his knee. "Nay, but, I pray
you, indulge me," he continued, in a tone anxious and almost submissive.
"I shall not betray your secrets. I am no philosopher, and no physician,
and, had I the will, I could make no use of your confidence."

"That is true," Basterga replied. "And, after all, the matter is simple.
I do not know why I should refuse to oblige you. I have said that I did
not discover this remedy. That is so. But it happened that in trying, by
way of amusement, certain precipitations, I obtained not that which I
sought--nor had I expected," he continued, smiling, "to obtain that, for
it was the Elixir of Life, which, as I have told you, does not
exist--but a substance new in my experience, and which seemed to me to
possess some peculiar properties. I tested it in all the ways known to
me, but without benefit or enlightenment; and in the end I was about to
cast it aside, when I chanced on a passage in the manuscript of Ibn
Jasher--the same, in fact, that I showed you a few minutes ago."

"And you found?" The Syndic's attitude as he leaned forward, with parted
lips and a hand on each knee, betrayed an interest so abnormal that it
was odd that Basterga did not notice it.

Instead, "I found that he had made," the scholar replied quietly, "as
far back as the tenth century the same experiment which I had just
completed. And with the same result."

"He obtained the substance?"

Basterga nodded.

"And discovered? What?" Blondel asked eagerly. "Its use?"

"A certain use," the other replied cautiously. "Or, rather, it was not
he, but an associate, called by him the Physician of Aleppo, who
discovered it. This man was the pupil of the learned Rhazes, and the
tutor of the equally learned Avicenna, the link, in fact, between them;
but his name, for some reason, perhaps because he mixed with his
practice a greater degree of mysticism than was approved by the Arabian
schools of the next generation, has not come down to us. This man
identified the product which had defied Ibn Jasher's tests with a
substance even then considered by most to be fabulous, or to be
extracted only from the horn of the unicorn if that animal existed. That
it had some of the properties of the fabled substance, he proceeded to
prove to the satisfaction of Ibn Jasher by curing of a certain incurable
disease five persons."

"No more than five?"

"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."

"True," Basterga replied with a smile; "but I was about to say that,
costly as it was, it was not its price which hindered the production of
a further supply. The reason was more simple. He could not extract it."

"Could not? But he had made it once?"

"Precisely."

"Then why could he not make it again?" the Syndic asked. He was
genuinely, honestly angry. It was strange how much he took the matter to
heart.

"He could not," Basterga answered. "He repeated the process again and
again, but the peculiar product, which at the first trial had resulted
from the precipitation, was not obtained."

"There was something lacking!"

"There was something lacking," Basterga answered. "But what that was
which was lacking, or how it had entered into the alembic in the first
instance, could not be discovered. The sage tried the experiment under
all known conditions, and particularly when the moon was in the same
quarter and when the sun was in the same house. He tried it, indeed,
thrice on the corresponding day of the year, but--the product did not
issue."

"How do you account for that?"

"Probably, in the first instance, an impurity in one of the drugs
introduced a foreign substance into the alembic. That chance never
occurred again, as far as I can learn, until, amusing myself with the
same precipitation, I--I, Cæsar Basterga of Padua," the scholar
continued, not boastfully but in a tone thoughtful and almost absent,
"in the last year of the last century, hit at length upon the same
result."

The Syndic leaned forward; his hands gripped his knees more tightly.
"And you," he said, "can repeat it?"

Basterga shook his head sorrowfully. "No," he said, "I cannot. Not that
I have myself essayed the experiment more than thrice. I could not
afford it. But a correspondent, M. de Laurens, of Paris, physician to
the King, has, at the expense of a wealthy patient, spent more than
fifteen thousand florins in essays. Alas, without result."

The big man spoke with his eyes on the floor. Had he turned them on the
Syndic he must have seen that he was greatly agitated. Beads of moisture
stood on his brow, his face was red, he swallowed often and with
difficulty. At length, with an effort at composure, "Possibly your
product--is not, after all, the same as Ibn Jasher's?" he said.

"I tested it in the same way," Basterga answered quietly.

"What? By curing persons of that disease?"

"Yes," Basterga rejoined. "And I would to Heaven," he continued, with
the first spirt of feeling which he had allowed to escape him, "that I
had held my hand after the first proof. Instead, I must needs try it
again and again, and again."

"For nothing?"

Basterga shrugged his shoulders. "No," he said, "not for nothing." By a
gesture he indicated the objects about him. "I am not a poor man now,
Messer Blondel. Not for nothing, but too cheaply. And so often that I
have now remaining but one portion of that substance which all the
science of Padua cannot renew. One portion, only, alas!" he repeated
with regret.

"Enough to cure one person?" the Syndic exclaimed.

"Yes."

"And the disease?" Blondel rose as he spoke. "The disease?" he repeated.
He extended his trembling arms to the other. No longer, even if he
wished it, could Basterga feign himself blind to the agitation which
shook, which almost convulsed, the Syndic's meagre frame. "The disease?
Is it not that which men call the Scholar's? Is it not that? But I know
it is."

Basterga with something of astonishment in his face inclined his head.

"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. Deeply grieved," he continued in a tone
of feeling, "to hear this. Do the physicians give no hope?"

"Sons of the Horse-Leech!" the Syndic cried, a new passion shaking him
in its turn. "They give me two years! Two years! And it may be less.
Less!" he cried, raising his voice. "I, who go to and fro here and
there, like other men with no mark upon me! I, who walk the streets in
sunshine and rain like other men! Yet, for them the sky is bright, and
they have years to live. For me, one more summer, and--night! Two more
years at the most--and night! And I, but fifty-eight!"

The big man looked at him with eyes of compassion. "It may be," he said,
after a pause, "that the physicians are wrong, Messer Blondel. I have
known such a case."

"They are, they shall be wrong!" Blondel replied. "For you will give me
your remedy! It was God led me here to-day, it was God put it in your
heart to tell me this. You will give me your remedy and I shall live!
You will, will you not? Man, you can pity!" And joining his hands he
made as if he would kneel at the other's feet. "You can pity, and you
will?"

"Alas, alas," Basterga replied, much and strongly moved. "I cannot."

"Cannot?"

"Cannot."

The Syndic glared at him. "Why?" he cried, "Why not? If I give you----"

"If you were to give me the half of your fortune," Basterga answered
solemnly, "it were useless! I myself have the first symptoms of the
disease."

"You?"

"Yes, I."

The Syndic fell back in his chair. A groan broke from him that bore
witness at once to the bitterness of his soul and the finality of the
argument. He seemed in a moment shrunk to half his size. In a moment
disease and the shadow of death clouded his features; his cheeks were
leaden; his eyes, without light or understanding, conveyed no meaning to
his brain. "You, too!" he muttered mechanically. "You, too!"

"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----"

"Even in that event I cannot aid you," the big man answered, spreading
out his hands. "I am pledged by the most solemn oath to retain the one
portion I have for the use of the Grand Duke, my patron. And apart from
that oath, the benefits I have received at his hand are such as to give
him a claim second only to my necessity. A claim, Messer Blondel,
which--I say it sorrowfully--I dare not set aside for any private
feeling or private gain."

Blondel rose violently, his hands clawing the air. "And I must die?" he
cried, his voice thick with rage. "I must die because he _may_ be ill?
Because--because----" He stopped, struggling with himself, unable, it
seemed, to articulate. By-and-by it became apparent that the pause had
another origin, for when he spoke he had conquered his passion. "Pardon
me," he said, still hoarsely, but in a different tone--the tone of one
who saw that violence could not help him. "I was forgetting myself.
Life--life is sweet to all, Messer Basterga, and we cannot lightly see
it pass from us. To have life within sight, to know it within this room,
perhaps within reach----"

"Not quite that," Basterga murmured, his eyes wandering to the steel
casket, chained to the wall beside the hearth. "Still, I understand;
and, believe me," he added in a tone of sympathy, "I feel for you,
Messer Blondel. I feel deeply for you."

"Feel?" the Syndic muttered. For an instant his eyes gleamed savagely,
the veins of his temples swelled. "Feel!"

"But what can I do?"

Blondel could have answered, but to what advantage? What could words
profit him, seeing that it was a life for a life, and that, as all that
a man hath he will give for his life, so there is nothing another hath
that he will take for it. Argument was useless; prayer, in view of the
other's confession, beside the mark. The magistrate saw this, and made
an effort to resume his dignity. "We will talk another day," he
murmured, pressing his hand to his brow, "another day!" And he turned to
the door. "You will not mention what I have said to you, Messer
Basterga?"

"Not a syllable," his host answered, as he followed him out. The
abruptness of the departure did not surprise him. "Believe me, I feel
for you, Messer Blondel."

The Syndic acknowledged the phrase by a gesture not without pathos, and,
passing out, stumbled blindly down the narrow stairs. Basterga attended
him with respect to the outer door, and there they parted in silence.
The magistrate, his shoulders bowed, walked slowly to the left, where,
turning into the town through the inner gate, the Porte Tertasse, he
disappeared. The big man waited a while, sunning himself on the steps,
his face towards the ramparts.

"He will come back, oh, yes, he will come back," he purred, smiling all
over his large face. "For I, Cæsar Basterga, have a brain. And 'tis
better a brain than thews and sinews, gold or lands, seeing that it has
all these at command when I need them. The fish is hooked. It will be
strange if I do not land him before the year is out. But the bribe to
his physician--it was a happy thought: a happy thought of this brain of
Cæsar Basterga, graduate of Padua, _viri valde periti, doctissimique_!"




CHAPTER VI.

TO TAKE OR LEAVE.


The house in the Corraterie, near the Porte Tertasse, differed in no
outward respect from its neighbours. The same row of chestnut trees
darkened its lower windows, the same breezy view of the Rhone meadows,
the sloping vineyards and the far-off Jura lightened its upper rooms. A
kindred life, a life apparently as quiet and demure, moved within its
walls. Yet was the house a house apart. Silently and secretly, it had
absorbed and sucked and drawn into itself the hearts and souls and minds
of two men. It held for the one that which the old prize above all
things in the world--life; and for the other, that which the young set
above life--love.

Life? The Syndic did not doubt; the bait had been dangled before his
eyes with too much cunning, too much skill. In a casket, in a room in
that house in the Corraterie, his life lay hidden; his life, and he
could not come at it! His life? Was it a marvel that waking or sleeping
he saw only that house, and that room, and that casket chained to the
wall; that he saw at one time the four steps rising to the door, and the
placid front with its three tiers of windows; at another time, the room
itself with its litter of scripts and dark-bound books, and rich
furnishings, and phials and jars and strangely shaped alembics? Was it a
marvel that in the dreams of the night the sick man toiled up and up and
up the narrow staircase, of which every point remained fixed in his
mind; or that waking, whatever his task, or wherever he might be, alone
or in company, in his parlour or in the Town House, he still fell
a-dreaming of the room and the box--the room and the box that held his
life?

Had this been the worst! But it was not. There were times, bitter times,
dark hours, when the pains were upon him, and he saw his fate clear
before him; for he had known men die of the disease which held him in
its clutches, and he knew how they had died. And then he must needs lock
himself into his room that other eyes might not witness the passionate
fits of revolt, of rage and horror, and weak weeping, into which the
knowledge cast him. And out of which he presently came back to--_the
house_. His life lay there, in that room, in that house, and he could
not come at it! He could not come at it! But he would! He would!

It issued in that always; in some plan or scheme for gaining possession
of the philtre. Some of the plans that occurred to him were wild and
desperate; dangerous and hopeless on the face of them. Others were
merely violent; others again, of which craft was the mainspring, held
out a prospect of success. For a whole day the notion of arresting
Basterga on a charge of treason, and seizing the steel casket together
with his papers, was uppermost. It seemed feasible, and was feasible;
nay, it was more than feasible, it was easy; for already there were
rumours of the man abroad, and his name had been mentioned at the
council table. The Syndic had only to give the word, and the arrest
would be made, the search instituted, the papers and casket seized. Nay,
if he did not give the word, it was possible that others might.

But when he thought of that step, that irrevocable step, he knew that he
would not have the courage to take it. For if Basterga had so much as
two minutes' notice, if his ear so much as caught the tread of those who
came to take him, he might, in pure malignity, pour the medicine on the
floor, or he might so hide it as to defy search. And at the thought--at
the thought of the destruction of that wherein lay his only chance of
life, his only hope of seeing the sun and feeling again the balmy breath
of spring, the Syndic trembled and shook and sweated with rage and fear.
No, he would not have the courage. He would not dare. For a week and
more after the thought occurred to him, he dared not approach the
scholar's lodging, or be seen in the neighbourhood, so great was his
fear of arousing Basterga's suspicions and setting him on his guard.

At the end of a fortnight or so, the choice of ways was presented to him
in a concrete form; and with an abruptness which placed him on the edge
of perplexity. It was at a morning meeting of the smaller council. The
day was dull, the chamber warm, the business to be transacted
monotonous; and Blondel, far from well and interested in one thing
only--beside which the most important affairs of Geneva seemed small as
the doings of an ant-hill viewed through a glass--had fallen asleep, or
nearly asleep. Naturally a restless and wakeful man, of thin habit and
nervous temperament, he had never done such a thing before: and it was
unfortunate that he succumbed on this occasion, for while he drowsed the
current of business changed. The debate grew serious, even vital.
Finally he awoke to the knowledge of place and time with a name ringing
in his ears; a name so fixed in his waking thoughts that, before he knew
where he was or what he was doing, he repeated it in a tone that drew
all eyes upon him.

"Basterga!"

Some knew he had slept and smiled; more had not noticed it, and turned,
struck by the strange tone in which he echoed the name. Fabri, the First
Syndic, who sat two places from him, and had just taken a letter from
the secretary, leaned forward so as to view him. "Ay, Basterga," he
said, "an Italian, I take it. Do you know him, Messer Blondel?"

He was awake now, but, confused and startled, inclined to believe that
he was on his trial; and that the faint parleyings with treason, small
things hard to define, to which he had stooped, were known.
Mechanically, to gain time, he repeated the name: "Basterga?"

"Yes," Fabri repeated. "Do you know him?"

"Cæsar Basterga, is it?"

"That is his name."

He was himself now, though his nerves still shook; himself so far as he
could be, while ignorant of what had passed, and how he came to be
challenged. "Yes, I know him," he said slowly, "if you mean a Paduan, a
scholar of some note, I believe. Who applied to me--I dare say it would
be six weeks back--for a licence to stay a while in the town."

"Which you granted?"

"In the usual course. He had letters from"--Blondel shrugged his
shoulders--"I forget from whom. What of him?" with a steady look at
Baudichon the councillor, his life-long rival, and the quarter whence if
trouble were brewing it was to be expected. "What of him?" he repeated,
throwing himself back in his chair, and tapping the table with his
fingers.

"This," Fabri answered, waving the letter which he had in his hands.

"But I do not know what that is," Blondel replied coolly. "I am
afraid"--he looked at his neighbour on either side--"was I asleep?"

"I fear so," said one, while the other smiled. They were his very good
friends and allies.

"Well, it is not like me. I can say that I am not often," with a keen
look at Baudichon, "caught napping! And now, M. Fabri," he continued
with his usual practical air, "I have delayed the business long enough.
What is it? And what is that?" He pointed to the letter in the First
Syndic's hands.

"Well, it is really your affair in the main," Fabri answered, "since as
Fourth Syndic you are responsible for the guard and the city's safety;
and ours afterwards. It is a warning," he continued, his eyes reverting
to the page before him, "from our secret agent in Turin, whose name I
need not mention"--Blondel nodded--"informing us of a fresh attempt to
be made on the city before Christmas; by means of rafts formed of
hurdles and capable of transporting whole companies of soldiers. These
he has seen tried in the River Po, and they performed the work. Having
reached the walls by their means the assailants are to mount by ladders
which are being made to fit into one another. They are covered with
black cloth, and can be laid against the wall without noise. It
sounds--circumstantial?" Fabri commented, breaking off and looking at
Blondel.

The Syndic nodded thoughtfully. "Yes," he said, "I think so. I think
also," he continued, "that with the aid of my friend, Captain Blandano,
I shall be able to give a good account of the rafts and the ladders."

Baudichon the councillor interposed. "But that is not all," he muttered,
rolling ponderously in his chair as he spoke. He was a stout man with a
double chin and a weighty manner; honest, but slow, and the spokesman of
the more wealthy burghers. His neighbour Petitot, a man of singular
appearance, lean, with a long thin drooping nose, commonly supported
him. Petitot, who bore the nickname of "the Inquisitor," represented the
Venerable Company of Pastors, and was viewed with especial distaste by
the turbulent spirits whom the war had left in the city, as well as by
the lower ranks, who upheld Blondel. In sense and vigour the Fourth
Syndic was more than a match for the two precisians: but honesty of
purpose has a weight of its own that slowly makes itself felt. "That is
not all," Baudichon repeated after a glance at his neighbour and ally
Petitot, "I want to know----"

"One moment, M. Baudichon, if you please," Fabri said, cutting him
short, amid a partial titter; the phrase "I want to know" was so often
on the councillor's lips that it had become ridiculous. "One moment; as
you say, that is not all. The writer proceeds to warn us that the Grand
Duke's lieutenant, M. d'Albigny, has taken a house on the Italian side
of the frontier, and is there constructing a huge petard on wheels which
is to be dragged up to the gate----"

"With the ladders and rafts?"

"They seem to belong to another scheme," Fabri said, as he turned back
and conned the letter afresh.

"With M. d'Albigny at the bottom of both?"

"Yes."

"Well, if he be not more successful with this," Blondel answered
contemptuously, "than he was with the attempt to mine the Arsenal--which
ended in supplying us with two or three casks of powder--I think Captain
Blandano and I may deal with him."

A murmur of assent approved the boast; but it did not proceed from all.
There were men at the table who had children, who had wives, who had
daughters, whose faces were grave. Just thirty years had passed over the
world since the horrors of the massacre of St. Bartholomew--to be
speedily followed by the sack of Antwerp--had paled the cheek of Europe.
Just thirty years were to elapse and the sack of Magdeburg was to prove
a match and more than a match for both in horror and cruelty. That the
Papists, if they entered, would deal more gently with Geneva, the head
and front of offence, or extend to the Mother of Heretics mercy which
they had refused to her children, these men did not believe. The
presence of an enemy ever lurking within a league of their gates, ever
threatening them by night and by day, had shaken their nerves. They
feared everything, they feared always. In fitful sleep, in the small
hours, they heard their doors smashed in; their dreams were disturbed by
cries and shrieks, by the din of bells, and the clash of weapons.

To these men Blondel seemed over confident. But no one took on himself
to gainsay him in his particular province, the superintendence of the
guard; and though Baudichon sighed and Petitot shook his head, the word
was left with him. "Is that all, Messer Fabri?" he asked.

"Yes, if we lay it to heart."

"But I want to know," Baudichon struck in, puffing pompously, "what is
to be done about--Basterga."

"Basterga? To be sure I was forgetting him," Fabri answered. "What is to
be done? What do you say, Messer Blondel? What are we to do about him?"

"I will tell you if you will tell me what the point is that touches him.
You forget, Messer Syndic"--with a somewhat sickly smile--"that I was
asleep."

"The letter," Fabri replied, returning to it, "touches him seriously. It
asserts that a person of that name is here in the Grand Duke's interest,
that he is in the secret of these plots, and that we should do well to
expel him, if we do not seize and imprison him."

"And you want to know----"

"I want to know," Baudichon answered, rolling in his chair as was his
habit when delivering himself, "what you know of him, Messer Blondel."

Blondel turned rudely on him, perhaps to hide a slight ebb of colour
from his cheeks. "What I know?" he said.

"Ay, ay."

"No more than you know!"

"But," Petitot retorted in his dry, thin voice, "it was you, Messer
Blondel, not Messer Baudichon, who gave him permission to reside in the
town."

"And I want to know," Baudichon chimed in remorselessly, "what
credentials he had. That is what I want to know!"

"Credentials? Oh, something formal! I don't know what," Blondel replied
rudely. He looked to the secretary who sat at the foot of the table. "Do
you know?" he asked.

"No, Messer Syndic," the man replied. "I remember that a licence was
granted to him in the name of Cæsar Basterga, graduate of Padua; and
doubtless--for licences to reside are not granted without such--he had
letters, but I do not recall from whom. They would be returned to him
with the licence."

"And that is all," Petitot said, his long nose drooping, his inquisitive
eyes looking over his glasses, "that you know about him, Messer
Blondel?"

Did they know anything, and, if so, what did they know? Blondel
hesitated. This persistence, this continual harping on one point, began
to alarm him. But he carried it bravely. "Do you mean as to his
convictions?" he asked with a sneer.

"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? A faint perspiration rose
on his brow as he decided that he dare not. "I know that he lives in a
house in the Corraterie," he answered, "a house beside the Porte
Tertasse, and that he is a scholar--I believe of some repute. I know so
much," he continued boldly, "because he wrote to thank me for the
licence, and, by way of acknowledgment, invited me to visit his lodging
to view a rare manuscript of the Scriptures. I did so, and remained a
few minutes with him. That is all I know of him. I suppose," with a grim
look at Baudichon and the Inquisitor, who had exchanged meaning glances,
"it is not alleged that I am in the plot with him? Or that he has
confided to me the Grand Duke's plans?"

Fabri laughed heartily at the notion, and the laugh, which was echoed by
four-fifths of those at the table, cleared the air. 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?"

"As to expelling him or seizing him."

"Oh!" The exclamation fell from Blondel's lips before he could stay it.
He saw what was coming, and the dilemma in which he was to be placed.

"We have the letter before us," the First Syndic continued, "and apart
from it, we know nothing for this person or against him." He looked
round the table and met assenting glances. "I think, therefore, that it
will be well, to leave it to Messer Blondel. He is responsible for the
safety of the city, and it should be for him to say what is to be
done."

"Yes, yes," several voices agreed. "Leave it to Messer Blondel."

"You assent to that, Messer Baudichon?"

"I suppose so," the councillor muttered reluctantly.

"Very good," said Fabri. "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. If, on the other hand, he gave the word to expel or
seize him, he broke at once and for ever with the man who held his last
chance of life in the hollow of his hand.

And yet, if he dared adopt the latter course, if he dared give the word
to seize, there was a chance, and a good chance, that he would find the
_remedium_ in the casket; for with a little arrangement Basterga might
be arrested out of doors, or be allured to a particular place and there
be set upon. But in that way lay risk; a risk that chilled the current
of the Syndic's blood. There was the chance that the attempt might fail;
the chance that Basterga might escape; the chance that he might have the
_remedium_ about him--and destroy it; the chance that he might have
hidden it. There were so many chances, in a word, that the Syndic's
heart stood still as he enumerated them, and pictured the crash of his
last hope of life.

He could not face the risk. He could not. Though duty, though courage
dictated the venture, craven fear--fear for the loss of the new-born
hope that for a week had buoyed him up--carried it. Hurriedly at last,
as if he feared that he might change his mind, he pronounced his
decision.

"I doubt the wisdom of touching him," he said. "To seize him if he be
guilty proclaims our knowledge of the plot; it will be laid aside, and
another, of which we may not be informed, will be hatched. But let him
be watched, and it will be hard if with the knowledge we have we cannot
do something more than frustrate his scheme."

After an interval of silence, "Well," Fabri said, drawing a deep breath
and looking round, "I believe you are right. What do you say, Messer
Baudichon?"

"Messer Blondel knows the man," Baudichon answered drily. "He is,
therefore, the best judge."

Blondel reddened. "I see you are determined to lay the responsibility on
me," he cried.

"The responsibility is on you already!" Petitot retorted. "You have
decided. I trust it may turn out as you expect."

"And as you do not expect!"

"No; but you see"--and again the Inquisitor looked over his
glasses--"you know the man, have been to his lodging, have conversed
with him, and are the best judge what he is! I have had naught to do
with him. By the way," he turned to Fabri, "he is at Mère Royaume's, is
he not? Is there not a Spaniard of the name of Grio lodging there?"

Blondel did not answer and the secretary looked up from his register.
"An old soldier, Messer Petitot?" he said. "Yes, there is."

"Perhaps you know him also, Messer Blondel?"

"Yes, I know him. He served the State," Blondel answered quietly. He had
winked at more than one irregularity on the part of Grio, and at the
sound of the name anger gave place to caution. "I have also," he
continued, "my eye upon him, as I shall have it upon Basterga. Will that
satisfy you, Messer Petitot?"

The councillor leaned forward. "Fac salvam Genevam!" he replied in a
voice low and not quite steady. "Do that, keep Geneva safe--guard well
our faith, our wives and little ones--and I care not what you do!" And
he rose from his seat.

The Fourth Syndic did not answer. Those few words that in a moment
raised the discussion from the low level of detail on which the
Inquisitor commonly wasted himself, and set it on the true plane of
patriotism--for with all his faults Petitot was a patriot--silenced
Blondel while they irritated and puzzled him. Why did the man assume
such airs? Why talk as if he and he alone cared for Geneva? Why bear
himself as if he and he alone had shed and was prepared to shed his
blood for the State? Why, indeed? Blondel snarled his indignation, but
made no other answer.

A few minutes later, as he descended the stairs, he laughed at the
momentary annoyance which he had felt. What did it matter to him, a
dying man, who had the better or who the worse, who posed, or who
believed in the pose? It was of moment indeed that his enemies had
contrived to fix him with the responsibility of arresting Basterga, or
of leaving him at large: that they had contrived to connect him with the
Paduan, and made him accountable to an extent which did not please him
for the man's future behaviour. But yet again what did that
matter--after all? Of what moment was it--after all? He was a dying man.
Was anything of moment to him except the one thing which Basterga had it
in his power to grant or to withhold, to give or to deny?

Nothing! Nothing!

He pondered on what had passed, and wondered if he had not done
foolishly. Certainly he had let slip a grand, a unique opportunity of
seizing the man and of snatching the _remedium_. He had put the chance
from him at the risk of future blame. Now he was of two minds about it.
Of two minds: but of one mind only about another thing. As he veered
this way and that in his mind, now cursing his cowardice, and now
thanking God that he had not taken the irrevocable step,

                                  Opportunity
    That work'st our thoughts into desires, desires
    To resolutions,

kindled in him a burning impatience to act. If he did not act, if he
were not going to act, if he were not going to take some surer and safer
step, he had been foolish and trebly foolish to let slip the opportunity
that had been his.

But he would act. For a fortnight he had abstained from visiting
Basterga, and had even absented himself from the neighbourhood of the
house lest the scholar's suspicions should be wakened. But to what
purpose if he were not going to act? If he were not going to build on
the ground so carefully prepared, to what end this wariness and this
abstention?

Within an hour the Syndic, long so wary, had worked himself into a fever
and, rather than remain inactive, was ripe for any step, however
venturesome, provided it led to the _remedium_. He had still the
prudence to postpone action until night; but when darkness had fairly
set in and the bell of St. Peter, inviting the townsfolk to the evening
preaching, had ceased to sound--an indication that he would meet few in
the streets--he cloaked himself, and, issuing forth, bent his steps
across the Bourg du Four in the direction of the Corraterie.

Even now he had no plan in his mind. But amid the medley of schemes that
for a week had been hatching in his brain, he hoped to be guided by
circumstances to that one which gave surest promise of success. Nor was
his courage as deeply rooted as he fancied: the day had told on his
nerves; he shivered in the breeze and started at a sound. Yet as often
as he paused or hesitated, the words "A dying man! A dying man!" rang in
his ears and urged him on.




CHAPTER VII.

A SECOND TISSOT.


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. For a day or two the
scholar lived in a fool's paradise, and hugging himself on certain
success, anticipated with confidence the entertainment which he would
derive from the antics of the fish as it played about the bait, now
advancing and now retreating. He had formed a low opinion of the
magistrate's astuteness, and forgetting that there is a cunning which is
rudimentary and of the primitives, he entertained for some time no
misgiving. But when day after day passed by and still, though more than
a week had elapsed, Blondel did not appear, nor make any overture, when,
watch he never so carefully in the dusk of the evening or at the quiet
hours of the day, he caught no glimpse of the Syndic's lurking figure,
he began to doubt. He began to fear. He began to wait about the door
himself in the hope of detecting the other: and a dozen times between
dawn and dark he was on his feet at the upper window, looking warily
down, on the chance of seeing him in the Corraterie.

At last, slowly and against his will, the fear that the fish would not
bite began to take hold of him. Either the Syndic was honest, or he was
patient as well as cunning. In no other way could Basterga explain his
dupe's inaction. And presently, when he had almost brought himself to
accept the former conclusion, on an evening something more than a week
later, a thing happened that added sharpness to his anxiety. He was
crossing the bridge from the Quarter of St. Gervais, when a man cloaked
to the eyes slipped from the shadow of the mills, a little before him,
and with a slight but unmistakable gesture of invitation proceeded in
front of him without turning his head.

There was mist on the face of the river that rushed in a cataract below;
a steady rain was falling, and darkness itself was not far off. There
were few abroad, and those were going their ways without looking behind
them. A better time for a secret rendezvous could not be, and Messer
Basterga's heart leapt up and his spirits rose as he followed the
cloaked figure. At the end of the bridge the man turned leftwards on to
a deserted wharf between two mills; Basterga followed. Near the water's
edge the projecting upper floor of a granary promised shelter from the
rain; under this the stranger halted, and turning, lowered with a
brusque gesture his cloak from his face. Alas, the eager "Why, Messer
Blondel----" that leapt to Basterga's lips died on them. He stood
speechless with disappointment, choking with chagrin. The stranger noted
it and laughed.

"Well," he said in French, his tone dry and sarcastic, "you do not seem
overpleased to see me, Monsieur Basterga! Nor am I surprised. Large
promises have ever small fulfilments!"

"His Highness has discovered that?" Basterga replied, in a tone no less
sarcastic. For his temper was roused.

The stranger's eyes flickered, as if the other's words touched a sore.
"His Highness is growing impatient!" he returned, his tone somewhat
warmer. "That is what he has sent me to say. He has waited long, and he
bids me convey to you that if he is to wait longer he must have some
security that you are likely to succeed in your design."

"Or he will employ other means?"

"Precisely. Had he followed my advice," the stranger continued with an
air of lofty arrogance, "he would have done so long ago."

"M. d'Albigny," Basterga answered, spreading out his hands with an
ironical gesture, "would prefer to dig mines under the Tour du Pin near
the College, and under the Porte Neuve! To smuggle fireworks into the
Arsenal and the Town House; and then, on the eve of execution, to fail
as utterly as he failed last time! More utterly than my plan can fail,
for I shall not put Geneva on its guard--as he did! Nor set every enemy
of the Grand Duke talking--as he did!"

M. d'Albigny--for he it was--let drop an oath. "Are you doing anything
at all?" he asked savagely, dropping the thin veil of irony that
shrouded his temper. "That is the question. Are you moving?"

"That will appear."

"When? When, man? That is what his Highness wants to know. At present
there is no appearance of anything."

"No," Basterga replied with fine irony. "There is not. I know it. It is
only when the fireworks are discovered and the mines opened and the
engineers are flying for their lives--that there is really an appearance
of something."

"And that is the answer I am to carry to the Grand Duke?" d'Albigny
retorted in a tone which betrayed how deeply he resented such taunts at
the lips of his inferior. "That is all you have to tell him?"

Basterga was silent awhile. When he spoke again, it was in a lower and
more cautious tone. "No; you may tell his Highness this," he said, after
glancing warily behind him. "You may tell him this. The longest night in
the year is approaching. Not many weeks divide us from it. Let him give
me until that night. Then let him bring his troops and ladders and the
rest of it--the care whereof is your lordship's, not mine--to a part of
the walls which I will indicate, and he shall find the guards withdrawn,
and Geneva at his feet."

"The longest night? But that is some weeks distant," d'Albigny answered
in a grumbling tone. Still it was evident that he was impressed by the
precision of the other's promise.

"Was Rome built in a day? Or can Geneva be destroyed in a day?" Basterga
retorted.

"If I had my hand on it!" d'Albigny answered truculently, "the task
would not take more than a day!" He was a Southern Frenchman and an
ardent Catholic; an officer of high rank in the employ of Savoy; for the
rest, proud, brave, and difficult.

"Ay, but you have not your hand on it, M. d'Albigny!" Basterga retorted
coolly. "Nor will you ever have your hand on it, without help from me."

"And that is all you have to say?"

"At present."

"Very good," d'Albigny replied, nodding contemptuously. "If his Highness
be wise----"

"He is wise. At least," Basterga continued drily, "he is wiser than M.
d'Albigny. He knows that it is better to wait and win, than leap and
lose."

"But what of the discontented you were to bring to a head?" d'Albigny
retorted, remembering with relief another head of complaint, on which he
had been charged to deliver himself. "The old soldiers and rufflers
whom the peace has left unemployed, and with whom the man Grio was to
aid you? Surely waiting will not help you with them! There should be
some in Geneva who like not the rule of the Pastors and the drone of
psalms and hymns! Men who, if I know them, must be on fire for a change!
Come, Monsieur Basterga, is no use to be made of them?"

"Ay," Basterga answered, after stepping back a pace to assure himself by
a careful look that no one was remarking a colloquy which the time and
the weather rendered suspicious. "Use them if you please. Let them drink
and swear and raise petty riots, and keep the Syndics on their guard! It
is all they are good for, M. d'Albigny; and I cannot say that aught
keeps back the cause so much as Grio's friends and their line of
conduct!"

"So! that is your opinion, is it, Monsieur Basterga?" d'Albigny
answered. "And with it I must go as I came! I am of no use here, it
seems?"

"Of great use presently, of none now," Basterga replied with greater
respect than he had hitherto exhibited. "Frankly, M. d'Albigny, they
fear you and suspect you. But if President Rochette of Chambery, who has
the confidence of the Pastors, were to visit us on some pretext or
other, say to settle such small matters as the peace has left in doubt,
it might soothe their spirits and allay their suspicions. He, rather
than M. d'Albigny, is the helper I need at present."

D'Albigny grunted, but it was evident that the other's boldness
impressed him. "You think, then, that they suspect us?" he said.

"How should they not? Tell me that. How should they not? Rochette's task
must be to lull those suspicions to sleep. In the meantime I----"

"Yes?"

"Will be at work," Basterga replied. He laughed drily as if it pleased
him to baulk the other's curiosity. Softly he added under his breath,

            "Captique dolis, lacrimisque coactis,
    Quos neque Tydides, nec Larrissæus Achilles
    Non anni domuere decem, non mille carinæ!

D'Albigny nodded. "Well, I trust you are really counting on something
solid," he answered. "For you are taking a great deal upon yourself,
Monsieur Basterga. I hope you understand that," he added with a
searching look.

"I take all on myself," the big man answered.

The Frenchman was far from content, but he argued no more. He reflected
a moment, considering whether he had forgotten anything: then, muttering
that he would convey Basterga's views to the Grand Duke, he pulled his
cloak more closely about his face, and with a curt nod of farewell, he
turned on his heel and was gone. A moment, and he was lost to sight
between the wooden mills and sheds which flanked the bridge on either
side, and rendered it at once as narrow and as picturesque as were most
of the bridges of the day. Basterga, left solitary, waited a while
before he left his shelter. Satisfied at length that the coast was
clear, he continued his way into the town, and thinking deeply as he
went came presently to the Corraterie. It cannot be said that his
meditations were of the most pleasant; and perhaps for this reason he
walked slowly. When he entered the house, shaking the moisture from his
cloak and cap, he found the others seated at table and well advanced in
their meal. He was twenty minutes late.

He was a clever man. But at times, in moments of irritation, the sense
of his cleverness and of his superiority to the mass of men led him to
do the thing which he had better have left undone. It was so this
evening. Face to face with d'Albigny, he had put a bold face on the
difficulties which surrounded him: he had let no sign of doubt or
uncertainty, no word of fear respecting the outcome escape him. But the
moment he found himself at liberty, the critical situation of his
affairs, if the Syndic refused to take the bait, recurred to his mind,
and harassed him. He had no _confidante_, no one to whom he could
breathe his fears, no one to whom he could explain the situation, or
with whom he could take credit for his coolness: and the curb of
silence, while it exasperated his temper, augmented a hundredfold the
contempt in which he held the unconscious companions among whom chance
and his mission had thrown him. A spiteful desire to show that contempt
sparkled in his eyes as he took his seat at the table this evening; but
for a minute or two after he had begun his meal he kept silence.

On a mind such as his, outward things have small effect; otherwise the
cheerful homeliness of the scene must have soothed him. The lamp,
telling of present autumn and approaching winter, had been lit: a
wood-fire crackled pleasantly in the great fireplace and was reflected
in rows of pewter plates on either dresser: a fragrant stew scented the
air; all that a philosopher of the true type could have asked was at his
service. 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. Splendour rather than comfort, the gorgeousness
of Venice, of red-haired dames, stiff-clad in Titian velvets, of tables
gleaming with silk and gold and ruby glass, rather than the plain
homeliness which Geneva shared with the Dutch cities, held his mind.
To-night in particular his lip curled as he looked round. To-night in
particular ill-pleased and ill-content he found the place and the
company well matched, the one and the other mean and contemptible!

One there--Gentilis--marked the great man's mood, and, cringing, after
his kind, kept his eyes low on his platter. Grio, too, knew enough to
seek refuge in sullen silence. Claude alone, impatient of the constraint
which descended on the party at the great man's coming, continued to
talk in a raised voice. "Good soup to-night, Anne," he said cheerfully.
For days past he had been using himself to speak to her easily and
lightly, as if she were no more to him than to the others.

She did not answer--she seldom did. But "Good?" Basterga sneered in his
most cutting tone. "Ay, for schoolboys! And such as have no palate save
for pap!"

Claude being young took the thrust a little to heart. He returned it
with a boy's impertinence. "We none of us grow thin on it," he said with
a glance at the other's bulk.

Basterga's eyes gleamed. "Grease and dish-washings," he exclaimed. And
then, as if he knew where he could most easily wound his antagonist, he
turned to the girl.

"If Hebe had brought such liquor to Jupiter," he sneered, "do you think
he had given her Hercules for a husband, as I shall presently give you
Grio? Ha! You flush at the prospect, do you? You colour and tremble," he
continued mockingly, "as if it were the wedding-day. You'll sleep little
to-night, I see, for thinking of your Hercules!" With grim irony he
pointed to his loutish companion, whose gross purple face seemed the
coarser for the small peaked beard that, after the fashion of the day,
adorned his lower lip. "Hercules, do I call him? Adonis rather."

"Why not Bacchus?" Claude muttered, his eyes on his plate. In spite of
the strongest resolutions, he could not keep silence.

"Bacchus? And why, boy?" frowning darkly.

"He were better bestowed on a tun of wine," the youth retorted, without
looking up.

"That you might take his place, I suppose?" Basterga retorted swiftly.
"What say you, girl? Will you have him?" And when she did not answer,
"Bread, do you hear?" he cried harshly and imperiously. "Bread, I say!"
And having forced her to come within reach to serve him, "What do you
say to it?" he continued, his hand on the trencher, his eyes on her
face. "Answer me, girl, will you have him?"

She did not answer, but that which he had quite falsely attributed to
her before, a blush, slowly and painfully darkened her cheeks and neck.
He seized her brutally by the chin, and forced her to raise her face.
"Blushing, I see?" he continued. "Blushing, blushing, eh? So it is for
him you thrill, and lie awake, and dream of kisses, is it? For this new
youth and not for Grio? Nay, struggle not! Wrest not yourself away! Let
Grio, too, see you!"

Claude, his back to the scene, drove his nails into the palms of his
hands. He would not turn. He would not, he dared not see what was
passing, or how they were handling her, lest the fury in his breast
sweep all away, and he rise up and disobey her! When a movement told him
that Basterga had released her--with a last ugly taunt aimed as much at
him as at her--he still sat bearing it, curbing, drilling, compelling
himself to be silent. Ay, and still to be silent, though the voice that
so cruelly wounded her was scarcely mute before it began again.

"Tissot, indeed!" Basterga cried in the same tone of bitter jeering. "A
fig for Tissot! No more shall we

    Upon his viler metal test our purest pure,
    And see him transmutations three endure!

And why? Because a mightier than Tissot is here! Because," with a coarse
laugh,

              "Our stone angelical whereby
    All secret potencies to light are brought

has itself suffered a transmutation! A transmutation do I say! Rather an
eclipse, a darkening! He, whom matrons for their maidens fear, has come,
has seen, has conquered! And we poor mortals bow before him."

Still Claude, his face burning, his ears tingling, put force upon
himself and sat mute, his eyes on the board. He would not look round, he
would not acknowledge what was passing. Basterga's tone conveyed a
meaning coarser and more offensive than the words he spoke; and Claude
knew it, and knew that the girl, at whom he dared not look knew it, as
she stood helpless, a butt, a target for their gloating eyes. He would
not look for he remembered. He saw the scalding liquid blister the skin,
saw the rounded arm quiver with pain; and remembering and seeing, he was
resolved that the lesson should not be lost on him. If it was only by
suffering he could serve her, he would serve her.

He dared not look even at Gentilis, who sat opposite him; and who was
staring in gross rapture at the girl's confusion, and the burning
blushes, so long banished from her pale features. For to look at that
mean mask of a man was the same thing as to strike! Unfortunately, as it
happened, his silence and lack of spirit had a result which he had not
foreseen. It encouraged the others to carry their brutality to greater
and even greater lengths. Grio flung a gross jest in the girl's face:
Basterga asked her mockingly how long she had loved. They got no answer;
on which the big man asked his question again, his voice grown menacing;
and still she would not answer. She had taken refuge from Grio's
coarseness in the farthest corner of the hearth: where stooping over a
pot, she hid her burning face. Had they gone too far at last? So far,
that in despair she had made up her mind to resist? Claude wondered. He
hoped that they had.

Basterga, too, thought it possible; but he smiled wickedly, in the pride
of his resources. He struck the table sharply with his knife-haft.
"What?" he cried. "You don't answer me, girl? You withstand me, do you?
To heel! To heel! Stand out in front of me, you jade, and answer me at
once. There! Stand there! Do you hear?" With a mocking eye he indicated
with his knife the spot that took his fancy.

She hesitated a moment, scarlet revolt in her face; she hesitated for a
long moment; and the lad thought that surely the time had come. But then
she obeyed. She obeyed! And at that Claude at last looked up; he could
look up safely now for something, even as she obeyed, had put a bridle
on his rage and given him control over it. That something was doubt. Why
did she comply? Why obey, endure, suffer at this man's hands that which
it was a shame a woman should suffer at any man's? What was his hold
over her? What was his power? Was it possible, ah, was it possible that
she had done anything to give him power? Was it possible----

"Stand there!" Basterga repeated, licking his lips. He was in a cruel
temper: harassed himself, he would make some one suffer. "Remember who
you are, wench, and where you are! And answer me! How long have you
loved him?"

The face no longer burned: her blushes had sunk behind the mask of
apathy, the pallid mask, hiding terror and the shame of her sex, which
her face had worn before, which had become habitual to her. "I have not
loved him," she answered in a low voice.

"Louder!"

"I have not loved him."

"You do not love him?"

"No." She did not look at Claude, but dully, mechanically, she stared
straight before her.

Grio laughed boisterously. "A dose for young Hopeful!" he cried. "Ho!
Ho! How do you feel now, Master Jackanapes?"

The big man smiled.

    "Galle, quid insanis? inquit, Tua cura Lycoris
    Perque nives alium perque horrida castra secuta est!"

he murmured. He bowed ironically in Claude's direction. "The gentleman
passes beyond the jurisdiction of the court," he said. "She will have
none of him, it seems; nor we either! He is dismissed."

Claude, his eyes burning, shrugged his shoulders and did not budge. If
they thought to rid themselves of him by this fooling they would learn
their mistake. They wished him to go: the greater reason he should stay.
A little thing--the sight of a small brown hand twitching painfully,
while her face and all the rest of her was still and impassive, had
expelled his doubts for the time--had driven all but love and pity and
burning indignation from his breast. All but these, and the memory of
her lesson and her will. He had promised and he must suffer.

Whether Basterga was deceived by his inaction, or of set purpose was
minded to try how far they could go with him, the big man turned again
to his victim. "With you, my girl," he said, "it is otherwise. The soup
was bad, and you are mutinous. Two faults that must be paid for. There
was something of this, I remember, when Tissot--our good Tissot, who
amused us so much--first came. And we tamed you then. You paid forfeit,
I think. You kissed Tissot, I think; or Tissot kissed you."

"No, it was I kissed her," Gentilis said with a smirk. "She chose me."

"Under compulsion," Basterga retorted drily. "Will you ransom her
again?"

"Willingly! But it should be two this time," Gentilis said grinning.
"Being for the second offence, a double----"

"Pain," quoth Basterga. "Very good. Do you hear, my girl? Go to
Gentilis, and see you let him kiss you twice! And see we see and hear
it. And have a care! Have a care! Or next time your modesty may not
escape so easily! To him at once, and----"

"No!" The cry came from Claude. He was on his feet, his face on fire.
"No!" he repeated passionately.

"No?"

"Not while I am here! Not under compulsion," the young man cried. "Shame
on you!" He turned to the others, generous wrath in his face. "Shame on
you to torture a woman so--a woman alone! And you three to one!"

Basterga's face grew dark. "You are right! We are three," he muttered,
his hand slowly seeking a weapon in the corner behind him. "You speak
truth there, we are three--to one! And----"

"You maybe twenty, I will not suffer it!" the lad cried gallantly. "You
may be a hundred----"

But on that word, in the full tide of speech he stopped. His voice died
as suddenly as it had been raised, he stammered, his whole bearing
changed. He had met her eyes: he had read in them reproach, warning,
rebuke. Too late he had remembered his promise.

The big man leaned forward. "What may we be?" he asked. "You were going,
I think, to say that we might be--that we might be----"

But Claude did not answer. He was passing through a moment of such
misery as he had never experienced. To give way to them now, to lower
his flag before them after he had challenged them! To abandon her to
them, to see her--oh, it was more than he could do, more than he could
suffer! It was----

"Pray go on," Basterga sneered, "if you have not said your say. Do not
think of us!"

Oh, bitter! But he remembered how the scalding liquor had fallen on the
tender skin. "I have said it," he muttered hoarsely. "I have said it,"
and by a movement of his hand, pathetic enough had any understood it, he
seemed to withdraw himself and his opposition.

But when, obedient to Basterga's eye, the girl moved to Gentilis' side
and bent her cheek--which flamed, not by reason of Gentilis or the
coming kisses, but of Claude's presence and his cry for her--he could
not bear it. He could not stay and see it, though to go was to abandon
her perhaps to worse treatment. He rose with a cry and snatched his cap,
and tore open the door. With rage in his heart and their laughter, their
mocking, triumphant laughter, in his ears, he sprang down the steps.

A coward! That was what he must seem to them. A coward's part, that was
the part they had seen him play. Into the darkness, into the night, what
mattered whither, when such fierce anger boiled within him? Such
self-contempt. What mattered whither when he knew how he had failed! Ay,
failed and played the Tissot! The Tissot and the weakling!




CHAPTER VIII.

ON THE THRESHOLD.


He hurried along the ramparts in a rage with those whom he had left, in
a still greater rage with himself. He had played the Tissot with a
vengeance. He had flown at them in weak passion, he had recoiled as
weakly, he had left them to call him coward. Now, even now, he was
fleeing from them, and they were jeering at him. Ay, jeering at him;
their laughter followed him, and burned his ears.

The rain that beat on his fevered face, the moist wind from the Rhone
Valley below, could not wipe out _that_--the defeat and the shame. The
darkness through which he hurried could not hide it from his eyes. Thus
had Tissot begun, flying out at them, fleeing from them, a thing of
mingled fury and weakness. He knew how they had regarded Tissot. So they
now regarded him.

And the girl? What shame lay on his manhood who had abandoned her, who
had left her to be their sport! His rage boiled over as he thought of
her, and with the rain-laden wind buffeting his brow he halted and made
as if he would return. But to what end if she would not have his aid, to
what end if she would not suffer him? With a furious gesture, he hurried
on afresh, only to be arrested, by-and-by, at the corner of the ramparts
near the Bourg du Four, by a dreadful thought. What if he had deceived
himself? What if he had given back before them, not because she had
willed it, not because she had looked at him, not in compliance with
her wishes; but in face of the odds against him, and by virtue of some
streak of cowardice latent in his nature? The more he thought of it, the
more he doubted if she had looked at him; the more likely it seemed that
the look had been a straw, at which his craven soul had grasped!

The thought maddened him. But it was too late to return, too late to
undo his act. He must have left them a full half-hour. The town was
growing quiet, the sound of the evening psalms was ceasing. The rustle
of the wind among the branches covered the tread of the sentries as they
walked the wall between the Porte Neuve and the Mint tower; only their
harsh voices as they met midway and challenged came at intervals to his
ears. It must be hard on ten o'clock. Or, no, there was the bell of St.
Peter's proclaiming the half-hour after nine.

He was ashamed to return to the house, yet he must return; and
by-and-by, reluctantly and doggedly, he set his face that way. The wind
and rain had cooled his brow, but not his brain, and he was still in a
fever of resentment and shame when his lagging feet brought him to the
house. He passed it irresolutely once, unable to make up his mind to
enter and face them. Then, cursing himself for a poltroon, he turned
again and made for the door.

He was within half a dozen strides of it when a dark figure detached
itself from the doorway, and stumbled down the steps. Its aim seemed to
be to escape, and leaping to the conclusion that it was Gentilis, and
that some trick was being prepared for him, Claude sprang forward. His
hand shot out, he grasped the other's neck. His wrath blazed up.

"You rogue!" he said. "I'll teach you to lie in wait for me!" And
shifting his grasp from the man's neck to his shoulder, he turned him
round regardless of his struggles. As he did so the man's hat fell off.
With amazement Claude recognised the features of the Syndic Blondel.

The young man's arm fell, and he stared, open-mouthed and aghast, the
passion with which he had seized the stranger whelmed in astonishment.

The Syndic, on the other hand, behaved with a strange composure.
Breathing rather quickly, but vouchsafing no word of explanation, he
straightened the crumpled linen about his neck, and set right his coat.
He was proceeding, still in silence, to pick up his hat, when Claude,
anticipating the action, secured the hat and restored it to him.

"Thank you," he said. And then, stiffly, "Come with me," he continued.

He turned as he spoke and led the way to a spot at some distance from
the house, yet within sight of the door; there he wheeled about. "I was
coming to see you," he said, steadfastly confronting Claude. "Why have
you not called upon me, young man, in accordance with the invitation I
gave you?"

Claude stared. The Syndic's matter-of-factness and the ease with which
he ignored what had just passed staggered him. Perhaps after all Blondel
had come for this, and had been startled while waiting at the door by
the quickness of his approach. "I--I had overlooked it," he murmured,
trying to accept the situation.

"Then," the Syndic answered shrewdly, "I can see that you have not
wanted anything."

"No."

"You lodge there?" Blondel continued, pointing to the house. "But I know
you do. And keep late hours, I fear. You are not alone in the house, I
think?"

"No," Claude replied; and on a sudden, as his mind went back to the
house and those in it, there leapt into it the temptation to tell all to
this man, a magistrate, and appeal to him in the girl's behalf. He
could not speak to a more proper person, if he sought the city through;
and here was the opportunity, brought unsought, to his door. But then he
had not the girl's leave to speak; could he speak without her leave? He
shifted his feet, and to gain time, "No," he said slowly, "there are two
or three who lodge in the house."

"Is not the person with whom you quarrelled at the inn one of them?" the
Syndic asked. "Eh? Is not he one?"

"Yes," Claude answered; and the recollection of the scene and of the
support which the Syndic had given to Grio checked the impulse to speak.
Perhaps after all the girl knew best.

"And a person of the name of Basterga, I think?"

Claude nodded. He dared not trust himself to speak now. Could it be that
a whisper of what was passing in the house had reached the magistrates?

The Syndic coughed. He glanced from the distant door, now a mere blur in
the obscurity, to his companion's face and back again to the door--of
which he seemed reluctant to lose sight. For a moment he seemed at a
loss how to proceed. When he did speak, after a long pause, it was in a
dry curt tone. "It is about him I wish to hear something," he said. "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."

"Yet you do not like him. Why?"

Claude's face burned. "He puts his learning to no good use," he blurted
out. "He uses it to--to torture women. If I could tell you all--all,
Messer Blondel," the young man continued, in growing excitement, "you
would understand me better! He gains power over people, a strange power,
and abuses it."

"Power? What do you mean? What kind of power?"

"God knows."

The Syndic stared a moment, his face expressive of contempt. This was
not the line he had meant his questions to take. What did it matter to
him how the man treated women? Pshaw! Then suddenly a light--as of
satisfaction, or discovery--gleamed in his eyes. "Do you mean," he
muttered, lowering his voice, "by sorcery?"

"God knows."

"By evil arts?"

The young man shook his head. "I do not know," he answered, almost
pettishly. "How should I? But he has a power. A secret power! I do not
understand him or it!"

The Syndic looked at him darkly thoughtful. "You did not know that that
was said of him?" he asked.

"That he----"

"Has magical arts?"

Claude shook his head.

"Nor that he has a laboratory upstairs?" Blondel continued, fixing the
young man gravely with his eyes. "A laboratory in which he reads much in
unknown tongues? And speaks much when no one is present? And tries
experiments with strange substances?"

Claude shook his head. "No!" he said. "Never! I never heard it."

He never had; but in his eyes dawned none the less a look of horror. No
man in those days doubted the existence of the devilish arts at which
Blondel hinted--arts by the use of which one being could make himself
master of the will and person of another. No man doubted their
existence: and that they were rare, were difficult, were seldom brought
within a man's experience, made them only the more hateful without
making them seem to the men of that day the less probable. That they
were often exercised at the cost of the innocent and pure, who in this
way were added to the accursed brood--few doubted this too; but the full
horror of it could be known only to the man who loved, and who
reverenced where he loved. Fortunately, men who never doubted the
reality of witchcraft, seldom conceived of it as touching those about
them; and it was only slowly that Claude took in the meaning of the
Syndic's suggestion, or discerned how perfectly it accounted for a thing
otherwise unaccountable--the mysterious sway which the scholar held over
the young girl.

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?"

Claude was silent in sheer horror: horror of the thing suggested to him,
horror of the punishment in which he might involve the innocent.

"I don't know!" he stammered at last, and almost incoherently. "I know
nothing! Don't ask me! God grant it be not so!" And he covered his face.

"Amen! Amen, indeed," Blondel answered gravely. "But now for the woman,
over whom you said he had power?"

"I said?"

"Aye, you, a minute ago! Who is she? Is she one of the household? Come,
young man, you must answer me," the Syndic continued with severity
proportioned to the other's hesitation. "I know much, and a little more
light may enable us to act and to bring the guilty to punishment. Does
she live in the house?"

Only the darkness hid Claude's pallor. "There is a woman," he muttered
reluctantly, "who lives in the house. But I know nothing! I have no
proof! Nothing, nothing!"

"But you suspect! You suspect, young man," the Syndic continued, eyeing
him sternly, "and suspecting you would leave her in the clutches of the
devil whose she must become, body and soul! For shame!"

"But I do not believe it!" Claude cried fiercely. "I do not believe it!"

"Of her?"

"Of her? No! _Mon dieu!_ No! She is a child! She is innocent! Innocent
as----"

"The day! you would say?" the Syndic struck in, almost solemnly. "The
likelier prey? The choicest are ever the devil's morsels."

"And you think that she----"

"God help her, if she be in his power! This man," the Syndic continued,
laying his hand on the other's arm, "has ruined hundreds by his secret
arts, by his foul practices, by his sorceries. He has made Venice too
hot for him. In Padua they will have him no more. Genoa has driven him
forth. If you doubt this character of him there is an easy proof; for it
is whispered, nay, it is almost certain, in what his power lies. Do you
know his room?"

"No."

"No?" in a tone of dismay. "But is it not on a level with yours?"

"No," Claude answered, shivering; "it is over mine."

"No matter, there is an easy mode of proving him," the Syndic replied;
and despite himself his tone was eager. "If he be the man they say he
is, there is in his room a box of steel chained to the wall. It contains
the spell he uses. By means of it he can enter where he pleases, he can
enslave women to his will, he----"

"And you do not seize it?" Claude cried in a tone of horror.

"He has the Grand Duke's protection," the Syndic answered smoothly, "and
to touch him without clear proof might cause much trouble to the State."

"And for that you suffer him," Claude exclaimed, his voice trembling.
"You suffer him to work his will? You suffer him----"

"I must follow the law," Blondel answered, shaking his head. He looked
warily round; the dark ramparts were quiet. "I act but as a magistrate.
Were I a mere man and knew him, as I know him now, for what he is--a
foul magician weaving his spells about the young, ensnaring, with his
sorceries, the souls of innocent women, corrupting--but what is it,
young man?"

"He is within?"

"No; he left the house a minute or so before you arrived. But what is
it?" Seizing the young man's arm he restrained him. "Where are you
going?"

"To his room!" Claude answered between his set teeth. "Be he man or
devil--to his room!"

"You dare?"

"I dare and I will!" Resisting the Syndic's feigned efforts to hold him
back, he strode towards the door. "That spell shall not be his another
hour."

But Blondel terrified by his sudden success, and loth, now the time was
come, to put all on a cast, kept his hand on him. "Stay! Stay!" he
babbled, dragging him back. "Do not be rash!"

"Stay, and leave him to ruin her!"

"Still, listen! Whatever you do, listen!" the Syndic answered; and
insisted, clinging to him. His agitation was such, that had Claude
retained his powers of observation, he must have found something strange
in this anxiety. "Listen! If you find the casket, on your life touch
nothing in it! On your life!" Blondel repeated, his hands clinging more
tightly to the other's arm. "Bring it entire--touch nothing! If you do
not promise me I will raise the alarm here and now! To open it, I warn
you, is to risk all!"

"I will bring it!" Claude answered, his foot on the steps, his hand on
the latch. "I will bring it!"

"Ay, but you do not know what hangs on it! You will bring it as you find
it?"

His persistence was so strange, he clung to the young man's arm with so
complete an abandonment of his ordinary manner, that, with the latch
half raised, Claude looked at him in wonder. "Very well, I will bring it
as I find it!" he muttered. Then, notwithstanding a movement which the
Syndic made to restrain him, he pushed the door.

It was not locked, and, in a moment, he stood in the living-room which
he had left little more than an hour before. It was untenanted, but not
in darkness; a rushlight, set in an earthen vessel on the hearth, flung
long shadows on the walls and ceiling, and gave to the room, so homely
in its every-day aspect, a sinister look. The door of Gentilis' room was
shut; probably he was asleep. That at the foot of the staircase was also
shut. Claude stood a moment, frowning; then he crossed the floor
towards the staircase door. But though his mind was fixed, the spell of
the other's excitement told on him: the flicker of the rushlight made
him start; and half-way across the room a sound at his elbow brought him
up as if he had been stabbed. He turned his head, expecting to find the
big man's eyes bent on him from some corner. He found instead the
Syndic, who had stolen in after him, and with a dark anxious face was
standing like a shadow of guilt between him and the door.

The young man resented the alarm which the other had caused him. "If you
are going, go," he muttered. "And if you will do it yourself, Messer
Syndic, so much the better." He pointed to the door of the staircase.

The Syndic recoiled, his beard wagging senilely. "No, no," he babbled.
"No, I will go back."

It was no longer the formal magistrate, but a frightened man who stood
at Claude's elbow. And this was so clear that superstition, which is of
all things the most infectious, began to shake the young man's
resolution. Desperately he threw it off, and went to open the door. Then
he reflected that it would be dark upstairs, he must have a light; and
re-crossing the floor he brought the rushlight from the hearth. Holding
it aloft he opened the creaking door and began to ascend the stairs.

With every step the awe of the other world grew on him; while the
shadow, which he had found at his elbow below, followed him upwards.
When he paused at the head of the flight the Syndic's face was on a
level with his knee, the Syndic's eyes were fixed on his.

Claude did not understand this; but the man's company was welcome now;
and the sight of Basterga's door, not three paces from the place where
he stood, diverted his thoughts. He had not been above stairs since the
day of his arrival, but he knew that Basterga's room was the nearest to
the stairs. That was the door then; behind that door the Italian wrought
his devilish spells!

His light, smoky and wavering, cast black shadows on the walls of the
passage as he moved. The air seemed heavy, laden with some strange drug;
the house was still, with the stillness which precedes horror. Not many
men of his time, suspecting what he suspected, would have opened that
door, or at that hour of the night would have entered that room. But
Claude, though he feared, though he shuddered, though unearthly terrors
pressed upon him, possessed a charm that supported his courage: the
memory of the scene in the room below, of the scalding drops falling on
the white skin, of the girl looking at him with that face of pain. The
devil was strong, but there was a stronger; and in the strength of love
the young man approached the door and tried it. It was locked.

Somehow the fact augmented his courage. "Where the devil is, is no need
of locks," he muttered, and he felt above the door, then, stooping,
groped under it. In the latter place he found the key, thrust out of
sight between door and floor, where doubtless it was Basterga's custom
to hide it. He drew it out, and with a grim face set it in the lock.

"Quick!" muttered a voice in his ear, and turning he saw that the Syndic
was trembling with eagerness. "Quick, quick! Or he may return!"

Claude smiled. If he did not fear the devil he certainly did not fear
Basterga. He was about to turn the key in the lock when a sound stayed
his hand, ay, and rooted him to the spot. Yet it was only a laugh--but a
laugh such as his ears had never caught before, a laugh full of ghastly,
shrill, unearthly mirth. It rang through the passage, through the
house, through the night; but whence it proceeded, whether from some
being at his elbow, or from above stairs, or below, it was impossible to
say; and the blood gone from his face, Claude stood, peering over his
shoulder into the dark corners of the passage. Again that laugh rose,
shrill, mocking, unearthly; and this time his hand fell from the lock.

The Syndic, utterly unmanned, leant sweating against the wall. He called
upon the name of his Maker. "My God!" he muttered. "My God!"

"_There is no God!_"

The words, each syllable of them clear, though spoken in a voice shrill
and cracked and strange, and such as neither of them had ever heard
before, were beyond doubt. Close on them followed a shriek of weird
laughter, and then the blasphemy repeated in the same tone of mockery.
The hair crept on Claude's head, the blood withdrew to his heart. The
key which he had drawn out of the lock fell from the hand it seemed to
freeze.

With distended eyes he glared down the passage. The words were still in
the air, the laughter echoed in his brain, the shadows cast by the
shaking rushlight danced and took weird shapes. A rustling as of black
wings gathered about him, unseen shapes hovered closer and closer--was
it his fancy or did he hear them?

He tried to disbelieve, he strove to withstand his terror; and a moment
his fortitude held. Then, as the Syndic, shaking as with the palsy,
tottered, with a hand on either wall down the stairs, and moaning aloud
in his terror, felt his way across the room below, Claude's courage,
too, gave way; not in face of that he saw, but of that which he fancied.
He turned too, and with a greater show of composure, and still carrying
the light, he stumbled down the stairs and into the room below.

There, for an instant sense and nerve returned, and he stood. He turned
even, and made as if he would re-ascend the staircase. But he had no
sooner thrust his head into it, and paused an instant to listen ere he
ventured, than a faint echo of the same mirthless laughter reached him,
and he turned shuddering, and fled--fled out of the room, out of the
house, out of the light, to the same spot under the trees whence he had
started with so bold a heart a few minutes earlier.

The Syndic was there before him--or no, not the Syndic, but a stricken
man, clinging to a tree; seized now and again with a fresh fit of
trembling. "Take me home," he babbled. "There is no hope! There is no
hope. Take me home!"

His house was not far off, and Claude, when he had a little recovered
himself, assented, gave the tottering man his arm and supported him--he
needed support--until they reached the dwelling in the Bourg du Four.
Still a wreck Blondel was by this time a little more coherent. He
foresaw solitude, and dreaded it; and would have had the other enter and
pass the night with him. But the young man, already ashamed of his
weakness, already doubting and questioning, refused, and would say no
more than that he would return on the morrow. With an aspect apparently
composed, he insisted on taking his leave, turned from the door and
retraced his steps to the Corraterie. But when he came to the house, he
lacked, brave as he was, the heart to enter; and passing it, he spent
the time until daybreak, in walking up and down the rampart within
hearing of the sentries.

His mind grown somewhat calmer, he set himself to recall, precisely and
exactly, the thing that had happened. But recall it as he might, he
could not account for it. The words of blasphemy that had scorched his
ears as the key entered the lock, had been uttered, he was sure, in no
voice known to him; nay more, in no voice of human intonation. How could
he explain them? How account for them save in one way? How defend his
cowardice save on one ground? He shuddered, gazing at the house, and
murmuring now a prayer, and now a word of exorcism. But the day had
come, the sky was red, and the sun was near its rising before he took
courage and dared to cross the threshold.




CHAPTER IX.

MELUSINA.


Even then, with the daylight about him, he crept into the house under a
weight of awe and dread. He left the door ajar that the daylight might
enter with him and dispel the shadows: and when he had crossed the
threshold it was with a pale and frowning face that he advanced to the
middle of the floor, and stood peering round the deserted living-room.
No one was stirring above or below, the house and all within it slept:
the rushlight stand, its wick long extinguished, remained where he had
set it down in the panic of his flight.

With that exception--he eyed it darkly--no trace of the mysterious event
of the night was visible. The room wore, or minute by minute assumed,
its daylight aspect. Nor had he stood long gazing upon it before he
breathed more freely and felt his heart lightened. What was to be
thought, what could be thought in the circumstances, he was not prepared
to say. But the panic of the night was gone with the darkness; and with
it all thought--if in the depths he had really sunk so low--of
relinquishing the woman he loved to the powers of evil.

To the powers of evil! To a fate as much worse than death as the soul
and the mind are higher than the body! Was he really face to face with
that? Was this house, so quiet, so peaceful, so commonplace, in reality
the theatre of one of those manifestations of Satan's power which were
the horror of the age? His senses affirmed it, and yet he doubted. Such
things were, he did not deny it. Few men of the time denied it. But
presented to him, brought within his experience, they shocked him to the
point of disbelief. He found that from the thing which he was prepared
to admit in the general, he dissented fiercely and instinctively in the
particular.

What, the woman he loved! Was he to believe her delivered, soul and
body, to the power of Satan? Never! All that was sane and wholesome and
courageous in the man rebelled against the thought. He would not believe
it. The pots and pans on the hearth, the simple implements of work and
life, on which his eyes alighted wherever he turned them, and to none of
which her hand was stranger, his memory of the love that was between her
and her mother, his picture of the sacred life led by those two above
stairs, all gave the lie to it! Her subjection to Basterga, her
submission to contumely and to insult--there must be a reason for these,
a natural and innocent reason could he hit on it. The strange
occurrences of the night, the blasphemous words, the mocking laughter,
at the worst they might not import a mastery over her. He shuddered as
he recalled them, they rang in his ears and brain, the vividness of his
memory of them was remarkable. But they might not have relation to her.

He stood long in moody thought, but his ears never for an instant
relaxed their vigil, their hearkening for he knew not what. At length he
passed into his bedcloset, and cooled his hot face with water and
repaired his dress. Coming out again, he found the house still quiet,
the door as he had left it, the daylight pouring in through the
aperture. No one was moving, he was still safe from interruption; and a
curiosity to visit the passage above and learn if aught abnormal was to
be seen, took possession of him. It was just possible that Basterga had
not returned; that the key still lay where he had dropped it!

He opened the door of the staircase and listened. He heard nothing, and
he stole half-way up the flight and again stood. Still all was silent.
He mounted more boldly then, and he was within four steps of the
top--whence, turning his head a little, he could command the
passage--when a sound arrested him. It was a sound easily explicable
though it startled him; for a moment later Anne Royaume appeared at the
foot of the upper flight of stairs, and moved along the passage towards
him.

She did not see him, and he could have escaped unnoticed, had he retired
at once. But he stood fixed to the spot by something in her appearance;
a something that, as she moved slowly towards him, fancying herself
alone, filled him with dread, and with something worse than
dread--suspicion.

For if ever woman looked as if she had come from a witch's Sabbath, if
ever girl, scarce more than child, walked as if she had plucked the
fruit of the Tree and savoured it bitter, it was the girl before him.
Despair--it seemed to him--rode her like a hag. Dejection, fear, misery,
were in her whole bearing. Her eyes looked out from black hollows, her
cheeks were pallid, her mouth was nerveless. Three sleepless nights, he
thought, could not have changed a woman thus--no, nor thrice three; and
he who had seen her last night and saw her now, gazed fascinated and
bewildered, asking himself what had happened, what it meant.

Alas, for answer there rose the spectre which he had been striving to
lay; the spectre that had for the men of that day so appalling, so
shocking a reality. Witchcraft! The word rang in his brain. Witchcraft
would account for this, ay, for all; for her long submission to vile
behests and viler men; for that which he had heard in this house at
midnight; for that which the Syndic had whispered of Basterga; for that
which he noted in her now! Would account for it; ay, but by fixing her
with a guilt, not of this world, terrible, abnormal: by fixing her with
a love of things vile, unspeakable, monstrous, a love that must deprive
her life of all joy, all sweetness, all truth, all purity! A guilt and a
love that showed her thus!

But thus, for a moment only. The next she espied his face above the
landing-edge, perceived that he watched her, detected, perhaps,
something of his feeling. With startling abruptness her features
underwent a change. Her cheeks flamed high, her eyes sparkled with
resentment. "You!" she cried--and her causeless anger, her impatience of
his presence, confirmed the dreadful idea he had conceived. "You!" she
repeated. "How dare you come here? How dare you? What are you doing
here? Your room is below. Go down, sir!"

He did not move, but he met her eyes; he tried to read her soul, his own
quaking. And his look, sombre and stern--for he saw a gulf opening at
his feet--should have given her pause. Instead, her anger faced him down
and mastered him. "Do you hear me?" she flung at him. "Do you hear me?
If you have aught to say, if you are not as those others, go down! Go
down, and I will hear you there!"

He went down then, giving way to her, and she followed him. She closed
the staircase door behind them; and that done, in the living-room with
her he would have spoken. But with a glance at Gentilis' door, she
silenced him, and led the way through the outer door to the open air.
The hour was still early, the sun was barely risen. Save for a sentry
sleeping at his post on the ramparts, there was no one within sight, and
she crossed the open space to the low wall that looked down upon the
Rhone. There, in a spot where the partly stripped branches which shaded
the rampart hid them from the windows, she turned to him. "Now," she
said--there was a smouldering fire in her eyes--"if you have aught to
say to me, say it. Say it now!"

He hesitated. He had had time to think, and he found the burden laid
upon him heavy. "I do not know," he answered, "that I have any right to
speak to you."

"Right!" she cried; and let her bitterness have way in that word.
"Right! Does any stay for that where I am concerned? Or ask my leave, or
crave my will, sir? Right? You have the same right to flout and jeer and
scorn me, the same right to watch and play the spy on me, to hearken at
my door, and follow me, that they have! Ay, and the same right to bid me
come and go, and answer at your will, that others have! Do you scruple a
little at beginning?" she continued mockingly. "It will wear off. It
will come easy by-and-by! For you are like the others!"

"No!"

"You are as the others! You begin as they began!" she repeated, giving
the reins to her indignation. "The day you came, last night even, I
thought you different. I deemed you"--she pressed her hand to her bosom
as if she stilled a pain--"other than you are! I confess it. But you are
their fellow. You begin as they began, by listening on stairs and at
doors, by dogging me and playing eavesdropper, by hearkening to what I
say and do. Right?" she repeated the word bitterly, mockingly, with
fierce unhappiness. "You have the right that they have! The same right!"

"Have I?" he asked slowly. His face was sombre and strangely old.

"Yes!"

"Then how did I gain it?" he retorted with a dark look. "How"--his tone
was as gloomy as his face--"did they gain it? Or--he?"

"He?" The flame was gone from her face. She trembled a little.

"Yes, he--Basterga," he replied, his eyes losing no whit of the change
in her. "How did he gain the right which he has handed on to others, the
right to shame you, to lay hand on you, to treat you as he does? This is
a free city. Women are no slaves here. What then is the secret between
you and him?" Claude continued grimly. "What is your secret?"

"My secret!" Her passion dwindled under his eyes, under his words.

"Ay," Claude answered, "and his! His secret and yours. What is the thing
between you and him?" he continued, his eyes fixed on her, "so dark, so
weighty, so dangerous, you must needs for it suffer his touch, bear his
look, be smooth to him though you loathe him? What is it?"

"Perhaps--love," she muttered, with a forced smile. But it did not
deceive him.

"You loathe him!" he said.

"I may have loved him--once," she faltered.

"You never loved him," he retorted. All the shyness of youth, all the
bashfulness of man with maiden were gone. Under the weight of that
thought, that dreadful thought, he had grown old in a few minutes. His
tone was hard, his manner pitiless. "You never loved him!" he repeated,
the very immodesty of her excuse confirming his fears. "And I ask you,
what is it? What is it that is between you and him? What is it that
gives him this power over you?"

"Nothing," she stammered, pale to the lips.

"Nothing! And was it for nothing that you were startled when you found
me upstairs? When you found me watching you five minutes ago, was it for
nothing that you flamed with rage----"

"You had no right to be there."

"No? Yet it was an innocent thing enough--to be there," he answered. "To
be there, this morning." And then, giving the words all the meaning of
which his voice was capable, "To have been there last night," he
continued, "were a different thing perhaps."

"Were you there?" Her voice was barely audible.

"I was."

It was dreadful to see how she sank under that, how she cringed before
him, her anger gone, her colour gone, the light fled from her eyes--eyes
grown suddenly secretive. It was a minute, it seemed a minute at least,
before she could frame a word, a single word. Then, "What do you know?"
she whispered. But for the wall against which she leant, she must have
fallen.

"What do I know?"

She nodded, unable to repeat the words.

"I was at the door of Basterga's room last night."

"Last night!"

"Yes. I had the key of his room in my hand. I was putting it into the
lock when I heard----"

"Hush!" She stepped forward, she would have put her hand over his mouth.
"Hush! Hush!"

The terror of her eyes, the glance she cast behind her, echoed the word
more clearly than her lips. "Hush! Hush!"

He could not bear to look at her. Her voice, her terror, the very
defence she had striven to make confirmed him in his worst suspicions.
The thing was too certain, too apparent; in mercy to himself as well as
to her, he averted his eyes.

They fell on the hills on which he had gazed that morning barely a
fortnight earlier, when the autumn haze had mirrored her face; and all
his thoughts, his heart, his fancy had been hers, her prize, her easy
capture. And now he dared not look on her face. He could not bear to see
it distorted by the terrors of an evil conscience. Even her words when
she spoke again jarred on him.

"You knew the voice?" she whispered.

"I did not know it," he answered brokenly. "I knew--whose it was."

"Mine?"

"Yes." He scarcely breathed the word.

She did not cry "Hush!" this time, but she caught her breath; and after
a moment's pause, "Still--you did not recognise it?" she murmured. "You
did not know that it was my voice?" Could it be that after all she hoped
to blind him?

"I did not."

"Thank God!"

"Thank God?" He stared at her, echoing the words in his astonishment.
How dared she name the sacred name?

She read his thoughts. "Yes," she said hardily, "why not?"

He turned on her. "Why not?" he cried. "Why not? You dare to thank Him,
who last night denied Him? You dare to name His name in the light, who
in the darkness----You! And you are not afraid?"

"Afraid?" she repeated. There was a strange light, almost a smile he
would have deemed it had he thought that possible, in her face, "Nay,
perhaps; perhaps. For even the devils, we are told, believe and
tremble."

His jaw fell; for a moment he gazed at her in sheer bewilderment. Then,
as the full import of her words and her look overwhelmed him, he turned
to the wall and bowed his face on his arms. His whole being shook, his
soul was sick. What was he to say to her? What was he to do? Flee from
her presence as from the presence of Antichrist? Avoid her henceforth as
he valued his soul? Pluck even the memory of her from his mind? Or
wrestle with her, argue with her, snatch her from the foul spells and
enchantments that now held her, the tool and chosen instrument of the
evil one, in their fiendish grip?

He felt a Churchman's horror--Protestant as he was--at the thought of a
woman possessed. But for that reason, and because he was in the way of
becoming a minister, was it not his duty to measure his strength with
the Adversary? Alas! he could conceive of no words, no thoughts, no
arguments adequate to that strife. Had he been a Papist he might have
turned with hope, even with pious confidence, to the Holy Stoup, the
Bell and Book and Candle, to the Relics, and hundred Exorcisms of his
Church. But the colder and more abstract faith of Calvin, while it
admitted the possibility of such possessions, supplied no weapons of a
material kind.

He groaned in his impotence, stifled by the unwholesome atmosphere of
his thoughts. He dared not even ponder too long on what she was who
stood beside him; nor peer too closely through the murky veil that hid
her being. To do so might be to risk his soul, to become a partner in
her guilt. He might conjecture what dark thoughts and dreadful aptitudes
lurked behind the girl's gentle mask, he might strive to learn by what
black arts she had been seduced, what power over visible things had been
the price of her apostasy, what Sabbath-mark, seal and pledge of that
apostasy she bore--but at what peril! At what risk of soul and body! His
brain reeled, his blood raced at the thought.

Such things had lately been, he knew. Had there not been a dreadful
outbreak in Alsace--Alsace, the neighbour almost of Geneva--within the
last few years. In Thann and Turckheim, places within a couple of days'
journey of Geneva, scores had suffered for such practices; and some of
these not old and ugly, but young and handsome, girls and pages of the
Court and young wives! Had not the most unlikely persons confessed to
practices the most dreadful? The most innocent in appearance to things
unspeakable!

But--with a sudden revulsion of feeling--that was in Alsace, he told
himself. That was in Alsace! Such things did not happen here at men's
elbows! He must have been mad to think it or dream it. And, lifting his
head, he looked about him. The sun had risen higher, the rich vale of
the Rhone, extended at his feet, lay bathed in air and light and
brightness. The burnished hills, the brown, tilled slopes, the gleaming
river, the fairness of that rare landscape clad in morning freshness,
gave the lie to the suspicions he had been indulging, gave the lie,
there and then, to possibilities he dared not have denied in school or
pulpit. Nature spoke to his heart, and with smiling face denied the
unnatural. In Bamberg and Wurzburg and Alsace, but not here! In
Magdeburg, but not here! In Edinburgh, but not here! The world of beauty
and light and growth on which he looked would have none of the dark
devil's world of which he had been dreaming: the dark devil's world
which the sophists and churchmen and the weak-witted of twoscore
generations had built up!

He turned and looked at her, the scales fallen from his eyes. Though she
was still pale, she had recovered her composure and she met his gaze
without blenching. But now, behind the passive defiance, grave rather
than sullen, which she presented to his attack, the weakness, the
helplessness, the heart pain of the woman were plain.

He discerned them, and while he hungered for a more explicit denial, for
a cry of indignant protest, for a passionate repudiation, he found some
comfort in that look. And his heart spoke. "I do not believe it!" he
cried impetuously, in perfect forgetfulness of the fact that he had not
put his charge into words. "I do not--I will not! Only say that it is
false! And I will say no more."

Her answer was as cold water thrown upon him. "I will tell you nothing,"
she answered.

"Why not? Why not?" he cried.

"You ask why not," she answered slowly. "Are you so short of memory? Is
it so long since, against my will and prayers, you came into yonder
house--that you forget what I said and what I did? And what you
promised?"

"My God!" he cried in excitement. "You do not know where you stand! You
do not know what perils threaten you. This is no time," he continued,
holding out his hands to her in growing agitation, "for sticking on
scruples or raising trifles. Tell me all!"

"I will tell you nothing!" she replied with the same quiet firmness. "I
have suffered. I suffer. Can you not suffer a little?"

"Not blasphemy!" he said. "Not that! Tell me"--his voice, his face grew
suppliant--"tell me only that it was not your voice, Anne. Tell me that
it was not you who spoke! Tell me--but that."

"I will tell you nothing!" she answered in the same tone.

"You do not know----"

"I know what it is you have in your mind!" she replied. "What it is you
are thinking of me. That they will burn me in the Bourg du Four
presently, as they burned the girl in Aix last year! As they burned the
woman in Besançon not many months since; I have seen those who saw it.
As they did to two women in Zurich--my mother was there! As they did to
five hundred people in Geneva in my grandfather's time. It is that," she
continued, a strange wild light in her eyes, "that you think they will
do to me?"

"God forbid!" he cried.

"Nay, you may do it, too, if you choose," she answered, gravely
regarding him. "But I do not think you will, for you are young, almost
as young as I am, and, having done it, you would have many years to live
and think. You would remember in those years that it was my mother who
nursed your father, that it was you who came to us not we to you, that
it was you who promised to aid us, not I who sought your aid! You would
remember all these things of a morning when you awoke early: and
this--that in the end you gave me up to the law and burned me."

"God forbid!" he cried, and hid his face with his hands. The very
quietness of her speech set an edge on horror. "God forbid!"

"Ay, but men allow!" she answered drearily. "What if I was mad last
night, and in my madness denied my Maker? I am sane to-day, but I must
burn, if it be known! I must burn!"

"Not by my mouth!" he cried, his brow damp with sweat. "Never, I swear
it! If there be guilt, on my head be the guilt!"

"You mean it? You mean that?" she said.

"I do."

"You will be silent?"

"I will."

Her lips parted, hope in her eyes shone--hope which showed how deep her
despair had been. "And you will ask no questions?" she whispered.

"I will ask no questions," he answered. He stifled a sigh.

She drew a deep breath of relief, but she did not thank him. It was a
thing for which no thanks could be given. She stood a while, sad and
thoughtful, reflecting, it seemed, on what had passed; then she turned
slowly and left him, crossed the open space, and entered the house,
walking as one under a heavy burden.

And he? He remained, troubled at one time by the yearning to follow and
comfort and cherish her; cast at another into a cold sweat by the
recollection of that voice in the night, and the strange ties which
bound her to Basterga. Innocent, it seemed to him, that connection could
not be. Based on aught but evil it could hardly be. Yet he must endure,
witness, cloak it. He must wait, helpless and inactive, the issue of it.
He must lie on the rack, drawn one way by love of her, drawn the other
by daily and hourly suspicions, suspicions so strong and so terrible
that even love could hardly cast them out.

For the voice he had heard at midnight, and the horrid laughter, which
greeted the words of sacrilege--were facts. And her subjection to
Basterga, the man of evil past the evil name, was a fact. And her terror
and her avowal were facts. He could not doubt, he could not deny them.
Only--he loved her. He loved her even while he doubted her, even while
he admitted that women as young and as innocent had been guilty of the
blackest practices and the most evil arts. He loved her and he suffered:
doubting, though he could not abandon her. The air was fresh about him,
the world lay sunlit under his eyes. But the beauty of the world had not
saved young and tender women, who on such mornings had walked barefoot,
none comforting them, to the fiery expiation of their crimes.
Perhaps--perhaps among the thousands who had witnessed their last agony,
one man hidden in the crowd, had vainly closed ears and eyes, one man
had died a hundred deaths in one.




CHAPTER X.

AUCTIO FIT: VENIT VITA.


In his spacious chestnut-panelled parlour, in a high-backed oaken chair
that had throned for centuries the Abbots of Bellerive, Messer Blondel
sat brooding with his chin upon his breast. The chestnut-panelled
parlour was new. The shields of the Cantons which formed a frieze above
the panels shone brightly, the or and azure, gules and argent of their
quarterings, undimmed by time or wood-smoke. The innumerable panes of
the long heavily leaded windows which looked out on the Bourg du Four
were still rain-proof; the light which they admitted still found
something garish in the portrait of the Syndic--by Schouten--that formed
the central panel of the mantelpiece. New and stately, the room had not
its pair in Geneva; and dear to its owner's heart had it been a short, a
very short time before. He had anticipated no more lasting pleasure,
looked forward to no safer gratification for his declining years, than
to sit, as he now sat, surrounded by its grandeur. In due time--not at
once, lest the people take alarm or his enemies occasion--he had
determined to rebuild the whole house after the same fashion. The plans
of the oaken gallery, the staircase and dining-chamber, prepared by a
trusty craftsman of Basle, lay at this moment in the drawer of the
bureau beside his chair.

Now all was changed. A fiat had gone forth, which placed him alike
beyond the envy of his friends, and the hatred of his foes. He must
die. He must die, and leave these pleasant things, this goodly room,
that future of which he had dreamed. Another man would lie warm in the
chamber he had prepared; another would be Syndic and bear his wand. The
years of stately plenty which he had foreseen, were already as last
year's harvest. No wonder that the sheen of portrait and panel, the
pride of echoing oak, were fled; or that the eyes with which he gazed on
the things about him were dull and lifeless.

Dull and lifeless at one moment, and clouded by the apathy of despair;
at another bright with the fierce fever of revolt. In the one phase or
the other he had passed many hours of late, some of them amid the
dead-sea grandeur of this room. And he had had his hours of hope also. A
fortnight back a ray of hope, bright as the goblin light which shines
the more brilliantly the darker be the night, had shone on him and
amused and enchanted him. And then, in one moment, God and man--or if
not God, the devil--had joined to quench the hope; and this morning he
sat sunk in deepest despair, all in and around him dark. Hitherto he had
regarded appearances. He had hidden alike his malady and his fears, his
apathy and his mad revolt; he had lived as usual. But this morning he
was beyond that. He could not rouse himself, he could not be doing. His
servants, wondering why he did not go abroad or betake himself to some
task, came and peeped at him, and went away whispering and pointing and
nudging one another. And he knew it. But he paid no heed to them or to
anything, until it happened that his eyes, resting dully on the street,
marked a man who paused before the door and looked at the house, in
doubt it seemed, whether he should seek to enter or should pass on.

For an appreciable time the Syndic watched the loiterer without seeing
him. What did it matter to a dying man--a man whom heaven, impassive,
abandoned to the evil powers--who came or who went? But by-and-by his
eyes conveyed the identity of the man to his brain; and he rose to his
feet, laying his hands on a bell which stood on the table beside him. In
the act of ringing he changed his mind, and laying the bell down, he
strode himself to the outer door, the house door, and opened it. The man
was still in the street. Scarcely showing himself, Blondel caught his
eye, signed to him to enter, and held the door while he did so.

Claude Mercier--for he it was--entered awkwardly. He followed the Syndic
into the parlour, and standing with his cap in his hand, began
shamefacedly to explain that he had come to learn how the Syndic was,
after--after that which had happened----He did not finish the sentence.

For that matter, Blondel did not allow him to finish. He had passed at
sight of the youth into the other of the two conditions between which
his days were divided. His eyes glittered, his hands trembled. "Have you
done anything?" he asked eagerly; and the voice in which he said it
surprised the young man. "Have you done anything?"

"As to Basterga, do you mean, Messer Syndic?"

"As to what else? What else?"

"No, Messer Blondel, I have not."

"Nor learned anything?"

"No, nothing."

"But you don't mean--to leave it there?" Blondel cried, his voice rising
high. And he sat down and rose up again. "You have done nothing, but you
are going to do something? What will it be? What?" And then as he
discerned the other's surprise, and read suspicion in his eyes, he
curbed himself, lowered his tone, and with an effort was himself. "Young
man," he said, wiping his brow, "I am still ridden--by what happened
last night. I have lain, since we parted, under an overwhelming sense of
the presence of evil. Of evil," he repeated, still speaking a little
wildly, "such as this God-fearing town should not know even by repute!
You think me over-anxious? But I have felt the hot blast of the furnace
on my cheek, my head bears even now the smell of the burning. Hell gapes
near us!" He was beginning to tremble afresh, partly with impatience of
this parleying, partly with anxiety to pluck from the other his answer.
The glitter was returning to his eyes. "Hell gapes near us," he
repeated. "And I ask you, young man, what are you going to do?"

"I?"

"Yes, you!"

Claude stared. "What would you have me do?" he asked.

"What would you have done last night?" the Syndic retorted. "Did you ask
me then? Did you wait for my permission? Did you wait even for my
presence?"

"No, but----"

"But what?"

"Things are changed."

"Changed? How?" Blondel's tone sank to one of unnatural calm; but his
frame shook and his face was purple with the pressure he put upon
himself. "What is changed? Who has changed it?" he continued; to see his
chance of life hang on the will of this imbecile was almost more than he
could bear. "Speak out! Let me know what has happened."

"You know what happened as well as I do," Claude answered slowly. He had
given his word to the girl that he would not interfere, but he began to
see difficulties of which he had not thought. "It was enough for me! He
may be all you said he was, Messer Syndic, but----"

"But you no longer burn to break the spell?" Blondel cried. "You no
longer desire to snatch from him the woman you love? You will stand by
and see her perish body and soul in this web of iniquity? You are
frightened, and will leave her to the law!" He thrust out his thin
flushed face, his pointed beard wagging malignantly. "For that is what
will come of it! To the law, you understand! I warn you, the magistrates
in Geneva bear not the sword in vain."

The young man's brow grew damp. The crisis was nearer than he had
feared. "But--she has done nothing!" he faltered.

"The tool with the hand that uses it! The idol and him who made it!" the
Syndic cried, swaying himself to and fro.

Claude stared. "But you know nothing!" he made shift to say after a
pause. "You have nothing against her, Messer Blondel. He may be all you
say, but she----"

"I have ears!"

The tone said more than the words, and Claude trembled. He knew the
width of the net where witchcraft or blasphemy was in question. He knew
that, were Basterga seized, all in the house would be taken with him,
and though men often escaped for the fright, it was seldom that women
went free so cheaply. The knowledge of this tied his tongue; and urgent
as he felt the need to be, he could only glare helplessly at the
magistrate.

Blondel, on his part, saw the effect of his words, and desperately
resolved to force the young man to his will, he followed up the blow.
"If you would see her burn, well and good!" he cried. "It is for you to
choose. Either break the spell, bring me the box, and set her free; or
see the law take its course! Last night----"

"Last night," Claude replied, hurt to the quick, "you were not so bold,
Messer Blondel!"

The Syndic winced, but merged his wrath in an anxiety a thousand times
deeper. "Last night is not to-day," he answered. "Midnight is not
daylight! I have told you where the spell is, where, at least, it is
reputed to be, what it does, and under what sway it lays her; you who
love her--and I see you do--you who have access to the house at all
hours, who can watch him out----"

"We watched him out last night!" Claude muttered.

"Ay, but day is day! In the daylight----"

"But it is not laid on me to do this! I am not the only one----"

"You love her!"

"Who has access to the house."

"Are you a coward?"

Claude breathed hard. He was driven to the wall. Between his promise to
her, and the Syndic's demand, he found himself helpless. And the demand
was not so unreasonable. For it was true that he loved her, and that he
had access to the house; and if the plan suggested seemed unusual, if it
was not the course most obvious or most natural, it was hardly for him
to cavil at a scheme which promised to save her, not only from the evil
influence which mysteriously swayed her, but from the law, and the
danger of an accusation of witchcraft. Apart from his promise he would
have chosen this course; as it had been his first impulse to pursue it
the evening before. But now he had given his word to her that he would
not interfere, and he was conscious that he understood but in part how
she stood. That being so----

"A coward!" the Syndic repeated, savagely and coarsely. He had waited in
intolerable suspense for the other's answer. "That is what you are, with
all your boasting!--A coward! Afraid of--why, man, of what are you
afraid? Basterga?"

"It may be," Claude answered sullenly.

"Basterga? Why----" But on the word Blondel stopped; and over his face
came a startling change. The rage died out of it and the flush; and
fear, and a cringing embarrassment, took the place of them. In the same
instant the change was made, and Claude saw that which caused it.
Basterga himself stood in the half-open doorway, looking towards them.

For a few seconds no one spoke. The magistrate's tongue clave to the
roof of his mouth, as the scholar advanced, cap in hand, and bowed to
one and the other. The florid politeness of his bearing thinly veiling
the sarcasm of his address when he spoke.

"O mire conjunctio!" he said. "Happy is Geneva where age thinks no shame
of consorting with youth! And youth, thrice happy, imbibes wisdom at the
feet of age! Messer Blondel," he continued, looking to him, and dropping
in a degree the irony of his tone, "I have not seen you for so long, I
feared that something was amiss, and I come to inquire. It is not so, I
hope?"

The Syndic, unable to mask his confusion, forced a sickly phrase of
denial. He had dreaded nothing so much as to be surprised by Basterga in
the young man's company: for his conscience warned him that to find him
with Mercier and to read his plan, would be one and the same thing to
the scholar's astuteness. And here was the discovery made, and made so
abruptly and at so unfortunate a moment that to carry it off was out of
his power, though he knew that every halting word and guilty look bore
witness against him.

"No? that is well," Basterga answered, smiling broadly as he glanced
from one face to the other. "That is well!" He had the air of a
good-natured pedagogue who espies his boys in a venial offence, and will
not notice it save by a sly word. "Very well! And you, my friend," he
continued, addressing Claude, "is it not true what I said,

    Terque Quaterque redit!

You fled in haste last night, but we meet again! Your method in affairs
is the reverse, I fear, of that which your friend here would advise:
namely, that to carry out a plan one should begin slowly, and end
quickly; thereby putting on the true helmet of Plato, as it has been
called by a learned Englishman of our time."

Claude glowered at him, almost as much at a loss as the Syndic, but for
another reason. To exchange commonplaces with the man who held the woman
he loved by an evil hold, who owned a power so baneful, so foul--to
bandy words with such an one was beyond him. He could only glare at him
in speechless indignation.

"You bear malice, I fear," the big man said. There was no doubt that he
was master of the situation. "Do you know that in the words of the same
learned person whom I have cited--a marvellous exemplar amid that
fog-headed people--vindictive persons live the life of witches, who as
they are mischievous, so end they unfortunate."

The blood left Claude's face. "What do you mean?" he muttered, finding
his voice at last.

"Who hates, burns. Who loves, burns also. But that is by the way."

"Burns?"

"Ay," with a grin, "burns! It seems to come home to you. Burns! Fie,
young man; you hate, I fear, beyond measure, or love beyond measure, if
you so fear the fire. What, you must leave us? It is not very mannerly,"
with sarcasm, "to go while I speak!"

But Claude could bear no more. He snatched his cap from the table, and
with an incoherent word, aimed at the Syndic and meant for
leave-taking, he made for the door, plucked it open and disappeared.

The scholar smiled as he looked after him. "A foolish young man," he
said, "who will assuredly, if he be not stayed, end unfortunate. It is
the way of Frenchmen, Messer Blondel. They act without method and strike
without intention, bear into age the follies of youth, and wear the
gravity neither of the north nor of the south. But that reminds me," he
continued, speaking low and bending towards the other with a look of
sympathy--"you are better, I hope?"

The words were harmless, but they conveyed more than their surface
meaning, and they touched the Syndic to the quick. He had begun to
compose himself; now he had much ado not to gnash his teeth in the
scholar's face. "Better?" he ejaculated bitterly. "What chance have I of
being better? Better? Are you?" He began to tremble, his hands on the
arms of his chair. "Otherwise, if you are not, you will soon have cause
to know what I feel."

"I am better," Basterga answered with fervour. "I thank Heaven for it."

Blondel rose to his feet, his hands still clutching the chair. "What!"
he cried. "You--you have not tried the----"

"The _remedium_?" The scholar shook his head. "No, on the contrary, I am
relieved from my fears. The alarm was baseless. I have it not, I thank
Heaven. I have not the disease. Nor, if there be any certainty in
medicine, shall have it."

The Syndic, alas for human nature, could have struck him in the face!

"You have it not?" he snarled. "You have it not?" And then regaining
control of himself, "I suppose I ought," with a forced and ghastly
smile, "to felicitate you on your escape."

"Rather to felicitate yourself," Basterga answered. "Or so I had hoped
two days ago."

"Myself?"

"Yes," Basterga replied lightly. "For as soon as I found that I had no
need of the _remedium_, I thought of you. That was natural. And it
occurred to me--nay, calm yourself!"

"Quick! Quick!

"Nay, calm yourself, my dear Messer Blondel," Basterga repeated with
outward solicitude and inward amusement. "Be calm, or you will do
yourself an injury; you will indeed! In your state you should be
prudent; you should govern yourself--one never knows. And besides, the
thought, to which I refer--I see you recognise what it was----"

"Yes! yes! Go on! Go on!"

"Proved futile."

"Futile?"

"Yes, I am sorry to say it. Futile."

"Futile!" The wretched man's voice rose almost to a scream as he
repeated the word. He rose and sat down again. "Then how did you--why
did you----" He stopped, fighting for words, and, unable to frame them,
clutched the air with his hands. A moment he mouthed dumbly, then "Tell
me!" he gasped. "Speak, man, speak! How was it? Cannot you see--that you
are killing me?"

Basterga saw indeed that he had gone nearer to it than he had intended:
for a moment the starting eyes and purple face alarmed him. In all
haste, he gave up playing with the others fears. "It occurred to me," he
said, "that as I no longer needed the medicine myself, there was only
the Grand Duke to be considered, I thought that he might be willing to
waive his claim, since he is as yet free from the disease. And four
days ago I despatched a messenger whom I could trust to him at Turin. I
had hopes of a favourable reply, and in that event, I should not have
lost a minute in waiting upon you. For I am bound to say, Messer
Blondel"--the big man rubbed his chin and eyed the other
benevolently--"your case appealed to me in an especial manner. I felt
myself moved, I scarcely know why, to do all I could on your behalf.
Alas, the answer dashed my hopes."

"What was it?" Blondel's voice sounded hollow and unnatural. Sunk in the
high-backed chair, his chin fallen on his breast, it was in his eyes
alone, peering from below bent brows, that he seemed to live.

"He would not waive his claim," Basterga answered gently, "save on
a--but in substance that was all."

Blondel raised himself slowly and stiffly in the chair. His lips parted.
"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."

"Impossible, then."

"What was it? What was it?"--with a gesture eloquent of the impatience
that was choking him.

"He asked," Basterga replied reluctantly, "a price."

"A price?"

The big man nodded.

The Syndic rose up and sat down again. "Why did you not say so? Why did
you not say so at once?" he cried fiercely. "Is it about that you have
been fencing all this time? Is that what you were seeking? And I
fancied--A price, eh? I suppose"--in a lower tone, and with a gleam of
cunning in his eyes--"he does not really want--the impossible? I am not
a very rich man, Messer Basterga--you know that; and I am sure you would
tell him. You would tell him that men do not count wealth here as they
do in Genoa or Venice, or even in Florence. I am sure you would put him
right on that," with a faint whine in his tone. "He would not strip a
man to the last rag. He would not ask--thousands for it."

"No," Basterga answered, with something of asperity and even contempt in
his tone. "He does not ask thousands for it, Messer Blondel. But he
asks, none the less, something you cannot give."

"Money?"

"No."

"Then--what is it?" Blondel leant forward in growing fury. "Why do you
fence with me? What is it, man?"

Basterga did not answer for a moment. At length, shrugging his
shoulders, and speaking between jest and earnest, "The town of Geneva,"
he said. "No more, no less."

The Syndic started violently, then was still. But the hand which in the
first instant of surprise he had raised to shield his eyes, trembled;
and behind it great drops of sweat rose on his brow, and bore witness to
the conflict in his breast.

"You are jesting," he said presently, without removing his hand.

"It is no jest," Basterga answered soberly. "You know the Grand Duke's
keen desire. We have talked of it before. And were it only a matter," he
shrugged his shoulders, "of the how--of ways and means in fact--there
need be no impossibility, your position being what it is. But I know
the feeling you entertain on the subject, Messer Blondel; and though I
do not agree with you, for we look at the thing from different sides, I
had no hope that you would come to it."

"Never!"

"No. So much so, that I had it in my mind to keep the condition to
myself. But----"

"Why did you not, then?"

"Hope against hope," the big man answered, with a shrug and a laugh.
"After all, a live dog is better than a dead lion--only you will not see
it. We are ruled, the most of us, by our feelings, and die for our side
without asking ourselves whether a single person would be a ducat the
worse if the other side won. It is not philosophical," with another
shrug. "That is all."

Apparently Blondel was not listening, for "The Duke must be mad!" he
ejaculated, as the other uttered his last word.

"Oh no."

"Mad!" the Syndic repeated harshly, his eyes still shaded by his hand.
"Does he think," with bitterness, "that I am the man to run through the
streets crying 'Viva Savoia!' To raise a hopeless _émeute_ at the head
of the drunken ruffians who, since the war, have been the curse of the
place! And be thrown into the common jail, and hurried thence to the
scaffold! If he looks for that----"

"He does not."

"He is mad."

"He does not," Basterga repeated, unmoved. "The Grand Duke is as sane as
I am."

"Then what does he expect?"

But the big man laughed. "No, no, Messer Blondel," he said. "You push me
too far. You mean nothing, and meaning nothing, all's said and done. I
wish," he continued, rising to his feet, and reverting to the tone of
sympathy which he had for the moment laid aside, "I wish I might
endeavour to show you the thing as I see it, in a word, as a philosopher
sees it, and as men of culture in all ages, rising above the prejudices
of the vulgar, have seen it. For after all, as Persius says,

    Live while thou liv'st! for death will make us all,
    A name, a nothing, but an old wife's tale.

But I must not," reluctantly. "I know that."

The Syndic had lowered his hand; but he still sat with his eyes averted,
gazing sullenly at the corner of the floor.

"I knew it when I came," Basterga resumed after a pause, "and therefore
I was loth to speak to you."

"Yes."

"You understand, I am sure?"

The Syndic moved in his chair, but did not speak, and Basterga took up
his cap with a sigh. "I would I had brought you better news, Messer
Blondel," he said, as he rose and turned to go. "But _Cor ne edito!_ I
am the happier for speaking, though I have done no good!" And with a
gesture of farewell, not without its dignity, he bowed, opened the door,
and went out, leaving the Syndic to his reflections.




CHAPTER XI.

BY THIS OR THAT.


Long after Basterga, with an exultant smile and the words "I have limed
him!" on his lips, had passed into the Bourg du Four and gone to his
lodging, the Syndic sat frowning in his chair. From time to time a sigh
deep and heart-rending, a sigh that must have melted even Petitot, even
Baudichon, swelled his breast; and more than once he raised his eyes to
his painted effigy over the mantel, and cast on it a look that claimed
the pity of men and Heaven.

Nevertheless with each sigh and glance, though sigh and glance lost no
whit of their fervour, it might have been observed that his face grew
brighter; and that little by little, as he reflected on what had passed,
he sat more firmly and strongly in his chair.

Not that he purposed buying his life at the price which Basterga had put
on it. Never! But when a ship is on the lee-shore it is pleasant to know
that if one anchor fails to hold there is a second, albeit a borrowed
one. The knowledge steadies the nerves and enables the mind to deal more
firmly with the crisis. Or--to put the image in a shape nearer to the
fact--though the power to escape by a shameful surrender may sap the
courage of the garrison, it may also enable it to array its defences
without panic. The Syndic, for the present at least, entertained no
thought of saving himself by a shameful compliance; it was indeed
because the compliance was so shameful, and the impossibility of
stooping to it so complete, that he sighed thus deeply, and raised eyes
so piteous to his own portrait. He who stood almost in the position of
Pater Patriæ to Geneva, to betray Geneva! He the father of his country
to betray his country! Perish the thought! But, alas, he too must
perish, unless he could hit on some other way of winning the _remedium_.

Still, it is not to be gainsaid that the Syndic went about the search
for this other way in a more cheerful spirit; and revolved this plan and
that plan in a mind more at ease. The ominous shadow of the night, the
sequent gloom of the morning were gone; in their place rode an almost
giddy hopefulness to which no scheme seemed too fanciful, no plan
without its promise. Betray his country! Never, never! Though, be it
noted, there was small scope in the Republic for such a man as himself,
and he had received and could receive but a tithe of the honour he
deserved! While other men, Baudichon and Petitot for instance, to say
nothing of Fabri and Du Pin, reaped where they had not sown.

That, by the way; for it had naught to do with the matter in hand--the
discovery of a scheme which would place the _remedium_ within his grasp.
He thought awhile of the young student. He might make a second attempt
to coerce him. But Claude's flat refusal to go farther with the matter,
a refusal on which, up to the time of Basterga's abrupt entrance, the
Syndic had made no impression, was a factor; and reluctantly, after some
thought, Blondel put him out of his mind.

To do the thing himself was his next idea. But the scare of the night
before had given him a distaste for the house; and he shrank from the
attempt with a timidity he did not understand. He held the room in
abhorrence, the house in dread; and though he told himself that in the
last resort--perhaps he meant the last but one--he should venture,
while there was any other way he put that plan aside.

And there was another way: there were others through whom the thing
could be done. Grio, indeed, who had access to the room and the box, was
Basterga's creature; and the Syndic dared not tamper with him. But there
was a third lodger, a young fellow, of whom the inquiries he had made
respecting the house had apprised him. Blondel had met Gentilis more
than once, and marked him; and the lad's weak chin and shifty eyes, no
less than the servility with which he saluted the magistrate had not
been lost on the observer. The youth, granted he was not under
Basterga's thumb, was unlikely to refuse a request backed by authority.

As he reflected, the very person who was in his thoughts passed the
window, moving with the shuffling gait and sidelong look which betrayed
his character. The Syndic took his presence for an omen: tempted by it,
he rose precipitately, seized his head-gear and cane, and hurried into
the street. He glanced up and down, and saw Louis in the distance moving
in the direction of the College. He followed. Three or four youths,
bearing books, were hastening in the same direction through the narrow
street of the Coppersmiths, and the Syndic fell in behind them. He dared
not hasten over-much, for a dozen curious eyes watched him from the
noisy beetle-browed stalls on either side; and presently, finding that
he did not gain, he was making up his mind to await a better occasion,
when Louis, abandoning a companion who had just joined him, dived into
one of the brassfounders' shops.

The Syndic walked on slowly, returning here and there a reverential
salute. He was nearly at the gate of the College, when Louis, late and
in haste, overtook him, and hurried by him. Blondel doubted an instant
what he should do; doubted now the moment for action was come the
wisdom of the step he had in his mind. But a feverish desire to act had
seized upon him, and after a moment's hesitation he raised his voice.
"Young man," he said, "a moment! Here!"

Louis, not quite out of earshot, turned, found the magistrate's eye upon
him, wavered, and at last came to him. He cringed low, wondering what he
had done amiss.

"I know your face," Blondel said, fixing him with a penetrating look.
"Do you not lodge, my lad, in a house in the Corraterie? Near the Porte
Tertasse?"

"Yes, Messer Syndic," Louis answered, overpowered by the honour of the
great man's address, and still wondering what evil was in store for him.

"The Mère Royaume's?"

"Yes, Messer Syndic."

"Then you can do me--or rather"--with an expression of growing
severity--"you can do the State a service. Step this way, and listen to
me, young man!" And his asperity increased by the fear that he was
taking an unwise step, he told the youth, in curt stiff sentences, such
facts as he thought necessary.

The young student listened thunderstruck, his mouth open, and an
expression of fatuous alarm on his face. "Letters?" he muttered, when
the Syndic had come to a certain point in the story he had decided to
tell.

"Yes, papers of importance to the State," the Syndic replied weightily,
"of which it is necessary that possession should be taken as quietly as
possible."

"And they are----"

"They are in the steel box chained to the wall of his apartment. Be it
your task, young man, to bring the box and the letters unread and
untouched to me. Opportunities of securing them in Messer Basterga's
absence cannot but occur," he continued more benignly. "Choose one
wisely, use it boldly, and the care of your fortunes will be in better
hands than yours! A word to Basterga, on the other hand," Blondel
continued slowly, and with a deadly look--he had not failed to notice
that Louis winced at the name of Basterga--"and you will find yourself
in the prison of the Two Hundred, destined to share the fate of the
conspirators."

The young man began to shake. "Conspirators?" he cried faintly. The word
brought vividly before him the horrors of the scaffold and the wheel.
"Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! Why did I go to that house to lodge?"

"Do your duty," the Syndic said, "and you need fear nothing."

"But if I cannot--do it?" the youth stammered, his teeth chattering. He
to penetrate to Basterga's room unbidden! He to rob the formidable man
and perhaps be caught in the act! He to deceive him and meet his eye at
meals! Impossible! "But if I cannot--do it?" he repeated, cowering.

"The State knows no such word!" the Syndic returned grimly. "Cannot," he
continued slowly, "means will not. Do your duty and fear nothing. Do it
not, pause, hesitate, breathe but a syllable of that which I have told
you, and you will have all to fear. All!"

He saw too late that it was he himself who had all to fear; that in
taking the lad before him into his confidence, he had placed himself in
the hands of a craven. But he had done it. He had gone too far, moved by
the foolish impulse of the moment, to retreat. His sole chance lay in
showing the lad on which side danger pressed him most closely; on
frightening him completely. And when Louis did not reply:--

"You do not answer me?" Blondel said in his sternest tones. "You do not
reply? Am I to understand that you decline? That you refuse to perform
the task which the State assigns to you? In that case be sure you will
perish with those whom the Two Hundred know to be the enemies of Geneva,
and for whom the rack and the wheel are at this moment prepared."

"No!" Louis cried passionately; he almost fell on his knees in the open
street. "No, no! I will go anywhere, do anything, Messer Syndic! I swear
I will; I am no enemy! No conspirator!"

"You may be no enemy. But you must show yourself a friend!"

"I will! I will indeed."

"And no syllable of this will pass your lips?"

"As I live, Messer Syndic! Nothing! Nothing!"

When he had repeated this several times with the earnestness of extreme
terror, and appeared to have laid to heart such particulars as Blondel
thought he should know, the Syndic dismissed him, letting him go with a
last injunction to be silent and a last threat.

By mere force of habit the lad would have gone forward and entered the
College; but on the threshold he felt how unfit he was to meet his
fellows' eyes, and he turned and hastened as fast as his trembling limbs
would carry him towards his home. The streets, to his excited
imagination, were full of spies; he fancied his every movement watched,
his footsteps counted. If he lingered they might suppose him lukewarm,
if he paused they might think him ill-affected. His speed must show his
zeal. His poor little heart beat in his breast as if it would spring
from it, but he did not stay nor look aside until the door of the house
in the Corraterie closed behind him.

Then within the house there fell upon him--alas! what a thing it is to
be a coward--a new fear. 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! On
his entrance he had flung himself face downward on his pallet in the
little closet in which he slept; but at that thought he sprang up,
suffocated by it; already he fancied himself in the hands of the
desperadoes whom he had betrayed, already he pictured slow and lingering
deaths. But again, at the remembrance of the task laid upon him, he
flung himself prostrate, writhing, and cursing his fate, and shedding
tears of panic. He to beard Basterga! He to betray him! Impossible! Yet
if he failed, the rack and the wheel awaited him. Either way lay danger,
on either side yawned torture and death. And he was a coward. He wept
and shuddered, abandoning himself to a very paroxysm of terror.

When his door was pushed open a minute later, he did not hear the
movement; with his head buried in the pillow he did not see the face of
wonder, mingled with alarm, which viewed him from the doorway. He had
forgotten that it was Anne Royaume's custom to attend to the young men's
rooms during their absence at the afternoon lecture; and when her voice,
asking in startled accents what was amiss and if he were ill, reached
his ears, he sought, with a smothered shriek, to cover his head with the
bedclothes. He fancied that Basterga was upon him!

"What is the matter?" she repeated, advancing slowly to the side of the
bed. Then, getting no answer, she dragged the coverlet off him. "What is
it? Don't you know me?"

He sat up then, saw who it was and came gradually to himself, but with
many sighs and tears. She stood, looking down on him with contempt. "Has
some one been beating you?" she asked, and searched with hard eyes--he
had been no friend to her--for signs of ill-treatment.

He shook his head. "Worse," he sobbed. "Far worse! Oh, what will become
of me? What will become of me? Lord, have mercy upon me! Lord, have
mercy upon me!"

Her lip curled. Perhaps she was comparing him with another youth who had
spoken to her that morning in a different strain.

"I don't think it matters much," she said scornfully, "what becomes of
you."

"Matters?" he exclaimed.

"If you are such a coward as this! Tell me what it is. What has
happened? If it is not that some one has beaten you, I don't know what
it is--unless you have been doing something wrong, and they have put you
out of the University? Is it that?"

"No!" he cried fretfully. "Worse, worse! And do you leave me! You can do
nothing! No one can do anything!"

She had her own troubles, and to-day was almost sinking under them. But
this was not her way of bearing them. She shrugged her shoulders
contemptuously. "Very well," she said, "I will go if I can do nothing."

"Do?" he cried vehemently. "What can you do?" And then, in the act of
turning from him, she stood; so startling was the change, so marvellous
the transformation which she saw come over his face. "Do," he repeated,
trembling violently, and speaking in a tone as much altered as his
expression. He rose to his feet. "Do? Perhaps you--you can do
something--still. Wait. Please wait a minute! I--I was not quite
myself." He passed his hand across his brow. She did not know that
behind his face of frightened stupor his mind was working cunningly,
following up the idea that had occurred to him.

She began to think him mad. But though she held him in distaste, she had
no fear of him; and even when he closed the door with a cringing air,
and a look that implored indulgence, she held her ground. "Only, you
need not close the door," she said coldly. "There is no one in the house
except my mother."

"Messer Basterga?"

"He has gone out. Is it of him," in sudden enlightenment, "that you are
afraid?"

He nodded sullenly. "Yes," he said; and then he paused, eyeing her in
doubt if he could trust her. At last, "It is, but, if you dared do it, I
know how I could draw his teeth! How I could"--with the cruel grin of
the coward--"squeeze him! squeeze him!" and he went through the act with
his nervous, shaking fingers. "I could hold him like that! I could hold
him powerless as the dog that would bite and dare not!"

She stared at him. "You?" she said; it was hard to say whether
incredulity or scorn were written more plainly on her face. "You?"

"I! I!" he replied, with the same gesture of holding something. "And I
know how to put him in your power also!"

"In my power!"

"Ay."

Her face grew hard as if she too held her enemy passive in her grip.
Then her lip curled, and she laughed in scorn. "Ay! And what must I do
to bring that about? Something, I suppose, you dare not, Louis?"

"Something you can do more easily than I," he answered doggedly. "A
small thing, too," he continued, clasping his hands in his eagerness and
looking at her with imploring eyes. "A nothing, a mere nothing!"

"And yet it will do so much?"

"I swear it will."

"Then," she retorted, eyeing him shrewdly, "if it is so easy to do why
were you undone a minute ago? And puling like a child in arms?"

"Because," he said, flushing under her eyes, "it--it is not easy for me
to do. And I did not see my way."

"It looked like it."

"But I see it now if you will help me. You have only to take a packet of
letters from his room--and you go there when you please--and he is
yours! While you have the letters he dare not stir hand or foot, lest
you bring him to the scaffold!"

"Bring him to the scaffold?"

"Get the letters, give them to me, and I will answer for the rest."
Louis' voice was low, but he shook with excitement. "See!" he continued,
his eyes at all times prominent, almost starting from his head, "it
might be done this minute. This minute!"

"It might," the girl replied, watching him coldly. "But it will not be
done either this minute or at all unless you tell me what is in the
letters, and how you come to know about them."

Should he tell her? He fancied that he had no choice. "Messer Blondel
the Syndic wants the letters," he answered sullenly. And, urged farther
by her expression of disbelief, he told the astonished girl the story
which Blondel had told him. The fact that he believed it went far with
her; why, for the rest, doubt a story so extraordinary that it seemed to
bear the stamp of truth?

"And that is all?" she said when he came to the end.

"Is it not enough?"

"It may be enough," she replied, her resolute manner in strange contrast
with his cowardly haste. "Only there is a thing not clear. If the Syndic
knows what is in the letters, why does he not seize them and Basterga
with them--the traitor with the proof of his treason?"

"Because he is afraid of the Grand Duke," Louis cried. "If he seize
Basterga and miss the proof of his treason, what then?"

"Then he is not sure that the letters are there?" Anne replied keenly.

"He is not sure that they would be there when he came to seize them,"
Louis answered. "Basterga might have a dozen confederates in the house
ready at a sign to destroy the letters."

She nodded.

"And that is what they will make us out to be," he continued, his voice
sinking as his fears returned upon him. "The Syndic threatened as much;
and such things have happened a hundred times. I tell you, if we do not
do something, we shall suffer with him. But do it, and he is in your
power! And if he has any hold on you, it is gone!"

The blood surged to her face. Hold upon her? Ah! Rage--or was it
hope?--lightened in her eyes and transformed her face. She was thinking,
he guessed, of the hundred insults she had undergone at Basterga's
hands, of the shame-compelling taunts to which she had been forced to
listen, of the loathed touch she had been forced to bear. If there was
aught in her mind beyond this, any motive deeper or more divine, he did
not perceive it; enough, that he saw that she wavered, and he pressed
her.

"You will be free," he cried passionately. "Freed from him! Freed from
fear of him! Say you will do it! Say that you will do it," he continued
fervently, and he made as if he would kneel before her. "Do it, and I
swear that never shall a word to displease you pass my lips."

With a glance of scorn that pierced even his selfishness, "Swear only,"
she said, "that you have told me the truth! I ask no more."

"I swear it on my salvation!"

She drew a deep breath.

"I will do it," she said. "The steel box which is chained to the wall?"

"Yes, yes," he panted, "you cannot mistake it. The key----"

"I know where he keeps it."

She said no more, but turned, and regarding his thanks as little as if
they had been the wind passing by her, she opened the door, crossed the
living-room, and vanished up the staircase. He followed her as far as
the foot of the stairs, and there stood listening and shifting his feet
and biting his nails in an agony of suspense. She had not deigned to bid
him watch for Basterga's coming, but he did so; his eyes on the outer
door, through which the scholar must enter, and his tongue and feet in
readiness to warn her or save himself, according as the pressure of
danger directed the one or the other step.

Meanwhile his ears were on the stretch to catch what she did. He heard
her try the door of the room. It was locked. He heard her shake it. Then
he guessed that she fetched a key, for after an interval, which seemed
an age, he caught the grating of the wards in the lock. After that, she
was quiet so long, that but for the apprehensions of Basterga's coming,
which weighed on his coward soul, he must have gone up in sheer jealousy
so see what she was doing.

Not that he distrusted her. Even while he waited, and while the thing
hung in the balance, he smiled to think how cleverly he had contrived
it. On the side of the authorities he would gain favour by delivering
the letters: on the other side, if Basterga retained power to harm, it
was not he who had taken the letters, nor he who would be exposed to the
first blast of vengeance--but the girl. The blame for her, the credit
for him! From the nettle danger his wits had plucked the flower safety.
But for his fears he could have chuckled; and then he heard her leave
the room, and relock the door. With a gasp of relief, he retired a pace
or two, and waited, his eyes fixed on the doorway through which she must
enter.

She was long in coming, and when she came his hand, extended to receive
the letters, fell by his side, the whispered question died on his lips.
Her face told him that she had failed. It might have told him also that
she had built far more on the attempt than she had let him perceive. But
what was that to him? It was enough for him that she had not the
letters. He could have torn her with his hands. "Where are they? Where
are they?" he cried, advancing upon her. "You have not got them?"

"Got them?" And then she straightened herself, and with a passionate
glance at the door, "No! And he has not come in time to take me in the
act, it seems. As I have no doubt you planned, you villain! That I might
be more and deeper in his power!"

"No! No!" he cried, recoiling. "I never thought of it!"

"Yes, yes!" she retorted.

He wrung his hands. How was he to make her understand? "I swear," he
cried, and he fell on his knees with uplifted hands. "I swear on my
knees I thought of no such thing. The tale I told you was true! True,
every word of it! And the letters----"

"There are no letters!" she said.

"In the box?"

"None."

He sprang to his feet. He shook his fist at her in low ignoble rage.
"You lie!" he cried. "You have not looked. You have played with me. You
have gone into the room and come out again, but you have not looked, you
have not dared to look."

"I have looked," she answered quietly. "In the box that is chained to
the wall. There are no papers in it. There is nothing in it except a
small phial."

"A phial?"

"Of some golden liquid."

"That is all?"

"All!"

Louis Gentilis stared at her, open-mouthed. Had the Syndic deceived him?
Or had some one deceived the Syndic?




CHAPTER XII.

THE CUP AND THE LIP.


Blondel could not hide the agitation he felt as he listened to his
unexpected visitors, and saw whither their errand tended. Fabri, who was
leader of the deputation of three who had come upon him without warning,
discerned this; much more Baudichon and Petitot, whose eyes were on the
watch for the least sign of weakness. And Blondel was conscious that
they saw it, and on that account strove the more to mask his feelings
under a show of decision. "I have little doubt that I shall have news
within the hour," he said. "Before night, I must have news." And nodding
with the air of a man who knew much which he could not impart, he leant
back in the old abbot's chair.

But Fabri had not come for that, nor was he to be satisfied with that;
and, after a pause, "Yes," he replied, "I know. That may be so. But you
see, Messer Blondel, this affair is not quite where it was yesterday, or
we should not have come to you to-day. The King of France--I am sure we
are much indebted to him--does not write on light occasions, and his
warning is explicit. From Paris, then, we get the same story as from
Turin. And this being so, and the King's tale agreeing with our
agent's----"

"He does not mention Basterga!" Blondel objected. He repented the moment
he had said it.

"By name, no. But he says----"

"Enough for any one with eyes!" Petitot exclaimed.

"He says," Fabri repeated, requesting the other by a gesture to be
silent, "that the Grand Duke's emissary is a Paduan expelled from Venice
or from Genoa. That is near enough. And I confess, were I in your place,
Messer Blondel----"

"With your responsibilities," Petitot muttered through closed teeth.

"I should want to know--more about him." This from Baudichon.

Fabri nodded assent. "I think so," he said. "I really think so. In fact,
I may go farther and say that were I in your place, Messer Blondel, I
should seize him to-day."

"Ay, within the hour!"

"This minute!" said Baudichon, last of the three. And all three, their
ultimatum delivered, looked at Blondel, a challenge in their eyes. If he
stood out longer, if he still declined to take the step which prudence
demanded, the step on which they were all agreed, they would know that
there was something behind, something of which he had not told them.

Blondel read the look, and it perturbed him. But not to the point of
sapping the resolution which he had formed at the Council Table, and to
which, once formed, he clung with the obstinacy of an obstinate man. The
_remedium_ first; afterwards what they would, but the _remedium_ first.
He was not going to risk life, warm life, the vista of sunny unending
to-morrows, of springs and summers and the melting of snows, for a
craze, a scare, an imaginary danger! Why at that very minute the lad
whom he had commissioned to seize the thing might be on the way with it.
At any minute a step might sound on the threshold, and herald the
promise of life. And then--then they might deal with Basterga as they
pleased. Then they might hang the Paduan high as Haman, if they pleased.
But until then--his mind was made up.

"I do not agree with you," he said, his underlip thrust out, his head
trembling a little.

"You will not arrest him?"

"No, I shall not arrest him," he replied, hardening himself to meet
their protestant and indignant eyes. "Nor would you," he continued with
bravado, "in my place. If you knew as much as I do."

"But if you know," Baudichon said, "I would like to know also."

"The responsibility is mine." Blondel swayed himself from side to side
in his chair as he said it. "The responsibility is mine, and I am
willing to bear it. It is the old difference of policy between us," he
continued, addressing Petitot. "You are willing to grasp at every petty
advantage, I am willing----"

"To risk much to gain much," Petitot exclaimed.

"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! For, warned that we have
detected their plot, they will hatch another plot, and instead of
working as at present under our eyes, they will work below the surface
with augmented care and secrecy: and will, perhaps, deceive us. No, my
friends"--throwing himself back in his chair with an air of patronage,
almost of contempt--for by dint of repeating his argument he had come to
believe it, and to plume himself upon it--"I look farther ahead than
you do, and for the sake of future gain am willing to take--present
responsibility."

They were silent awhile: his old mastery was beginning to assert itself.
Then Petitot spoke. "You take a heavy responsibility," he said, "a heavy
charge, Messer Blondel. What if harm come of it?"

Blondel shrugged his shoulders.

"You have no wife, Messer Blondel."

The Fourth Syndic stared. What did the man mean?

"You have no daughters," Petitot continued, a slight quaver in his tone.
"You have no little children, you sleep well of nights, the fall of
wood-ash does not rouse you, you do not listen when you awake. You do
not----" he paused, the last barrier of reserve broken down, the tears
standing openly in his eyes--"it is foolish perhaps--you do not yearn,
Messer Blondel, to take all you love in your arms, and shelter them and
cover them from the horrors that threaten us, the horrors that may fall
on us--any night! You do not"--he looked at Baudichon and the stout
man's face grew pale, he averted his eyes--"you do not dream of these
things, Messer Blondel, nor awake to fancy them, but we do. We do!" he
repeated in accents which went to the hearts of all, "day and night,
rising and lying down, waking and sleeping. And we--dare run no risks."

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. It might come at this minute, it
might come at any minute," the Syndic continued. With a glance at the
window he moved his chair, as if to shake off the spell that Petitot
had cast over him. "Besides--you do not expect the town to be taken in
an hour from now?"

"No."

"In broad daylight?"

Petitot shook his head, "God knows what I expect!" he murmured
despondently.

"When the information we have points to a night attack?"

Fabri nodded. "That is true," he said.

"And the walls are well guarded at night."

Fabri nodded again. "Yes," he said, "it is true. I think, Messer
Petitot," he went on, turning to him, "we are a little over-fearful."

The two others were silent, and Blondel eyed them harshly, aware that he
had mastered them, yet hating them. Petitot's appeal to his
feelings--which had touched and moved Blondel even while he resented it
as something cruel and unfair--had lacked but a little of success. But
missing, failing by ever so little, it left the three ill-equipped to
continue the struggle on lower grounds. They sat silent, Fabri almost
convinced, the others dejected: and Blondel sat silent also, hardened by
his victory, and hating them for the manner of it. Was not his life as
dear to him as their wives and children were to them? And was it not at
stake? Yet he did not whine and pule to them. God! they whine, they
complain, who had long years to live and rose of mornings without
counting the days, and, at the worst and were Geneva taken, had but the
common risks to run and many a chance of escape! While he--yet he did
not pule to them! He did not stab them unfairly, cruelly, striving to
reach their tender spots, to take advantage of their kindness of heart.
He had no thought, no notion of betraying them; but, had he such, it
would serve them right! It would repay them selfishness for
selfishness, greed for greed! In his place they would not hesitate. He
could see at what a price they set their petty lives, and how little
they would scruple to buy them in the dearest market. Well was it for
Geneva that it was he and not they whom God saw fit to try. And he
glowered at them. Wives and daughters! What were wives and daughters
beside life, warm life, life stretching forward pleasantly,
indefinitely, morning after morning, day after day--life and a
continuance of good things?

Immersed as he was in this train of thought, it was none the less he who
first caught the sound of a foot on the threshold, and a summons at the
door. He rose to his feet. Already in his mind's eye he saw Basterga
cast to the lions: and why not? The sooner the better if the _remedium_
were really at the door. "There may be news even now," he said, striving
to master his emotion, and to speak with the superiority of a few
minutes before. "One moment, by your leave! I will see and let you know
if it be so, Messer Fabri."

"Do by all means," Fabri answered earnestly. "You will greatly relieve
me."

"Ay, indeed, I hope it is so," Petitot murmured.

"I will see, and--and return," Blondel repeated, beginning to stammer.
"I--I shall not be a minute." The struggle for composure was vain; his
head was on fire, his limbs twitched. Had it come?

Yet when he reached the door he paused, afraid to open. What if it were
not the _remedium_, what if it were some trifle? What if--but as he
hesitated, his hand, half eager, half reluctant, rested on the latch,
the door slid ajar, and his eyes met the complacent smirking face of his
messenger. He fancied that he read success in Gentilis' looks, and his
heart leapt up. "I shall be back in a moment," he babbled, speaking over
his shoulder to those whom he left. "In a moment, gentlemen, one
moment!" And going out he closed the door behind him--closed it
jealously, that they might not hear.

"I hope he has news will decide him," Petitot muttered lowering his
voice involuntarily. "Messer Blondel is over-courageous for me!" He
shook his head dismally.

"He is very courageous," Fabri assented in the same undertone. "Perhaps
even--a little rash."

Baudichon grunted. "Rash!" he repeated. "I would like to know what he
expects? I would like to know----"

A cry as of a wild beast cut short the word: a blow, a shriek of pain
followed, the door flew open; as they rose to their feet in wonder, into
the room fell a lad--it was Louis--a red weal across his face, his arm
raised to protect his head. Close on him, his eyes flaming, his cane
quivering in the air, pressed Messer Blondel. In their presence he aimed
another blow at the lad: but the blow fell short, and before he could
raise his stick a third time the astonished looks of the three in the
room reminded him where he was, and in a measure sobered him. But he was
still unable to articulate: and the poor smarting wretch cowering behind
the magistrates was not more deeply or more visibly moved.

"Steady, steady, Messer Blondel!" Fabri said. "I fear something untoward
has happened. What is it?" And he put himself more decidedly between
them.

"He has ruined us!"

"Not that, I hope?"

"Ruined us! Ruined us!" Blondel panted, his rage almost choking him. "He
had it in his hands and let it go. He let it go!"

"That which you----"

"That which I"--a pause--"commissioned him to get."

"But you did not! Oh, worshipful gentlemen," Gentilis wailed, turning to
them, "indeed, he did not tell me to bring aught but papers! I swear he
did not."

"Whatever was there, I said! Whatever was there!" the Syndic screamed.

"No, worshipful sir!" amid a storm of sobs. "No, no! Indeed no! And how
was I to know? There was naught but that in the box, and who would think
treason lay in a----"

"Mischief lay in it!"

"In a bottle!"

"And treason," Blondel thundered, drowning his last word, "for aught you
knew! Who are you to judge where treason lies, or may lie? Oh, pig, dog,
fool," he continued, carried away by a fresh paroxysm of rage, at the
thought that he had had it in his grasp and let it go! "If I could score
your back!" And he brandished his cane.

"You have scored his face pretty fairly," Baudichon muttered. "To score
his back too----"

"Were nothing for the offence! Nothing! As you would say if you knew
it," Blondel panted.

"Indeed?"

"Ay."

"Then I would like to know it. What is it he has done?"

"He has left undone that which he was ordered to do," Blondel answered
more soberly than he had yet spoken. He had recovered something of his
power to reason. "That is what he has done. But for his default we
should at this moment be in a position to seize Basterga."

"Ay?"

"Ay, and to seize him with proof of his guilt! Proof and to spare."

"But I could not know," Louis whimpered. "Worshipful gentlemen, I could
not know. I could not know what it was you wanted."

"I told you to bring the contents of the box."

"Letters, ay! Letters, worthy sir, but not----"

"Silence, and go into that room!" Blondel pointed with a shaking finger
to a small inner serving-room at the end of the parlour. "Go!" he
repeated peremptorily, "and stay there until I come to you."

Then, but not until the lad had taken his tear-bedabbled face into the
closet and had closed the door behind him, the Syndic turned to the
three. "I ask your pardon," he said, making no attempt to disguise the
agitation which still moved him. "But it was enough, it was more than
enough, to try me." He paused and wiped his brow, on which the sweat
stood in beads. "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." There was something like a tear, a leaden drop, in the
corner of the Fourth Syndic's eye.

"Still if he had access to them once," Petitot suggested briskly, "what
has been done once may be done twice. He may gain access to them again.
Why not?"

"He may, but he may not. Still, I should have thought of that and--and
made allowance," Blondel answered with a fair show of candour. "But too
often an occasion let slip does not return, as you well know. The least
disorder in the box he searched may put Basterga on the alert, and wreck
my plans."

They did not answer. They felt one and all, Petitot and Baudichon no
less than Fabri, that they had done this man an injustice. His passion,
his chagrin, his singleness of aim, the depth of his disappointment,
disarmed even those who were in the daily habit of differing from him.
Was this--this the man whom they had secretly accused of lukewarmness?
And to whom they had hesitated to entrust the safety of the city? They
had done him wrong. They had not credited him with a tithe of the
feeling, the single-mindedness, the patriotism which it was plain he
possessed.

They stood silent, while Blondel, aware of the precipice, to the verge
of which his improvident passion had drawn him, watched them out of the
corner of his eye, uncertain how far their comprehension of the scene
had gone. He trembled to think how nearly he had betrayed his secret;
and took the more shame to himself, inasmuch as in cooler blood he saw
the lad's error to be far from irremediable. As Petitot said, that which
could be done so easily and quickly could be done a second time. If only
he had not struck the lad! If only he had commanded himself, and spoken
him fairly and sent him back! Almost by this time the _remedium_ might
be here. Ay, here, in the palm of his hand! The reflection stabbed
Blondel so poignantly, the sense of his folly went so deep, he groaned
aloud.

That groan fairly won over Baudichon, who was by nature of a kind heart.
"Tut, tut," he said; "you must not take it to heart, Messer Blondel. Try
again."

"Unless, indeed," Petitot murmured, but with respect, "Messer Blondel
knows the mistake to be fraught with consequences more grave than we
suppose."

The Fourth Syndic smiled awry: that was precisely what he did know. But
"No," he said, "the thing can be cured. I am sorry I lost my temper. Not
a moment must be wasted, however. I will see this young man: if he
raises any difficulty, I have still another agent whom I can employ. And
by to-morrow at latest----"

"You may still have the thing in your hands."

"I think so. I certainly think so."

"Good. Then till to-morrow," Fabri answered, as he took his cap from the
table and with the others turned towards the door. "Good luck, Messer
Blondel. We are reassured. We feel that our interests are in good
hands."

"Yes," said Petitot almost warmly. "Still, caution, caution! Messer
Blondel. One bad man within the gates----"

"May be hung!" Blondel cried gaily.

"Ay, may be! But unhung is a graver foe than five hundred men without!
It is that I would have you bear in mind."

"I will bear it in mind," the Fourth Syndic answered. "And when I can
hang him," with a vindictive look, "be sure I will--and high as Haman!"

He attended them with solicitude to the door, being set by what had
happened a little more upon his behaviour. That done and the outer door
closed upon them, he returned to the parlour, but did not at once seek
the young man, upon whom he had taken the precaution of turning the key.

Instead he stood a while, pondering with a pale face; a haggard, paler
replica he seemed of the stiff, hard portrait on the panel over the
mantel. He was wondering why he had let himself go so foolishly; he was
recognising with a sinking heart that it was to his illness he owed it
that he had so frequently of late lost control of himself.

For a man to discover that the power of self-mastery is passing from him
is only a degree less appalling than the consciousness of insanity
itself; and Blondel cowered, trembling under the thought. If aught
could strengthen his purpose it was the suspicion that the insidious
disease from which he suffered was already sapping the outworks of that
mind on whose clever combinations he depended for his one chance of
cure.

Yet while the thought strengthened, it terrified him. "I must make no
second mistake--no second mistake!" he muttered, his eyes on the door of
the serving-room. "No second mistake!" And he waited a while considering
the matter in all its aspects. Should he tell Louis more than he had
told him already? It seemed needless. To send the lad with curt, stern
words to fetch that which he had omitted to bring--this seemed the more
straight-forward way: and the more certain, too, since the lad had now
seen the other magistrates, and could have no doubt of their concurrence
or of the importance of the task entrusted to him. Blondel decided on
that course, and advancing to the door he opened it and called to his
prisoner to come out.

To his credit be it said the sight of the lad's wealed face gave the
Syndic something of a shock. He was soon to be more gravely shaken.
Instigated partly by curiosity, partly by the desire to fix Louis'
scared faculties, he began by asking what was the aspect of the phial
which the lad had omitted to bring. "What was its colour and size, and
how full was it?" he proceeded, striving to speak gently and to make
allowance for the cowering weakness of the youth before him. "Do you
hear?" he urged. "Of what shape was it? You can tell that at least. You
handled it, I suppose? You took it out of the metal box?"

Louis burst into tears.

Blondel had much ado--for it was true, he had small command of
himself--not to strike the lad again. Instead, "Fool," he said, "what do
your tears help you or advance me? Speak, I tell you, and answer my
question! What was the appearance of this flask or bottle, or what it
was--that you left there?"

The lad sank to his knees. Fear and pain had robbed him of the petty
cunning he possessed. He no longer knew what to tell nor what to
withhold. And in a breath the truth was out. "Don't strike me!" he
wailed, guarding his smarting face with his arm. "And I'll tell you all!
I will indeed!"

The Syndic knew then that there was more to learn. "All?" he repeated,
aghast.

"Ay, the truth. All the truth," Louis moaned. "I didn't see it. I did
not go to it! I dared not! I swear I dared not.'"

"You did not see it?" the Syndic said slowly. "The phial? You did not
see the phial?"

"No."

This time Messer Blondel did not strike. He leant heavily upon the
table; his face, which a moment before had been swollen with impatience,
turned a sickly white. "You--you didn't see it?" he muttered--his tone
had sunk to a whisper. "You didn't see it? Then all you told me was a
lie? There was nothing--no bottle in the box? But how, then, did you
know anything of a bottle? Did he"--with a sharp spasm of pain--"send
you here to tell me this?"

"No, no! She told me. She looked--for me in the box."

"Who?"

"Anne. Anne Royaume! I was afraid," the lad continued, speaking with a
little more confidence, as he saw that the Syndic made no movement to
strike him, "and she said that she would look for me. She could go to
his room, and run little risk. But if he had caught me there he would
have killed me! Indeed he would!" Louis repeated desperately, as he
read the storm-signs that began to darken the Syndic's face.

"You told her then?"

"I could not do it myself! I could not indeed."

He cowered lower; but he fared better than he expected. The Syndic drew
a long fluttering breath, a breath of returning life, of returning hope.
The colour, too, began to come back to his cheeks. After all, it might
have been worse. He had thought it worse. He had thought himself
discovered, tricked, discomfited by the man against whom he had pitted
his wits, with his life for stake. Whereas--it seemed a small thing in
comparison--this meant only the inclusion of one more in the secret, the
running of one more risk, the hazarding another tongue. And the lad had
not been so unwise. She had easier access to the room than he, and ran
less risk of suspicion or detection. Why not employ her in place of the
lad?

The youth grovelling before him wondered to see him calm, and plucking
up spirit stood upright. "You must go back to her, and ask her to get it
for you," Blondel said firmly. "You can be back within the half-hour,
bringing it."

Louis began to shrink. His eyes sank. "She will not give it me," he
muttered.

"No?" Blondel, as he repeated the word, wondered at his own moderation.
But the shock had been heavy; he felt the effect of it. He was languid,
almost half-hearted. Moreover, a new idea had taken root in his mind.
"You can try her," he said.

"I can try her, but she will not give it me," Louis repeated with a new
obstinacy. As the Syndic grew mild he grew sullen. The change was in the
other, not in himself. Subtly he knew that the Syndic was no longer in
the mood to strike.

Blondel ruminated. It might be better, it might even be safer, if he saw
the girl himself. The story--of treason and a bottle--which had imposed
on his colleagues might not move her much. It might be wiser to attack
her on other grounds, grounds on which women lay more open. And
self-pity whispered with a tear that the truth, than which he could
conceive nothing more moving, nothing more sublimely sad, might go
farther with a woman than bribes or threats or the most skilful
inventions. He made up his mind. He would tell the truth, or something
like it, something as like it as he dared tell her.

"Very well," he said, "you can go! But be silent! A word to him--I shall
learn it sooner or later--and you perish on the wheel! You can go now. I
shall put the matter in other hands."




CHAPTER XIII.

A MYSTERY SOLVED.


Whether Basterga, seeing that Claude was less pliant than he had looked
to find him, shunned occasion of collision with him, or the Paduan being
in better spirits was less prone to fall foul of his companions, certain
it is that life for a time after the outbreak at supper ran more quietly
in the house in the Corraterie. Claude's gloomy face--he had not
forgiven--bade beware of him; and little save on the subject of Louis'
disfigured cheek--of which the most pointed questions could extract no
explanation--passed among them at table. But outward peace was preserved
and a show of ease. Grio's brutal nature broke out once or twice when he
had had wine; but discouraged by Basterga, he subsided quickly. And
Louis, starting at a voice and trembling at a knock, with the fear of
the Syndic always upon him, showed a nervousness which more than once
drew the Italian's eye to him. But on the whole a calm prevailed; a
stranger entering at noon or during the evening meal might have deemed
the party ill-assorted and silent, but lacking neither in amity nor
ease.

Meantime, under cover of this calm, destined to be short-lived and
holding in suspense the makings of a storm of no mean violence, two
persons were drawing nearer to one another. A confidence, even a
confidence not perfect, is a tie above most. Nor does love play at any
time a higher part than when it repeats "I do not understand--I trust".
By the common light of day, which showed Anne moving to and fro about
her household tasks, at once the minister and the providence of the
home, the dark suspicion that had for a moment--a moment only!--mastered
Claude's judgment, lost shape and reality. It was impossible to see her
bending over the hearth, or arranging her mother's simple meal, it was
impossible to witness her patience, her industry, her deftness, to
behold her, ever gentle yet supporting with a man's fortitude the trials
of her position, trials of the bitterness of which she had given him
proof--it was impossible, in a word, to watch her in her daily life,
without perceiving the wickedness as well as the folly of the thought
which had possessed him.

True, the more he saw of her the graver seemed the mystery; and the more
deeply he wondered. But he no longer dreaded the answer to the riddle;
nor did he fear to meet at some turn or corner a Megæra head that should
freeze his soul. Wickedness there might be, cruelty there might be, and
shame; but the blood ran too briskly in his veins and he had looked too
often into the girl's candid eyes--reading something there which had not
been there formerly--to fear to find either at her door.

He had taken to coming to the living-room a little before nightfall;
there he would seat himself beside the hearth while she prepared the
evening meal. The glow of the wood-fire, reflected in rows of burnished
pewters, or given back by the night-backed casements, the savour of the
coming meal, the bubbling of the black pot between which and the table
her nimble feet carried her a dozen times in as many minutes, the
pleasant, homely room with its touches of refinement and its winter
comfort, these were excuses enough had he not brought the book which lay
unheeded on his knee.

But in truth he offered her no excuse. With scarce a word an
understanding had grown up between them that not a million words could
have made more clear. Each played the appropriated part. He looked and
she bore the look, and if she blushed the fire was warrant, and if he
stared it was the blind man's hour between day and night, and why should
he not sit idle as well as another? Soon there was not a turn of her
head or a line of her figure that he did not know; not a trick of her
walk, not a pose of her hand as she waited for a pot to boil that he
could not see in the dark; not a gleam from her hair as she stooped to
the blaze, nor a turn of her wrist as she shielded her face that was not
as familiar to him as if he had known her from childhood.

In these hours she let the mask fall. The apathy, which had been the
least natural as it had been the most common garb of her young face, and
which had grown to be the cover and veil of her feelings, dropped from
her. Seated in the shadow, while she moved, now in the glow of the
burning embers, now obscured, he read her mind without disguise--save in
one dark nook--watched unrebuked the eye fall and the lip tremble, or in
rarer moments saw the shy smile dimple the corner of her cheek. Not
seldom she stood before him sad: sad without disguise, her bowed head
and drooping shoulders the proof of gloomy thoughts, that strayed, he
fancied, far from her work or her companion. And sometimes a tear fell
and she wiped it away, making no attempt to hide it; and sometimes she
would shiver and sigh as if in pain or fear.

At these times he longed for Basterga's throat; and the blood of old
Enguerrande de Beauvais, his ancestor, dust these four hundred years at
"Damietta of the South," raced in him, and he choked with rage and
grief, and for the time could scarcely see. Yet with this pulse of wrath
were mingled delicious thrills. The tear which she did not hide from
him was his gage of love. The brooding eye, the infrequent smile, the
start, the reverie were for him only, and for no other. They were the
gift to him of her secret life, her inmost heart.

It was an odd love-making, and bizarre. To Grio, even to men more
delicate and more finely wrought, it might have seemed no love-making at
all. But the wood-smoke that perfumed the air, sweetened it, the
firelight wrapped it about, the pots and pans and simple things of life,
amid which it passed, hallowed it. His eyes attending her hither and
thither without reserve, without concealment, unabashed, laid his heart
at her feet, not once, but a hundred times in the evening; and as often,
her endurance of the look, more rarely her sudden blush or smile,
accepted the offering.

And scarce a word said: for though they had the room to themselves, they
knew that they were never alone or unheeded. Basterga, indeed, sat above
stairs and only descended to his meals; and Grio also was above when he
was not at the tavern. But Louis sulked in his closet beside them,
divided from them only by a door, whence he might emerge at any minute.
As a fact he would have emerged many times, but for two things. The
first was his marked face, which he was chary of showing; the second,
the notion which he had got that the balance of things in the house was
changing, and the reign of petty bullying, in which he had so much
delighted, approaching its end. With Basterga exposed to arrest, and the
girl's help become of value to the authorities, it needed little acumen
to discern this. He still feared Basterga; nay, he lived in such terror,
lest the part he had played should come to the scholar's ears, that he
prayed for his arrest night and morning, and whenever during the day an
especial fit of dread seized him. But he feared Anne also, for she might
betray him to Basterga; and of young Mercier's quality--that he was no
Tissot to be brow-beaten, or thrust aside--he had had proof on the night
of the fracas at supper. Essentially a coward, Louis' aim was to be on
the stronger side; and once persuaded that this was the side on which
they stood, he let them be.

On several consecutive evenings the two passed an hour or more in this
silent communion. On the last the door of Louis' room stood open, the
young man had not come in, and for the first time they were really
alone. But the fact did not at once loosen Claude's tongue; and if the
girl noticed it, or expected aught to come of it, more than had come of
their companionship on other evenings, she hid her feelings with a
woman's ease. He remarked, however, that she was more thoughtful and
downcast than usual, and several times he saw her break off in the
middle of a task and listen nervously as for something she expected.
Presently:--

"Are you listening for Louis?" he asked.

She turned on him, her eyes less kind than usual. "No," she said, almost
defiantly. "Was I listening?"

"I thought so," he said.

She turned away again, and went on with her work. But by-and-by as she
stooped over the fire a tear fell and pattered audibly in the wood-ash
on the hearth; and another. With an impatient gesture she wiped away a
third. He saw all--she made no attempt to hide them--and he bit his lip
and drove his finger-ends into his palms in the effort to be silent.
Presently he had his reward.

"I am sorry," she said in a low tone. "I was listening, and I knew I
was. I do not know why I deceived you."

"Why will you not tell me all?" he cried.

"I cannot!" she answered, her breast heaving passionately. "I cannot!"
For the first time in his knowledge of her, she broke down completely,
and sinking on a bench with her back to the table she sobbed bitterly,
her face in her hands. For some minutes she rocked herself to and fro in
a paroxysm of trouble.

He had risen and stood watching her awkwardly, longing to comfort her,
but ignorant how to go about it, and feeling acutely his helplessness
and his _gaucherie_. Sad she had always been, and at her best
despondent, with gleams of cheerfulness as fitful as brief. But this
evening her abandonment to her grief convinced him that something more
than ordinary was amiss, that some danger more serious than ordinary
threatened. He felt no surprise therefore when, a little later, she
arrested her sobbing, raised her head, and with suspended breath and
tear-stained face listened with that scared intentness which had
impressed him before.

She feared! He could not be mistaken. Fear looked out of her strained
eyes, fear hung breathless on her parted lips. He was sure of it. And
"Is it Basterga?" he cried. "Is it of him that you are afraid? If you
are----"

"Hush!" she cried, raising her hand in warning. "Hush!" And then, "You
did not--hear anything?" she asked. For an instant her eyes met his.

"No." He met her look, puzzled; and, obeying her gesture, he listened
afresh. "No, I heard nothing. But----"

He heard nothing even now, nothing; but whatever it was sharpened her
hearing to an abnormal pitch, it was clear that she did. She was on her
feet; with a startled cry she was round the table and half-way across
the room, while he stared, the word suspended on his lips. A second, and
her hand was on the latch of the staircase door. Then as she opened it,
he sprang forward to accompany her, to help her, to protect her if
necessary. "Let me come!" he said. "Let me help you. Whatever it is, I
can do something."

She turned on him fiercely. "Go back!" she said. All the confidence,
the gentleness, the docility of the last three days were gone; and in
their place suspicion glared at him from eyes grown spiteful as a cat's.
"Go back!" she repeated. "I do not want you! I do not want any one, or
any help! Or any protection! Go, do you hear, and let me be!"

As she ceased to speak, a sound from above stairs--a sound which this
time, the door being open, did reach his ears, froze the words on his
lips. It was the sound of a voice, yet no common voice, Heaven be
thanked! A moment she continued to confront him, her face one mute,
despairing denial! Then she slammed the door in his teeth, and he heard
her panting breath and fleeing footsteps speed up the stairs and along
the passage, and--more faintly now--he heard her ascend the upper
flight. Then--silence.

Silence! But he had heard enough. He paused a moment irresolute,
uncertain, his hand raised to the latch. Then the hand fell to his side,
he turned, and went softly--very softly back to the hearth. The
firelight playing on his face showed it much moved; moved and softened
almost to the semblance of a woman's. For there were tears in his
eyes--eyes singularly bright; and his features worked, as if he had some
ado to repress a sob. In truth he had. In a breath, in the time it takes
to utter a single sound, he had hit on the secret, he had come to the
bottom of the mystery, he had learnt that which Basterga, favoured by
the position of his room on the upper floor, had learned two months
before, that which Grio might have learned, had he been anything but the
dull gross toper he was! He had learned, or in a moment of intuition
guessed--all. The power of Basterga, that power over the girl which had
so much puzzled and perplexed him, was his also now, to use or misuse,
hold or resign.

Yet his first feeling was not one of joy; nor for that matter his
second. The impression went deeper, went to the heart of the man. An
infinite tenderness, a tenderness which swelled his breast to bursting,
a yearning that, man as he was, stopped little short of tears, these
were his, these it was thrilled his soul to the point of pain. The room
in which he stood, homely as it showed, plain as it was, seemed
glorified, the hearth transfigured. He could have knelt and kissed the
floor which the girl had trodden, coming and going, serving and making
ready--under that burden; the burden that dignified and hallowed the
bearer. What had it not cost her--that burden? What had it not meant to
her, what suspense by day, what terror of nights, what haggard
awakenings--such as that of which he had been the ignorant witness--what
watches above, what slights and insults below! Was it a marvel that the
cheeks had lost their colour, the eyes their light, the whole face its
life and meaning? Nay, the wonder was that she had borne the weight so
long, always expecting, always dreading, stabbed in the tenderest
affection; with for confidant an enemy and for stay an ignorant! Viewed
through the medium of the man's love, which can so easily idealise where
it rests, the love of the daughter for the mother, that must have
touched and softened the hardest--or so, but for the case of Basterga,
one would have judged--seemed so holy, so beautiful, so pure a thing
that the young man felt that, having known it, he must be the better for
it all his life.

And then his mind turned to another point in the story, and he recalled
what had passed above stairs on that day when he had entered a stranger,
and gone up. With what a smiling face of love had she leant over her
mother's bed. With what cheerfulness had she lied of that which passed
below, what a countenance had she put on all--no house more prosperous,
no life more gay--how bravely had she carried it! The peace and neatness
and comfort of the room with its windows looking over the Rhone valley,
and its spinning-wheel and linen chest and blooming bow-pot, all came
back to him; so that he understood many things which had passed before
him then, and then had roused but a passing and a trifling wonder.

Her anxiety lest he should take lodging there and add one more to the
chances of espial, one more to the witnesses of her misery; her secret
nods and looks, and that gently checked outburst of excitement on Madame
Royaume's part, which even at the time had seemed odd--all were plain
now. Ay, plain; but suffused with a light so beautiful, set in an
atmosphere so pure and high, that no view of God's earth, even from the
eyrie of those lofty windows, and though dawn or sunset flung its
fairest glamour over the scene, could so fill the heart of man with
gratitude and admiration!

Up and down in the days gone by, his thoughts followed her through the
house. Now he saw her ascend and enter, and finding all well, mask--but
at what a cost--her aching heart under smiles and cheerful looks and
soft laughter. He heard the voice that was so seldom heard downstairs
murmur loving words, and little jests, and dear foolish trifles; heard
it for the hundredth time reiterate the false assurances that affection
hallowed. He was witness to the patient tendance, the pious offices, the
tireless service of hand and eye, that went on in that room under the
tiles; witness to the long communion hand in hand, with the world shut
out; to the anxious scrutiny, to the daily departure. A sad departure,
though daily and more than daily taken; for she who descended carried a
weight of fear and anxiety. As she came down the weary stairs, stage by
stage, he saw the brightness die from eye and lip, and pale fear or dull
despair seize on its place. He saw--and his heart was full--the slender
figure, the pallid face enter the room in which he stood--it might be at
the dawning when the cold shadow of the night still lay on all, from the
dead ashes on the hearth to the fallen pot and displaced bench; or it
might be at mid-day, to meet sneers and taunts and ignoble looks; and
his heart was full. His face burned, his eyes filled, he could have
kissed the floor she had walked over, the wooden spoon her hand had
touched, the trencher-edge--done any foolish thing to prove his love.

Love? It was a deeper thing than love, a holier, purer thing--that which
he felt. Such a feeling as the rough spearsmen of the Orléannais had for
Joan the maid; or the great Florentine for the girl whom he saw for the
first time at the banquet in the house of the Portinari; or as that man,
who carried to his grave the Queen's glove, yet had never touched it
with his bare hand.

Alas, that such feelings cannot last, nor such moments endure; that in
the footsteps of the priest, be he never so holy, treads ever the
grinning acolyte with his mind on sweet things. They pass, these
feelings, and too quickly. But once to have had them, once to have lived
such moments, once to have known a woman and loved her in such wise
leaves no man as he was before; leaves him at the least with a memory of
a higher life.

That the acolyte in Claude's case took the form of Louis Gentilis made
him no more welcome. Claude was still dreaming on his feet, still
viewing in a kind of happy amaze the simple things about him, things
that for him wore

    The light that never was on land or sea,

and that this world puts on but once for each of us, when Gentilis
opened the door and entered, bringing with him a rush of rain, and a
gust of night air. He breathed quickly as if he had been running, yet
having closed the door, he paused before he advanced into the room; and
he seemed surprised, and at a nonplus. After a moment, "Supper is not
ready?" he said.

"It is not time," Claude answered curtly. The vision of an angel does
not necessarily purify at all points, and he had small stomach for
Master Louis at any time.

The youth winced under the tone, but stood his ground.

"Where is Anne?" he asked, something sullenly.

"Upstairs. Why do you ask?"

"Messer Basterga is not coming to supper. Nor Grio. They bade me tell
her. And that they would be late."

"Very well, I will tell her."

But it was evident that that was not all Louis had in his mind. He
remained fidgeting by the door, his cap in his hand; and his face, had
Claude marked it--but he had already turned a contemptuous shoulder on
him--was a picture of doubt and indecision. At length, "I've a message
for you," he muttered nervously. "From Messer Blondel the Syndic. He
wants to see you--now."

Claude turned, and if he had not looked at the other before, he made up
for it now. "Oh!" he said at last, after a stare that bespoke both
surprise and suspicion. "He does, does he? And who made you his
messenger?"

"He met me in the street--just now."

"He knows you, then?"

"He knows I live here," Louis muttered.

"He pays us a vast amount of attention," Claude replied with polite
irony. "Nevertheless"--he turned again to the fire--"I cannot pleasure
him," he continued curtly, "this time."

"But he wants to see you," Gentilis persisted desperately. It was plain
that he was on pins and needles. "At his house. Cannot you believe me?"
in a querulous tone. "It is all fair and above board. I swear it is."

"Is it?"

"It is--I swear it is. He sent me. Do you doubt me?" he added with
undisguised eagerness.

Claude was about to say, with no politeness at all, that he did, and to
repeat his refusal in stronger terms, when his ear caught the same sound
which had revealed so much to him a few minutes earlier at the foot of
the stairs. It came more faintly this time, deadened by the closed door
of the staircase, but to his enlightened senses it proclaimed so clearly
what it was--the echo of a cracked, shrill voice, of a laugh insane,
uncanny, elfish--that he trembled lest Louis should hear it also and
gain the clue. That was a thing to be avoided at all costs; and even as
this occurred to him he saw the way to avoid it. Basterga and Grio were
absent: if this fool could be removed, even for an hour or two, Anne
would have the house to herself, and by midnight the crisis might be
overpast.

"I will come with you," he said.

Louis uttered a sigh of relief. He had expected--and he had very nearly
received--another answer. "Good," he said. "But he does not want me."

"Both or neither," Claude replied coolly. "For all I know 'tis an
ambush."

"No, no!"

"In which event I shall see that you share it. Or it may be a scheme to
draw me from here, and then if harm be done while I am away----"

"Harm? What harm?" Louis muttered.

"Any harm! If harm be done, I say, I shall then have you at hand to pay
me for it. So--both or neither!"

For a moment Louis' hang-dog face--none the handsomer for the mark of
the Syndic's cane--spelt refusal. Then he changed his mind. He nodded
sulkily. "Very well," he said. "But it is raining, and I have no great
wish to--Hush! What is that?" He raised his hand in the attitude of one
listening and his eyes sought his companion's. "What is that? Did you
not hear something--like a scream upstairs?"

"I hear something like a fool downstairs!" Claude retorted gruffly.

"But it was--I certainly heard something!" Louis persisted, raising his
hand again. "It sounded----"

"If we are to go, let us go!" Claude cried with temper. "Come, if you
want me to go! It is not my expedition," he continued, moving noisily
hither and thither in search of his staff and cloak. "It is your affair,
and--where is my cap?"

"I should think it is in your room," Louis answered meekly. "It was only
that I thought it might be Anne. That there might be----"

"Two fools in the house instead of one!" Claude broke in, emerging
noisily, and slamming the door of his closet behind him. "There, come,
and we may hope to be back to supper some time to-night! Do you hear?"
And jealously shepherding the other out of the house, he withdrew the
key when both had passed the threshold. Locking the door on the outside,
he thrust the key under it. "There!" he said, smiling at his cleverness,
"now, who enters--knocks!"




CHAPTER XIV.

"AND ONLY ONE DOSE IN ALL THE WORLD!"


In his picture of the life led by the two women on the upper floor of
the house in the Corraterie, that picture which by a singular intuition
he had conceived on the day of his arrival, Claude had not gone far
astray. In all respects but one the picture was truly drawn. Than the
love between mother and daughter, no tie could be imagined at once more
simple and more holy; no union more real and pure than that which bound
together these two women, left lonely in days of war and trouble in the
midst of a city permanently besieged and menaced by an enduring peril.
Almost forgotten by the world below, which had its own cares, its
alarums and excursions, its strivings and aims, they lived for one
another. The weak health of the one and the brave spirit of the other
had gradually inverted their positions; and the younger was mother, the
elder, daughter. Yet each retained, in addition, the pious instincts of
the original relation. To each the welfare of the other was the prime
thought. To give the other the better portion, be it of food or wine, of
freedom from care, or ease of mind, and to take the worse, was to each
the ground plan of life, as it was its chiefest joy.

In their eyrie above the anxious city they led an existence all their
own. Between them were a hundred jests, Greek to others; and whimsical
ways, and fond sayings and old smiles a thousand times repeated. And
things that must be done after one fashion or the sky would fall; and
others that must be done after another fashion or the world would end.
When the house was empty of boarders, or nearly empty--though at such
times the cupboard also was apt to be bare--there were long hours spent
upstairs and surveys of household gear, carried up with difficulty, and
reviews of linen and much talk of it, and small meals, taken at the open
windows that looked over the Rhone valley and commanded the sunset view.
Such times were times of gaiety though not of prosperity, and far from
the worst hours of life--had they but persisted.

But in the March of 1601 a great calamity fell on these two. A fire,
which consumed several houses near the Corraterie, and flung wide
through the streets the rumour that the enemy had entered, struck the
bedridden woman--aroused at midnight by shouts and the glare of
flames--with so dire a terror, not on her own account but on her
daughter's, that she was never the same again. For weeks at a time she
appeared to be as of old, save for some increase of weakness and
tremulousness. But below the surface the brain was out of poise, and
under the least pressure of excitement she betrayed the change in a
manner so appalling--by the loud negation of those beliefs which in
saner moments were most dear to her, and especially by a denial of the
Providence and goodness of God--that even her child, even the being who
knew her and loved her best, shuddered lest Satan, visible and
triumphant, should rise to confront her.

Fortunately the fits of this mysterious malady were short as they were
appalling, and to the minds of that day, suspicious. And in the
beginning Anne had the support of an old physician, well-nigh their only
intimate. True, even he was scared by a form of disease, new and beyond
his science; but he prescribed a sedative and he kept counsel. He went
further: for sufficiently enlightened himself to believe in the
innocence of these attacks, he none the less explained to the daughter
the peril to which her mother's aberrations must expose her were they
known to the vulgar; and he bade her hide them with all the care
imaginable.

Anne, on this would fain have adopted the safest course and kept the
house empty; to the end that to the horror of her mother's fits of
delirium might not be added the chance of eavesdropping. But to do this
was to starve, as well as to reveal to Madame Royaume the fact of those
seizures of which no one in the world was more ignorant than the good
woman who suffered under them. It followed that to Anne's burden of
dread by reason of the outer world, whom she must at all costs deceive,
was added the weight of concealment from the one from whom she had never
kept anything in her life. A thing which augmented immeasurably the
loneliness of her position and the weight of her load.

Presently the drama, always pitiful, increased in intensity. The old
leech who had been her stay and helper died, and left her to face the
danger alone. A month later Basterga discovered the secret and
henceforth held it over her. From this time she led a life of which
Claude, in his dreams upon the hearth, exaggerated neither the tragedy
nor the beauty. The load had been heavy before. Now to fear was added
contumely, and to vague apprehensions the immediate prospect of
discovery and peril. The grip of the big scholar, subtle, cruel,
tightening day by day and hour by hour, was on her youth; slowly it
paralysed in her all joy, all spirit, all the impulses of life and hope,
that were natural to her age.

That through all she showed an indomitable spirit, we know. We have seen
how she bore herself when threatened from an unexpected quarter on the
morning when Claude Mercier, after overhearing her mother's ravings, had
his doubts confirmed by the sight of her depression on the stairs. How
boldly she met his attack, unforeseen as it was, how bravely she
shielded her other and dearer self, how deftly she made use of the
chance which the young man's soberer sense afforded her, will be
remembered. But not even in that pinch, no, nor in that worse hour when
Basterga, having discovered his knowledge to her, gave her--as a cat
plays with a mouse which it is presently to tear to pieces--a little law
and a little space, did she come so near to despair as on this evening
when the echo of her mother's insane laughter drew her from the
living-room at an hour without precedent.

For hitherto Madame Royaume's attacks had come on in the night only.
With a regularity not unknown in the morbid world they occurred about
midnight, an hour when her daughter could attend to her and when the
house below lay wrapped in sleep. A change in this respect doubled the
danger, therefore. It did more: the prospect of being summoned at any
hour shook, if it did not break, the last remains of Anne's strength. To
be liable at all times to such interruptions, to tremble while serving a
meal or making a bed lest the dreadful sound arise and reveal all, to
listen below and above and never to feel safe for a minute, never!
never!--who could face, who could endure, who could lie down and rise up
under this burden?

It could not be. As Anne ascended the stairs she felt that the end was
coming, was come. Strive as she might, war as she might, with all the
instinct, all the ferocity, of a mother defending her young, the end was
come. The secret could not be kept long. Even while she administered the
medicine with shaking hands, while with tears in her voice she strove
to still the patient and silence her wild words, even while she
restrained by force the feeble strength that would and could not, while
in a word she omitted no precaution, relaxed no effort, her heart told
her with every pulsation that the end was come.

And presently, when Madame was quiet and slept, the girl bowed her head
over the unconscious object of her love and wept, bitterly,
passionately, wetting with her tears the long grey hair that strewed the
pillow, as she recalled with pitiful clearness all the stages of
concealment, all the things which she had done to avert this end.
Vainly, futilely, for it was come. The dark mornings of winter recurred
to her mind, those mornings when she had risen and dressed herself by
rushlight, with this fear redoubling the chill gloom of the cold house;
the nights, too, when all had been well, and in the last hour before
sleep, finding her mother sane and cheerful, she had nursed the hope
that the latest attack might be the last. The evenings brightened by
that hope, the mornings darkened by its extinction, the rare hours of
brooding, the days and weeks of brave struggle, of tendance never
failing, of smiles veiling a sick heart--she lived all these again,
looking pitifully back, straining tenderly in her arms the dear being
she loved.

And then, stabbing her back to life in the midst of her exhaustion, the
thought pierced her that even now she was hastening the end by her
absence. They would be asking for her below; they must be asking for her
already. The supper-time was come, was past, perhaps; and she was not
there! She tried to picture what would happen, what already must be
happening; and rising and dashing the tears from her face she stood
listening. Perhaps Claude would make some excuse to the others; or,
perhaps--how much had he guessed?

Her mother was passive now, sunk in the torpor which followed the
attack and from which the poor woman would awake in happy
unconsciousness of the whole. Anne saw that her charge might be left,
and hastily smoothing the tangle of luxuriant hair which had fallen
about her face, she opened the door. Another might have stayed to allay
the fever of her cheeks, to remove the traces of her tears, to stay the
quivering of her hands; but such small cares were not for her, nor for
the occasion. She could form no idea of the length of time she had spent
upstairs, a half-hour, or an hour and a half; and without more ado she
raised the latch, slipped out, and turning the key on her patient ran
down the upper flight of stairs.

She anticipated many things, but not that which she encountered--silence
on the upper landing, and below when she had descended and opened the
staircase door--an empty room. The place was vacant; the tables were as
she had left them, half laid; the pot was gently simmering over the
fire.

What had happened? The supper-hour was past, yet none of the four who
should have sat down to the meal were here. Had they overheard her
mother's terrible cry--those words which voiced the woman's despair on
finding, as she fancied, the city betrayed? And were they gone to
denounce her? The thought was discarded as soon as formed; and before
she could hit on a second explanation a hasty knocking on the door
turned her eyes that way.

The four who lodged in the house were not in the habit of knocking, for
the door was only locked at night when the last retired. She approached
it then, wondering, hesitated an instant, and at last, collecting her
courage, raised the latch. The door resisted her impulse. It was locked.

She tried it twice, and it was only as she drew back the second time
that she saw the key lying at the foot of the door. That deepened the
mystery. Why had they locked her in? Why, when they had done so, had
they thrust the key under the door and so placed it in her power? Had
Claude Mercier done it that the others might not enter to hear what he
had heard and discover what he had discovered? Possibly. In which case
the knocker--who at that instant made a second and more earnest attack
upon the door--must be one of the others, and the sooner she opened the
door the less would be the suspicion created.

With an apology trembling on her lips she hastened to open. Then she
stood bewildered; she saw before her, not one of the lodgers, but Messer
Blondel. "I wish to speak to you," the magistrate said with firmness.
Before she knew what was happening he had motioned to her to go before
him into the house, and following had locked the door behind them.

She knew him by sight, as did all Geneva; and the blood, which surprise
at the sight of a stranger had brought to her cheeks, fled as she
recognised the Syndic. Had they betrayed her, then, while she lingered
upstairs? Had they locked her in while they summoned the magistrate? And
was he here to make inquiries about--something he had heard?

His voice cut short her thoughts without allaying her fears. "I wish to
speak to you alone," he said. "Are you alone, girl?" His manner was
quiet, but masked excitement. His eyes scrutinised her and searched the
room by turns.

She nodded, unable to speak.

"There is no one in the house with you?"

"Only my mother," she murmured.

"She is bedridden, is she not? She cannot hear us?" he added, frowning.

"No, but I am expecting the others to return."

"Messer Basterga?"

"Yes."

"He will not return before morning," the Syndic replied with decision,
"nor his companion. The two young men are safe also. If you are alone,
therefore, I wish to speak to you."

She bowed her head, trembling and wondering, fearing what the next
moment might disclose.

"The young man who lodges here--of the name of Gentilis--he came to you
some time ago and told you that the State needed certain letters which
the man Basterga kept in a steel box upstairs? That is so, is it not?"

"Yes, Messer Syndic."

"And you looked for them?"

"Yes, I--I was told that you desired them."

"You found a phial? You found a phial?" the Syndic repeated, passing his
tongue over his lips. His face was flushed; his eyes shone with a
peculiar brightness.

"I found a small bottle," she answered slowly. "There was nothing else."

He raised his hand. If she had known how the delay of a second tortured
him! "Describe it to me!" he said. "What was it like?"

Wondering, the girl tried to describe it. "It was small and of a strange
shape, of thin glass, Messer Syndic," she said. "Shot with gold, or
there was gold afloat in the liquid inside. I do not know which."

"It was not empty?"

"No, it was three parts full."

His hand went to his mouth, to hide the working of his lips. "And there
was with it--a paper, I think?"

"No."

"A scrap of parchment then? Some words, some figures?" His voice rose
as he read a negative in her face. "There was something, surely?"

"There was nothing," she said. "Had there been a scrap even of
writing----"

"Yes, yes?" He could not control his impatience.

"I should have sent it to you. I should have thought," she continued
earnestly, "that it was that you needed, Messer Syndic; that it was that
the State needed. But there was nothing."

"Well, be there papers with it or be there not, I must have that phial!"

Anne stared. "But I do not think"--she ventured with hesitation--and
then as she gained courage, she went on more firmly--"that I can take
it! I dare not, Messer Syndic."

"Why not?"

"Papers for the State--were one thing," she stammered in confusion; "but
to take this--a bottle--would be stealing!"

The Syndic's eyes sparkled. His passion overcame him. "Girl, don't play
with me!" he cried. "Don't dare to play with me!" And then as she shrank
back alarmed by his tone, and shocked by this sudden peeping forth of
the tragic and the real, lo, in a twinkling he was another man,
trembling, and holding out shaking hands to her. "Get it for me!" he
said. "Get it for me, girl! I will tell you what it is! If I had told
you before, I had had it now, and I should be whole and well! whole and
well. You have a heart and can pity! Women can pity. Then pity me! I am
rich, but I am dying! I am a dying man, rising up and lying down,
counting the days as I walk the streets, and seeing the shroud rise
higher and higher upon my breast!"

He paused for breath, endeavouring to gain some command of himself;
while she, carried off her feet by this rush of words, stared at him in
stupefaction. Before he came he had made up his mind to tell her the
truth--or something like the truth. But he had not intended to tell the
truth in this way until, face to face with her and met by her scruples,
he let the impulse to tell the whole carry him away.

He steadied his lips with a shaking hand. "You know now why I want it,"
he resumed, speaking huskily and with restrained emotion. "'Tis life!
Life, girl! In that"--he fought with himself before he could bring out
the word--"in that phial is my life! Is life for whoever takes it! It is
the _remedium_, it is strength, life, youth, and but one--but one dose
in all the world! Do you wonder--I am dying!--that I want it? Do you
wonder--I am dying!--that I will have it? But"--with a strange grimace
intended to reassure her--"I frighten you, I frighten you."

"No!" she said, though in truth she had unconsciously retreated almost
to the door of the staircase before his extended hands. "But I--I
scarcely understand, Messer Blondel. If you will please to tell me----"

"Yes, yes!"

"What Messer Basterga--how he comes to have this?" She must parley with
him until she could collect her thoughts; until she could make up her
mind whether he was sane or mad and what it behoved her to do.

"Comes to have it!" he cried vehemently. "God knows! And what matter?
'Tis the _remedium_, I tell you, whoever has it! It is life, strength,
youth!" he repeated, his eyes glittering, his face working, and the
impulse to tell her not the truth only, but more even than the truth, if
he might thereby dazzle her, carrying him away. "It is health of body,
though you be dying, as I am! And health of mind though you be
possessed of devils! It is a cure for all ills, for all weaknesses, all
diseases, even," with a queer grimace, "for the Scholar's evil! Think
you, if it were not rare, if it were not something above the common, if
it were not what leeches seek in vain, I should be here! I should have
more than enough to buy it, I, Messer Blondel of Geneva!" He ceased,
lacking breath.

"But," she said timidly, "will not Messer Basterga give it to you? Or
sell it to you?"

"Give it to me? Sell it to me? He?" Blondel's hands flew out and clawed
the air as if he had the Paduan before him, and would tear it from him.
"He give it me? No, he will not. Nor sell it! He is keeping it for the
Grand Duke! The Grand Duke? Curse him; why should he escape more than
another?"

Anne stared. Was she dreaming or had her brain given way? Or was this
really Messer Blondel the austere Syndic, this man standing before her,
shaking in his limbs as he poured forth this strange farrago of
_remedia_ and scholars and princes and the rest? Or if she were not mad
was he mad? Or could there be truth, any truth, any fact in the medley?
His clammy face, his trembling hands, answered for his belief in it. But
could there be such a thing in nature as this of which he spoke? She had
heard of panaceas, things which cured all ills alike; but hitherto they
had found no place in her simple creed. Yet that he believed she could
not doubt; and how much more he knew than she did! Such things might be;
in the cabinets of princes, perhaps, purchasable by a huge fortune and
by the labour, the engrossment, the devotion of a life. She did not
know; and for him his acts spoke.

"It was this that Louis Gentilis was seeking?" she murmured.

"What else?" he retorted, opening and shutting his hands. "Had I told
him the truth, as I have told you, the thing had been in my grasp now!"

"But are you sure," she ventured to ask with respect, "that it will do
these things, Messer Blondel?"

He flung up his hands in a gesture of impatience. "And more! And more!"
he cried. "It is life and strength, I tell you! Health and youth! For
body or mind, for the old or the young! But enough! Enough, girl!" he
resumed in an altered tone, a tone grown peremptory and urgent. "Get it
me! Do you hear? Stand no longer talking! At any moment they may return,
and--and it may be too late."

Too late! It was too late already. The door shook even as he spoke under
an angry summons. As he stiffened where he stood, his eyes fixed upon
it, his hand still pointing her to his bidding, a face showed white at
the window and vanished again. An instant he imagined it Basterga's; and
hand, voice, eyes, all hung frozen. Then he saw his mistake--to
whomsoever the face belonged, it was not Basterga's; and finding voice
and breath again, "Quick!" he muttered fiercely, "do you hear, girl? Get
it! Get it before they enter!"

Her hand was on the latch of the inner door. Another second and, swayed
by his will, she would have gone up and got the thing he needed, and the
stout door would have shielded them, and within the staircase he might
have taken it from her and no one been the wiser. But as she turned,
there came a second attack on the door, so loud, so persistent, so
furious, that she faltered, remembering that the duplicate key of
Basterga's chamber was in her mother's room, and that she must mount to
the top of the house for it.

He saw her hesitation, and, shaken by the face which had looked in out
of the night, and which still might be watching his movements, his
resolution gave way. The habit of a life of formalism prevailed. The
thing was as good as his, she would get it presently. Why, then, cause
talk and scandal by keeping these persons--whoever they were--outside,
when the thing might be had without talk?

"To-night!" he cried rapidly. "Get it to-night, then! Do you hear, girl?
You will be sure to get it?" His eyes flitted from her to the door and
back again. "Basterga will not return until to-morrow. You will get it
to-night!"

She murmured some form of assent.

"Then open the door! open the door!" he urged impatiently. And with a
stifled oath, "A little more and they will rouse the town!"

She ran to obey, the door flew open, and into the room bundled first
Louis without his cap; and then on his heels and gripping him by the
nape, Claude Mercier. Nor did the latter seem in the least degree
abashed by the presence in which he found himself. On the contrary, he
looked at the Syndic, his head high; as if he, and not the magistrate,
had the right to an explanation.

But Blondel had recovered himself. "Come, come!" he said sternly. "What
is this, young man? Are you drunk?"

"Why was the door locked?"

"That you might not interrupt me," Blondel replied severely, "while I
asked some questions. I have it in my mind to ask you some also. You
took him to my house?" he continued, addressing Louis.

Louis whined that he had.

"You were late then?" His cold eye returned to Claude. "You were late, I
warrant. Attend me to-morrow at nine, young man. Do you hear? Do you
understand?"

"Yes."

"Then have a care you are there, or the officers will fetch you. And
you," he continued, turning more graciously to Anne, "see, young woman,
you keep counsel. A still tongue buys friends, and is a service to the
State. With that--good-night."

He looked from one to the other with a sour smile, nodded, and passed
out.

He left Claude staring, and something bewildered in the middle of the
room. The love, the pity, the admiration of which the lad's heart had
been full an hour before, still hungered for expression; but it was not
easy to vent such feelings before Louis, nor at a moment when the
Syndic's cold eye and the puzzle of his presence there chilled for the
time the atmosphere of the room.

Claude, indeed, was utterly perplexed by what he had seen; and before he
could decide what he would do, Anne, ignoring the need of explanation,
had taken the matter into her own hands. She had begun to set out the
meal; and Louis, smiling maliciously, had seated himself in his place.
To speak with any effect then, or to find words adequate to the feelings
that had moved him a while before, was impossible. A moment later, the
opportunity was gone.

"You must please to wait on yourselves," the girl said wearily. "My
mother is not well, and I may not come down again this evening." As she
spoke, she lifted from the table the little tray which she had prepared.

He was in time to open the door for her; and even then, had she glanced
at him, his eyes must have told her much, perhaps enough. But she did
not look at him. She was preoccupied with her own thoughts; pressing
thoughts they must have been. She passed him as if he had been a
stranger, her eyes on the tray. Worshipping, he stood, and saw her turn
the corner at the head of the flight; then with a full heart he went
back to his place. His time would come.

And she? At the door of Basterga's room she paused and stood long in
thought, gazing at the rushlight she carried on the tray--yet seeing
nothing. A sentence, one sentence of all those which Blondel had poured
forth--not Blondel the austere Syndic, who had set the lads aside as if
they had been schoolboys, but Blondel the man, trembling, holding out
suppliant hands--rang again and again in her ears.

"It is health of body, though you be dying as I am, and health of mind,
though you be possessed of devils!" Health of body! Health of mind!
Health of body! Health of mind! The words wrote themselves before her
eyes in letters of fire. Health of Body! Health of Mind!

And only one dose in all the world. Only one dose in all the world! She
recalled that too.




CHAPTER XV.

ON THE BRIDGE.


To say that the Syndic, as soon as he had withdrawn, repented of his
weakness and wished with all his heart that he had not opened until the
_remedium_ was in his hand, is only to say that he was human. He did
more than this, indeed. When he had advanced some paces in the direction
of the Porte Tertasse he returned, and for a full minute he stood before
the Royaumes' door irresolute; half-minded to knock and, casting the
fear of publicity to the winds, to say that he must have at once that
for which he had come. He would get it, if he did, he was certain of
that. And for the rest, what the young men said or thought, or what
others who heard their story might say or think, mattered not a straw
now that he came to consider it; since he could have Basterga seized on
the morrow, and all would pass for a part of his affair.

Yet he did not knock. A downward step on the slope of indecision is hard
to retrace. He reflected that he would get the _remedium_ in the
morning. He would certainly get it. The girl was won over, Basterga was
away. Practically, he had no one to fear. And to make a stir when the
matter could be arranged without a stir was not the part of a wise man
in the position of a magistrate. Slowly he turned and walked away.

But, as if his good angel touched him on the shoulder, under the Porte
Tertasse he had qualms; and again he stood. And when, after a shorter
interval and with less indecision, he resumed his course, it was by no
means with the air of a victor. He would receive what he needed in the
morning: he dared not admit a doubt of that. And yet--was it a vague
presentiment that weighed on him as he walked, or only the wintry night
wind that caused the blood to run more slowly and more tamely in his
veins? He had not fared ill in his venture, he had made success certain.
And yet he was unreasonably, he was unaccountably, he was undefinably
depressed.

He grew more cheerful when he had had his supper and seated before a
half-flagon of wine gave the reins to his imagination. For the space of
a golden hour he held the _remedium_ in his grasp, he felt its
life-giving influence course through his frame, he tasted again of
health and strength and manhood, he saw before him years of success and
power and triumph! In comparison to it the bath of Pelias, though
endowed with the virtues which lying Medea attributed to it, had not
seemed more desirable, nor the elixir of life, nor the herb of Anticyra.
Nor was it until he had taken the magic draught once and twice and
thrice in fancy, and as often hugged himself on health renewed and life
restored that a thought, which had visited him at an earlier period of
the evening, recurred and little by little sobered him.

This was the reflection that he knew nothing of the quantity of the
potion which he must take, nothing of the time or of the manner of
taking it. Was it to be taken all at once, or in doses? Pure, or diluted
with wine, or with water, or with _aqua vitæ_? At any hour, or at
midnight, or at a particular epoch of the moon's age, or when this or
that star was in the ascendant?

The question bulked larger as he considered it; for in life no trouble
is surmounted but another appears to confront us; nor is the most
perfect success of an imperfect world without its drawback. Now that he
held the elixir his, now that in fancy he had it in his grasp, the
problem of the mode and the quantity which had seemed trivial and
negligible a few days or hours before, grew to formidable dimensions;
nor could he of himself discover any solution of it. He had counted on
finding with the potion some scrap of writing, some memorandum, some
hieroglyphics at least, that, interpreted by such skill as he could
command, would give him the clue he sought. But if there was nothing, as
the girl asserted, not a line nor a sign, the matter could be resolved
in one way only. He must resort to pressure. With the potion and the man
in his possession, he must force the secret from Basterga; force it by
threats or promises or aught that would weigh with a man who lay
helpless and in a dungeon. It would not be difficult to get the truth in
that way: not at all difficult. It seemed, indeed, as if Providence--and
Fabri and Petitot and Baudichon--had arranged to put the man in his
power _ad hoc_.

He hugged this thought to him, and grew so enamoured of it that he
wondered that he had not had the courage to seize Basterga in the
beginning. He had allowed himself to be disturbed by phantoms; there lay
the truth. He should have seen that the scholar dared not for his own
sake destroy a thing so precious, a thing by which he might, at the
worst, ransom his life. 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. At nine o'clock, therefore, the hour at
which he had directed Claude to come to him at his house, he approached
the Royaumes' door. Pluming himself on the stratagem by which twice in
the twenty-four hours he had rid himself of an inconvenient witness, he
opened the door boldly and entered.

On the hearth, cap in hand, stood not Claude, but Louis. The lad wore
the sneaking air as of one surprised in a shameful action, which such
characters wear even when innocently employed. But his actions proved
that he was not surprised. With finger on his lip, and eyes enjoining
caution, he signed to the Syndic to be silent, and with head aside set
the example of listening.

The Syndic was not the man to suffer fools gladly, and he opened his
mouth. He closed it--all but too late. All but too late, if--the thought
sent cold shivers down his back--if Basterga had returned. With an air
almost as furtive as that of the lad before him, he signed to him to
approach.

Louis crossed the room with a show of caution the more strange as the
early December sun was shining and all without was cheerful. "Has he
come back?" Blondel whispered.

"Claude?"

"Fool!" Low as the Syndic pitched his tone it expressed a world of
contempt. "No, Basterga?"

The youth shook his head, and again laying his finger to his lips
listened.

"What! He has not?" Blondel's colour returned, his eyes bulged out with
passion. What did the imbecile mean? Because he knew certain things did
he think himself privileged to play the fool? The Syndic's fingers
tingled. Another second and he had broken the silence with a vengeance,
when--

"You are--too late!" Louis muttered. "Too late!" he repeated with
protruded lips.

Blondel glared at him as if he would annihilate him. Too late? What did
this creature know? Or how could it be too late, if Basterga had not
returned? Yet the Syndic was shaken. His fingers no longer tingled for
the other's cheek; he no longer panted to break the silence in a way
that should startle him. On the contrary, he listened; while his eyes
passed swiftly round the room, to gather what was amiss. But all seemed
in order. The lads' bowls and spoons stood on the table, the great roll
of brown bread lay beside them, and a book, probably Claude's, lay face
downwards on the board. The door of one of the bedrooms stood open. The
Syndic's suspicious gaze halted at the closed door. He pointed to it.

Louis shook his head; then, seeing that this was not enough, "There is
no one there," he whispered. "But I cannot tell you here. I will follow
you, honoured sir, to----"

"The Porte Tertasse."

"Mercier would meet us, by your leave," Louis rejoined with a faint
grin.

The magistrate glared at the tool who on a sudden was turned adviser.
Still, for the time he must humour him. "The mills, then, on the
bridge," he muttered. And he opened the door with care and went out.
With a dreadful sense of coming evil he went along the Corraterie and
took his way down the steep to the bridge which, far below, curbed the
blue rushing waters of the Rhone. The roar of the icy torrent and of the
busy mills, stupendous as it was, was not loud enough to deaden the two
words that clung to his ears, "Too late! Too late!" Nor did the frosty
sunshine, gloriously reflected from the line of snowy peaks to eastward,
avail to pierce the gloom in which he walked. For Louis Gentilis, if it
should turn out that he had inflicted this penance for naught, there was
preparing an evil hour.

The magistrate turned aside on a part of the bridge between two mills.
With his back to the wind-swept lake and its wide expanse of ruffled
waves, he stood a little apart from the current of crossers, on a space
kept clear of loiterers by the keen breeze. He seemed, if any curious
eye fell on him, to be engaged in watching the swirling torrent pour
from the narrow channel beneath him, as in warmer weather many a one
stood to watch it. Here two minutes later Louis found him; and if
Blondel still cherished hope, if he still fought against fear, or
maintained courage, the lad's smirking face was enough to end all.

For a moment, such was the effect on him, Blondel could not speak. At
last, with an effort, "What is it?" he said. "What has happened?"

"Much," Louis replied glibly. "Last night, after you had gone, honoured
sir, I judged by this and that, that there was something afoot. And
being devoted to your interests, and seeking only to serve you----"

"The point! The point!" the Syndic ejaculated. "What has happened?"

"Treachery," the young man answered, mouthing his words with enjoyment;
it was for him a happy moment. "Black, wicked treachery!" with a glance
behind him. "The worst, sir, the worst, if I rightly apprehend the
matter."

"Curse you," Blondel cried, contrary to his custom, for he was no
swearer, "you will kill me, if you do not speak."

"But----"

"What has happened. What has happened, man!"

"I was going to tell you, honoured sir, that I watched her----"

"Anne? The girl?"

"Yes, and an hour before midnight she took that which you wished me to
get--the bottle. She went to Basterga's room, and----"

"Took it! Well? Well?" The Syndic's face, grey a moment before, was
dangerously suffused with blood. The cane that had inflicted the bruise
Louis still wore across his visage, quivered ominously. Public as the
bridge was, open to obloquy and remark as an assault must lay him,
Blondel was within an inch of striking the lad again. "Well? Well?" he
repeated. "Is that all you have to tell me?"

"Would it were!" Louis replied, raising his open hands with
sanctimonious fervour. "Alas, sir!"

"You watched her?"

"I watched her back to her room."

"Upstairs?"

"Yes, the room which she occupies with her mother. And kneeling and
listening, and seeing what I could for your sake," the knave continued,
not a feature evincing the shame he should have felt, "I saw her handle
the phial at a little table opposite the door, but hidden by a curtain
from the bed."

The Syndic's eyes conveyed the question his lips refused to frame. No
man, submitted to the torture, has ever suffered more than he was
suffering.

But Louis had as much mind to avenge himself as the bravest, if he could
do so safely; and he would not be hurried. "She held it to the light,"
he said, dwelling on every syllable, "and turned it this way and that,
and I could see bubbles as of gold----"

"Ah!"

"Whirling and leaping up and down in it as if they lived--God guard us
from the evil one! Then she knelt----"

The Syndic uttered an involuntary cry.

"And prayed," Louis continued, confirming his astonishing statement by a
nod. "But whether to it--'twas on the table before her--or to the devil,
or otherwise, I know not. Only"--with damnatory candour--"it had a
strange aspect. Certainly she knelt, and it was on the table in front of
her, and her forehead rested on her hands, and----"

"What then? What then? By Heaven, the point!" gasped Blondel, writhing
in torture. "What then? blind worm that you are, can you not see that
you are killing me? What did she do with it? Tell me!"

"She poured it into a glass, and----"

"She drank it?"

"No, she carried it to her mother," Louis replied as slowly as he dared.
Fawning on the hand that had struck him, he would fain bite it if he
could do so safely. "I did not see what followed," he went on, "they
were behind the screen. But I heard her say that it was Madame's
medicine. And I made out enough----"

"Ah!"

"To be sure that her mother drank it."

Blondel stared at him a moment, wide-eyed; then, with a cry of despair,
bitter, final, indescribable, the Syndic turned and hurried away. He did
not hear the timid remonstrances which Louis, who followed a few paces
behind, ventured to utter. He did not heed the wondering looks of those
whom he jostled as he plunged into the current of passers and thrust his
way across the bridge in the direction whence he had come. The one
impulse in his blind brain was to get home, that he might be alone, to
think and moan and bewail himself unwatched; even as the first instinct
of the wounded beast is to seek its lair and lie hidden, there to await
with piteous eyes and the divine patience of animals the coming of
death.

But this man had the instinct only, not the patience. In his case would
come with thought wild rages, gnawings of regret, tears of blood. That
he might have, and had not, that he had failed by so little, that he
had been worsted by his own tools--these things and the bitter irony of
life's chances would madden and torment him. In an hour he would live a
lifetime of remorse; yet find in his worst moments no thought more
poignant than the reflection that had he played the game with courage,
had he grasped the nettle boldly, had he seized Basterga while it was
yet time, he might have lived! He might have lived! Ah, God!

Meanwhile Louis, though consumed with desire to see what would happen,
remained on the bridge. He had tasted a fearful joy and would fain
savour more of it if he could do so with a whole skin. But to follow
seemed perilous; he held the Syndic's mood in too great awe for that. He
did the next best thing. He hastened to a projecting part of the bridge
a few paces from the spot where they had conferred; there he raised
himself on the parapet that he might see which way Blondel turned at the
end of the bridge. If he entered the town no more could be made of it:
but if he turned right-handed and by the rampart to the Corraterie,
Louis' mind was made up to risk something. He would follow to the
Royaumes' house. The magistrate could hardly blame him for going to his
own lodging!

It was a busy hour, and, cold as it was, a fair number of people were
passing between the island and the upper town. For a moment, look as he
might, he could not discern the Syndic's spare figure; and he was
beginning to think that he had missed him when he saw something that in
a twinkling turned his thoughts. On the bank a little beside the end of
the bridge stood Claude Mercier. He carried a heavy stick in his hand,
and he was waiting: waiting, with his eyes fixed on our friend, and a
look in those eyes that even at that distance raised a gentle sweat on
Louis' brow.

It required little imagination to follow Claude's past movements. He had
gone to the Syndic's house at nine, and finding himself tricked a second
time had returned hot-foot to the Corraterie. Thence he had tracked the
two to this place. But how long had he been waiting, Louis wondered; and
how much had he seen? Something for certain. His face announced that;
and Louis, hot all over, despite the keen wind and frosty air, augured
the worst. Cowards however have always one course open. The way was
clear behind him. He could cross the island to the St. Gervais bank, and
if he were nimble he might give his pursuer the slip in the maze of
small streets beside the water. It was odd if the lapse of a few hours
did not cool young Mercier's wrath, and restore him to a frame of mind
in which he might be brought to hear reason.

No sooner planned than done. Or rather it would have been done if
turning to see that the way was clear behind him, Louis had not
discovered a second watcher, who from a spot on the edge of the island
was marking his movements with grim attention. This watcher was
Basterga. Moreover the glance which apprised Louis of this showed him
that the scholar's face was as black as thunder.

Then, if the gods looked down that day upon any mortal with pity, they
must have looked down on this young man; who was a coward. At the one
end of the bridge, Claude, with an ugly weapon and a face to match! At
the other, Basterga, with a black brow and Heaven alone could say how
much knowledge of his treachery! The scholar could not know of the loss
of the phial, indeed, for it was clear that he had just returned to the
city by the St. Gervais gate. But that he soon would know of it, that he
knew something already, that he had been a witness to the colloquy with
the Syndic--this was certain.

At any rate Louis thought so, and his knees trembled under him. He had
no longer a way of retreat, and out of the corner of his eye he saw
Claude beginning to advance. What was he to do? The perspiration burst
out on him. He turned this way and that, now casting wild eyes at the
whirling current below, now piteous eyes--the eyes of a calf on its way
to the shambles, and as little regarded--on the thin stream of passers.
How could they go on their way and leave him to the mercies of this
madman?

He smothered a shriek as Claude, now less than twenty paces away, sped a
look at him. Claude, indeed, was thinking of Anne and her wrongs; and of
a certain kiss. His face told this so plainly, and that passion was his
master, that Louis' cheek grew white. What if the ruffian threw him into
the river? What if--and then like every coward, he chose the remoter
danger. With Claude at hand, he turned and fled, dashed blindly through
the passers on the bridge, flung himself on Basterga, and, seizing the
big scholar by the arm, strove to shelter himself behind him.

"He is mad!" he gasped. "Mad! Save me! He is going to throw me over!"

"Steady!" Basterga answered; and he opposed his huge form to Claude's
rush. "What is this, young man? Coming to blows in the street? For
shame! For shame!" He moved again so as still to confront him.

"Give him up!" Claude panted, scarcely preventing himself from attacking
both. "Give him up, I say, and----"

"Not till I have heard what he has done! Steady, young man, keep your
distance!"

"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. It is waiting for you, sneak, bear that in mind!" And
shrugging his shoulders he turned with as much dignity as he could and
moved off.

Basterga wheeled from him to the other. "So!" he said. "You have
something to tell me, it seems?" And taking the trembling Louis by the
arm, he drew him aside, a few paces from the approach of the bridge. In
doing this he hung a moment searching the bridge and the farther bank
with a keen gaze. He knew, and for some hours had known, on what a
narrow edge of peril he stood, and that only Blondel's influence
protected him from arrest. Yet he had returned: he had not hesitated to
put his head again into the lion's mouth. Still if Louis' words meant
that certain arrest awaited him, he was not too proud to save himself.

He could discern no officers on the bridge, and satisfied on the point
of immediate danger, he turned to his shivering ally. "Well, what is
it?" he said. "Speak!"

"I'll tell you the truth," Louis gabbled.

"You had better!" Basterga replied, in a tone that meant much more than
he said. "Or you will find me worse to deal with than yonder hot-head! I
will answer for that."

"Messer Blondel has been at the house," Louis murmured glibly, his mind
centred on the question how much he should tell. "Last night and again
this morning. He has been closeted with Anne and Mercier. And there has
been some talk--of a box or a bottle."

"Were they in my room?" Basterga asked, his brow contracting.

"No, downstairs."

"Did they get--the box or the bottle?" There was a dangerous note in
Basterga's voice; and a look in his eyes that scared the lad.

Louis, as his instinct was, lied again, fleeing the more pressing peril.
"Not to my knowledge," he said.

"And you?" The scholar eyed him with bland suavity. "You had nothing to
do--with all this, I suppose?"

"I listened. I was in my room, but they thought I was out. When I went,"
the liar continued, "they discovered me; and Messer Blondel followed me
and overtook me on the bridge and threatened--that he would have me
arrested if I were not silent."

"You refused to be silent, of course?"

But Louis was too acute to be caught in a trap so patent. 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. He seemed
to be in distress, or to be ill."

"I could see that," the scholar answered dryly. "But Master Claude? What
of him? And why was he so enamoured of you that he could not be parted
from you?"

"It was to punish me for listening. They followed me different ways."

"I see. And that is the truth, is it?"

"I swear it is!"

The scholar saw no reason why it should not be the truth. Louis, a
facile tool, had always been of his, the stronger, party. If Blondel
tampered with any one, he would naturally, if he knew aught of the
house, suborn Claude or Anne. And Louis, spying and fleeing, and when
overtaken, promising silence, was quite in the picture. The only thing,
indeed, which stood out awkwardly, and refused to fall into place, was
the fashion in which the Syndic had turned and gone off the bridge. And
for that there might be reasons. He might have been seized with a sudden
attack of his illness, or he might have perceived Basterga watching him
from the farther bank.

On the whole, the scholar, forgetting that cowards are ever liars, saw
no reason to doubt Louis' story. It did but add one more to the motives
he had for action: immediate, decisive, striking action, if he would
save his neck, if he would succeed in his plans. That the Syndic alone
stood between him and arrest, that by the Syndic alone he lived, he had
learned at a meeting at which he had been present the previous night at
the Grand Duke's country house four leagues distant. D'Albigny had been
there, and Brunaulieu, Captain of the Grand Duke's Guards, and Father
Alexander, who dreamed of the Episcopate of Geneva, and others--the
chiefs of the plot, his patrons. To his mortification they had been able
to tell him things he had not learned, though he was within the city,
and they without. Among others, that the Council had certain knowledge
of him and his plans, and but for the urgency of Blondel would have
arrested him a fortnight before.

His companions at the midnight supper had detected his dismay, and had
derided him, thinking that with that there was an end of the mysterious
scheme which he had refused to impart. They fancied that he would not
return to the city, or venture his head a second time within the lion's
jaws. But they reckoned without their man, Basterga with all his faults
was brave; and he had failed in too many schemes to resign this one
lightly.

    "Si fractus illabatur orbis
    Impavidum ferient ruinæ,"

he murmured; and he had ventured, he had passed the gates, he was here.
Here, with his eyes open to the peril, and open to the necessity of
immediate action if the slender thread by which all hung were not to
snap untimely.

Blondel! He lived by Blondel. And Blondel--why had he left the bridge in
that strange fashion? Abruptly, desperately, as if something had
befallen him. Why? He must learn, and that quickly.




CHAPTER XVI.

A GLOVE AND WHAT CAME OF IT.


Meanwhile, Claude, robbed of his prey, had gone into the town in great
disgust. As he passed from the bridge, and paused before he entered the
huddle of narrow streets that climbed the hill, he had on his left the
glittering heights of snow, rising ridge above ridge to the blue; and
most distant among them Mont Blanc itself, etherealised by the frosty
sunshine and clear air of a December morning. But Mont Blanc might have
been a marsh, the Rhone, pouring its icy volume from the lake, might
have been a brook, for him. Aware, at length, of the peril in which Anne
stood, and not doubting that these colloquies of Messers Blondel and
Louis, these man[oe]uvrings to be rid of his presence, were part of a
conspiracy against her, he burned with the desire to thwart it. They had
made a puppet of him; they had sent him to and fro at their will and
pleasure; and they had done this, no doubt, in order that in his absence
they might work--Heaven knew what vile and miserable work! But he would
know, too! He was going to know! He would not be so tricked thrice.

His indignation went beyond the Syndic. The smug-faced towns-folk whom
he met and jostled in the narrow ways, and whose grave starched looks he
countered with hot defiant glances--he included them in his anathema. He
extended to them the contempt in which he held Blondel and Louis and the
rest. They were all of a breed, a bigoted breed; all dull, blind worms,
insensible to the beauty of self-sacrifice, or the purity of affection.
All, self-sufficient dolts, as far removed, as immeasurably divided from
her whom he loved, as the gloomy lanes of this close city lay below the
clear loveliness of the snow-peaks! For, after all, he had lifted his
eyes to the mountains.

One thing only perplexed him. He understood the attitude of Basterga and
Grio and Louis towards the girl. He discerned the sword of Damocles that
they held over her, the fear of a charge of witchcraft, or of some vile
heresy, in which they kept her. But how came Blondel in the plot? What
was his part, what his object? If he had been sincere in that attempt on
Basterga's secrets, which Madame's delirious words had frustrated, was
he sincere now? Was his object now as then--the suppression of the
devilish practices of which he had warned Claude, and in the punishment
of which he had threatened to include the girl with her tempter?
Presumably it was, and he was still trying to reach the goal by other
ways, using Louis as he had used Claude, or tried to use him.

And yet Claude doubted. He began to suspect--for love is jealous--that
Blondel had behind this a more secret, a more personal, a more selfish
aim. Had the young girl, still in her teens, caught the fancy of the man
of sixty? There was nothing unnatural in the idea; such things were,
even in Geneva; and Louis was a go-between, not above the task. In that
case she who had showed a brave front to Basterga all these months, who
had not blenched before the daily and hourly persecution to which she
had been exposed in her home, was not likely to succumb to the senile
advances of a man who might be her grandfather!

If he did not hold her secret. But if he did hold it? If he did hold
it, and the cruel power it gave? If he held it, he who had only to lift
his hand to consign her to duress on a charge so dark and dangerous that
innocence itself was no protection against it? So plausible that even
her lover had for a short time held it true? What then?

Claude, who had by this time reached the Tertasse gate and passed
through it from the town side, paused on the ramparts and bared his
head. What then?

He had his answer. Framed in the immensity of sky and earth that lay
before him, he saw his loneliness and hers, his insignificance and hers,
his helplessness and hers; he, a foreigner, young, without name or
reputation, or aught but a strong right hand; she, almost a child, alone
or worse than alone, in this great city--one of the weak things which
the world's car daily and hourly crushes into the mud, their very cries
unheard and unheeded. Of no more account than the straw which the turbid
Rhone, bore one moment on its swirling tide, and the next swallowed from
sight beneath its current!

They were two--and a mad woman! And against them were Blondel and
Basterga and Grio and Louis, and presently all the town of Geneva! All
these gloomy, narrow, righteous men, and shrieking, frightened
women--frightened lest any drop of the pitch fall on them and destroy
them! Love is a marvellous educator. Almost as clearly as we of a later
day, he saw how outbreaks of superstition, such as that which he
dreaded, began, and came to a head, and ended. A chance word at a door,
a spiteful rumour or a sick child, the charge, the torture, the widening
net of accusation, the fire in the market-place. So it had been in
Bamberg and Wurzburg, in Geneva two generations back, in Alsace scarce
as many years back: at Edinburgh in Scotland where thirty persons had
suffered in one day--ten years ago that; in the district of Como, where
a round thousand had suffered!

Nobility had not availed to save some, nor court-favour others; nor
wealth, nor youth, nor beauty. And what had he or she to urge, what had
they to put forward that would in the smallest degree avail them? That
could even for a moment stem or avert the current of popular madness
which power itself had striven in vain to dam. Nothing!

And yet he did not blench, nor would he; being half French and of good
blood, at a time when good French blood ran the more generously for a
half century of war. He would not have blenched, even if he had not,
from the sunlit view of God's earth and heaven which lay before his
eyes, drawn other thoughts than that one of his own littleness and
insignificance. As this view of vale and mountain had once before lifted
his judgment above the miasma of a cruel superstition, so it raised him
now above creeping fears and filled him with confidence in something
more stable than magistrates or mobs. Love, like the sunlight, shone
aslant the dark places of the prospect and filled them with warmth.
Sacrifice for her he loved took on the beauty of the peaks, cold but
lovely; and hope and courage, like the clear blue of the vault above,
looked smiling down on the brief dangers and the brief troubles of man's
making.

The clock of St. Gervais was striking eleven as, still in exalted mood,
he turned his back on the view and entered the house in the Corraterie.
He had entered on his return from his fruitless visit to Blondel, and
had satisfied himself that Anne was safe. Doubtless she was still safe,
for the house was quiet.

In his new mood he was almost inclined to quarrel with this. In the
ardour of his passion he would gladly have seen the danger immediate,
the peril present, that he might prove to her how much he loved her,
how deeply he felt for her, what he would dare for her. To die on the
hearth of the living-room, at her feet and saving her, seemed for a
moment the thing most desirable--the purest happiness!

That was denied him. The house was quiet, as in a morning it commonly
was. So quiet that he recalled without effort the dreams which he had
dreamed on that spot, and the thoughts which had filled his heart to
bursting a few hours before. The great pot was there, simmering on its
hook; and on the small table beside it, the table that Basterga and Grio
occupied, stood a platter with a few dried herbs and a knife fresh from
her hand. Claude made sure that he was unobserved, and raising the knife
to his lips, kissed the haft gently and reverently, thinking what she
had suffered many a day while using it! What fear, and grief and
humiliation, and----

He stood erect, his face red: he listened intently. Upstairs, breaking
the long silence of the house, opening as it were a window to admit the
sun, a voice had uplifted itself in song. The voice had some of the
tones of Anne's voice, and something that reminded him of her voice. But
when had he heard her sing? When had aught so clear, so mirthful, or so
young fallen from her as this; this melody, laden with life and youth
and abundance, that rose and fell and floated to his ears through the
half-open door of the staircase?

He crept to the staircase door and listened; yes, it was her voice, but
not such as he had ever heard it. It was her voice as he could fancy it
in another life, a life in which she was as other girls, darkened by no
fear, pinched by no anxiety, crushed by no contumely; such as her voice
might have been, uplifted in the garden of his old home on the French
border, amid bees and flowers and fresh-scented herbs. Her voice,
doubtless, it was; but it sorted so ill with the thoughts he had been
thinking, that with his astonishment was mingled something of shock and
of loss. He had dreamed of dying for her or with her, and she sang! He
was prepared for peril, and her voice vied with the lark's in joyous
trills.

Leaning forward to hear more clearly, he touched the door. It was ajar,
and before he could hinder it, it closed with a sharp sound. The singing
ceased with an abruptness that told, or he was much mistaken, of
self-remembrance. And presently, after an interval of no more than a few
seconds, during which he pictured the singer listening, he heard her
begin to descend.

Two men may do the same thing from motives as far apart as the poles.
Claude did what Louis would have done. As the foot drew near the
staircase door, treading, less willingly, less lightly, more like that
of Anne with every step, he slid into his closet, and stood. Through the
crack between the hinges of the open door, he would be able to view her
face when she appeared.

A second later she came, and he saw. The light of the song was still in
her eyes, but mingled, as she looked round the room to learn who was
there, with something of exaltation and defiance. Christian maidens
might have worn some such aspect, he thought--but he was in love--as
they passed to the lions. Or Esther, when she went unbidden into the
inner court of the King's House, and before the golden sceptre moved.
Something had happened to her. But what?

She did not see him, and after standing a moment to assure herself that
she was alone, she passed to the hearth. She lifted the lid of the pot,
bent over it, and slowly stirred the broth; then, having covered it
again, she began to chop the dried herbs on the platter. Even in her
manner of doing this, he fancied a change; a something unlike the Anne
he had known, the Anne he had come to love. The face was more animated,
the action quicker, the step lighter, the carriage more free. She began
to sing, and stopped; fell into a reverie, with the knife in her hand,
and the herb half cut; again roused herself to finish her task; finally
having slid the herbs from the platter to the pot, she stood in a second
reverie, with her eyes fixed on the window.

He began to feel the falseness of his position. It was too late to show
himself, and if she discovered him what would she think of him? Would
she believe that in spying upon her he had some evil purpose, some low
motive, such as Louis might have had? His cheek grew hot. And then--he
forgot himself.

Her eyes had left the window and fallen to the window-seat. It was the
thing she did then which drew him out of himself. Moving to the
window--he had to stoop forward to keep her within the range of his
sight--she took from it a glove, held it a moment, regarding it; then
with a tender, yet whimsical laugh, a laugh half happiness, half
ridicule of herself, she kissed it.

It was Claude's glove. And if, with that before his eyes he could have
restrained himself, the option was not his. She turned in the act, and
saw him; with a startled cry she put--none too soon--the table between
them.

They faced one another across it, he flushed, eager, with love in his
eyes, and on his lips; she blushing but not ashamed, her new-found joy
in her eyes, and in the pose of her head.

"Anne!" he cried. "I know now! I know! I have seen and you cannot
deceive me!"

"In what?" she said, a smile trembling on her lips. "And of what, Messer
Claude, are you so certain, if you please?"

"That you love me!" he replied. "But not a hundredth part"--he stretched
his arms across the table towards her "as much as I love you and have
loved you for weeks! As I loved you even before I learned last
night----"

"What?" Into her face--that had not found one hard look to rebuke his
boldness--came something of her old silent, watchful self. "What did you
learn last night?"

"Your secret!"

"I have none!" Quick as thought the words came from her lips. "I have
none! God is merciful," with a gesture of her open arms, as if she put
something from her, "and it is gone! If you know, if you guess aught of
what it was"--her eyes questioned his and read in them if not that which
he knew, that which he thought of her.

"I ask you to be silent."

"I will, after I have----"

"Now! Always!"

"Not till I have spoken once!" he cried. "Not till I have told you once
what I think of you! Last night I heard. And I understood. I saw what
you had gone through, what you had feared, what had been your life all
these weeks, rising and lying down! I saw what you meant when you bade
me go anywhere but here, and why you suffered what you did at their
hands, and why they dared to treat you--so! And had they been here I
would have killed them!" he added, his eyes sparkling. "And had you been
here----"

"Yes?" she did not seek to check him now. Her bearing was changed, her
eyes, soft and tender, met his as no eyes had ever met his.

"I should have worshipped you! I should have knelt as I kneel now!" he
cried. And sinking on his knees he extended his arms across the table
and took her unresisting hands. "If you no longer have a secret, you
had one, and I bless God for it! For without it I might not have known
you, Anne! I might not have----"

"Perhaps you do not know me now," she said; but she did not withdraw her
hands or her eyes. Only into the latter grew a shade of trouble. "I have
done--you do not know what I have done. I am a thief."

"Pah!"

"It is true. I am a thief."

"What is it to me?" He laughed a laugh as tender as her eyes. "You are a
thief, for you have stolen my heart. For the rest, do you think that I
do not know you now? That I can be twice deceived? Twice take gold for
dross, and my own for another thing? I know you!"

"But you do not know," she said tremulously, "what I have done--what I
did last night--or what may come of it."

"I know that what comes of it will happen, not to one but to two," he
replied bravely. "And that is all I ask to know. That, and that you are
content it shall be so?"

"Content?"

"Yes."

"Content!"

There are things, other than wine, that bring truth to the surface. That
which had happened to the girl in the last few hours, that which had
melted her into unwonted song, was of these things; and the tone of her
voice as she repeated the word "Content!" the surrender of her eyes that
placed her heart in his keeping, as frankly as she left her hands in
his, proclaimed it. The reserves of her sex, the tricks of coyness and
reticence men look for in maids, were shaken from her; and as man to man
her eyes told him the truth, told him that if she had ever doubted she
no longer doubted that she loved him. In the heart which a single
passion, the purest of which men and women are capable, had engrossed
so long, Nature, who, expel her as you will, will still return, had won
her right and carved her kingdom.

And she knew that it was well with her--whatever the upshot of last
night. To be lonely no more; to be no longer the protector, but the
protected; to know the comfort of the strong arm as well as of the
following eye, the joy of receiving as well as of giving; to know that,
however dark the future might lower, she had no longer to face it alone,
no longer to plan and hope and fear and suffer alone, but with
_him_--the sense of these things so mingled with her gratitude on her
mother's account that the new affection, instead of weakening the old
became as it were part of it; while the old stretched onwards its pious
hand to bless the new.

If Claude did not read all this in her eyes, and in that one word
"Content?" he read so much that never devotee before relic rose more
gently or more reverently to his feet. Because all was his he would take
nothing. "As I stand by you, may God stand by me," he said, still
holding her hands in his, and with the table between them.

"I have no fear," she replied in a low voice. "Yet--if you fail, may He
forgive you as fully as I must forgive you. What shall I say to you on
my part, Messer Claude?"

"That you love me."

"I love you," she murmured with an intonation which ravished the young
man's heart and brought the blood to his cheeks. "I love you. What
more?"

"There is no more," he cried. "There can be no more. If that be true,
nothing matters."

"No!" she said, beginning to tremble under a weight of emotion too heavy
for her, following as it did the excitement of the night. "No!" she
continued, raising her eyes which had fallen before the ardour of his
gaze. "But there must be something you wish to ask me. You must wish to
know----"

"I have heard what I wished to know."

"But----"

"Tell me what you please."

She stood in thought an instant: then, with a sigh, "He came to me last
evening," she said, "when you were at his house."

"Messer Blondel?"

"Yes. He wished me to procure for him a certain drug that Messer
Basterga kept in his room."

Claude stared. "In a steel casket chained to the wall?" he asked.

"Yes," she whispered with some surprise. "You knew of it, then? He had
tried to procure it through Louis, and on the pretence that the box
contained papers needed by the State. Failing in that he came last
evening to me, and told me the truth."

"The truth?" Claude asked, wondering. "But was it the truth?"

"It was." Her eyes, like stars on a rainy night, shone softly. "I have
proved it." Again, with a ring of exultation in her voice, "I have
proved it!" she cried.

"How?"

"There was in the box a drug, he told me, possessed of an almost
miraculous power over disease of body and mind; so rare and so wonderful
that none could buy it, and he knew of but this one dose, of which
Messer Basterga had possessed himself. He begged me to take it and to
give it to him. He had on him, he said, a fatal illness, and if he did
not get this--he must die." Her voice shook. "He must die! Now God help
him!"

"You took it."

"I took it." Her face, as her eyes dropped before his, betrayed trouble
and doubt. "I took it," she continued, trembling. "If I have done wrong,
God forgive me. For I stole it."

His face betrayed his amazement, but he did not release her hands.
"Why?" he said.

"To give it to her," she answered. "To my mother. I thought then that it
was right--it was a chance. I thought--now I don't know, I don't know!"
she repeated. The shade on her face grew deeper. "I thought I was right
then. Now--I--I am frightened." She looked at him with eyes in which her
doubts were mirrored. She shivered, she who had been so joyous a moment
before, and her hands, which hitherto had lain passive in his, returned
his pressure feverishly. "I fear now!" she exclaimed. "I fear! What is
it? What has happened--in the last minute?"

He would have drawn her to him, seeing that her nerves were shaken; but
the table was between them, and before he could pass round it, a sound
caught his ear, a shadow fell between them, and looking up he discovered
Basterga's face peering through the nearer casement. It was pressed
against the small leaded panes, and possibly it was this which by
flattening the huge features imparted to them a look of malignity. Or
the look--which startled Claude, albeit he was no coward--might have
been only the natural expression of one, who suspected what was afoot
between them and came to mar it. Whatever it meant, the girl's cry of
dismay found an echo on Claude's lips. Involuntarily he dropped her
hands; but--and the action was symbolical of the change in her life--he
stepped at the same moment between her and the door. Whatever she had
done, right or wrong, was his concern now.




CHAPTER XVII.

THE _REMEDIUM_.


We have seen that for Claude, as he hurried from the bridge, the faces
he met in the narrow streets of the old town were altered by the medium
through which he viewed them; and appeared gloomy, sordid and fanatical.
In the eyes of Blondel, who had passed that way before him, the same
faces wore a look of selfishness, stupendously and heartlessly cruel.
And not the faces only; the very houses and ways, the blue sky overhead,
and the snow-peaks--when for an instant he caught sight of them--bore
the same aspect. All wore their every-day air, and mocked the despair in
his heart. All flung in his teeth the fact, the incredible fact, that
whether he died or lived, stayed or went, the world would proceed; that
the eternal hills, ay, and the insensate bricks and mortar, that had
seen his father pass, would see him pass, and would be standing when he
was gone into the darkness.

There are few things that to the mind of man in his despondent moods are
more strange, or more shocking, than the permanence of trifles. The
small things to which his brain and his hand have given shape, which he
can, if he will, crush out of form, and resolve into their primitive
atoms, outlive him! They lie on the table when he is gone, are unchanged
by his removal, serve another master as they have served him, preach to
another generation the same lesson. The face is dust, but the canvas
smiles from the wall. The hand is withered, but the pencil is still in
the tray and is used by another. There are times when the irony of this
thought bites deep into the mind, and goads the mortal to revolt. Had
Blondel, as he climbed the hill, possessed the power of Orimanes to
blast at will, few of those whom he met, few on whom he turned the
gloomy fire of his eyes, would have reached their houses that day or
seen another sun.

He was within a hundred paces of his home, when a big man, passing along
the Bourg du Four, but on the other side of the way, saw him and came
across the road to intercept him. It was Baudichon, his double chin more
pendulent, his massive face more dully wistful than ordinary; for the
times had got upon the Councillor's nerves, and day by day he grew more
anxious, slept worse of nights, and listened much before he went to bed.

"Messer Blondel," he called out, in a voice more peremptory than was
often addressed to the Fourth Syndic's ear. "Messer Syndic! One moment,
if you please!"

Blondel stopped and turned to him. Outwardly the Syndic was cool,
inwardly he was at a white heat that at any moment might impel him to
the wildest action. "Well?" he said. "What is it, M. Baudichon?"

"I want to know----"

"Of course!" The sneer was savage and undisguised. "What, this time, if
I may be so bold?"

Baudichon breathed quickly, partly with the haste he had made across the
road, partly in irritation at the gibe. "This only," he said. "How far
you purpose to try our patience? A week ago you were for delaying the
arrest you know of--for a day. It was a matter of hours then."

"It was."

"But days have passed, and are passing! and we have no explanation;
nothing is done. And every night we run a fresh risk, and every
morning--so far--we thank God that our throats are still whole; and
every day we strive to see you, and you are out, or engaged, or about to
do it, or awaiting news! But this cannot go on for ever! Nor," puffing
out his cheeks, "shall we always bear it!"

"Messer Baudichon!" Blondel retorted, the passion he had so far
restrained gleaming in his eyes, and imparting a tremor to his voice,
"are you Fourth Syndic or am I?"

"You! You, certainly. Who denies it?" the stout man said. "But----"

"But what? But what?"

"We would know what you think we are, that we can bear this suspense."

"I will tell you what I think you are!"

"By your leave?"

"_A fat hog!_" the Syndic shrieked. "And as brainless as a hog fit for
the butcher! That for you! and your like!"

And before the astounded Baudichon, whose brain was slow to take in new
facts, had grasped the full enormity of the insult flung at him, the
Syndic was a dozen paces distant. He had eased his mind, and that for
the moment was much; though he still ground his teeth, and, had
Baudichon followed him, would have struck the Councillor without thought
or hesitation. The pigs! The hogs! To press him with their wretched
affairs: to press him at this moment when the grave yawned at his feet,
and the coffin opened for him!

To be sure he might now do with Basterga as he pleased without thought
or drawback; but for their benefit--never! He paused at his door, and
cast a haggard glance up and down; at the irregular line of gables
which he had known from childhood, the steep, red roofs, the cobble
pavement, the bakers' signs that hung here and there and with the wide
eaves darkened the way; and he cursed all he saw in the frenzy of his
rage. Let Basterga, Savoy, d'Albigny do their worst! What was it to him?
Why should he move? He went into his house despairing.

Unto this last hour a little hope had shone through the darkness. At
times the odds had seemed to be against him, at one time Heaven itself
had seemed to declare itself his foe. But the _remedium_ had existed,
the thing was still possible, the light burned, though distant, feeble,
flickering. He had told himself that he despaired; but he had not known
what real despair was until this moment, until he sat, as he saw now,
among the Dead Sea splendours of his parlour, the fingers of his right
hand drumming on the arm of the abbot's chair, his shaggy eyelids
drooping over his brooding eyes.

Ah, God! If he had stayed to take the stuff when it lay in his power! If
he had refused to open until he held it in his hand! If, even after that
act of folly, he had refused to go until she gave it him! How
inconceivable his madness seemed now, his fear of scandal, his thought
of others! Others? There was one of whom he dared not think; for when he
did his head began to tremble on his shoulders; and he had to clutch the
arms of the chair to stay the palsy that shook him. If _she_, the girl
who had destroyed him, thought it was all one to him whom the drug
advantaged, or who lived or who died, he would teach her--before he
died! He would teach her! There was no extremity of pain or shame she
should not taste, accursed witch, accursed thief, as she was! But he
must not think of that, or of her, now; or he would die before his time.
He had a little time yet, if he were careful, if he were cool, if he
were left a brief space to recover himself. A little, a very little
time!

Whose were that foot and that voice? Basterga's? The Syndic's eyes
gleamed, he raised his head. There was another score he had to pay! His
own score, not Baudichon's. Fool, to have left his treasure unguarded
for every thieving wench to take! Fool, thrice and again, for putting
his neck back into the lion's mouth. Stealthily Blondel pulled the
handbell nearer to him and covered it with his cloak. He would have
added a weapon, but there was no arm within reach, and while he
hesitated between his chair and the door of the small inner room, the
outer door opened, and Basterga appeared and advanced, smiling, towards
him.

"Your servant, Messer Syndic," he said. "I heard that you had been
inquiring for me in my absence, and I am here to place myself at your
disposition. You are not looking----" he stopped short, in feigned
surprise. "There is nothing wrong, I hope?"

Had the scholar been such a man as Baudichon, Blondel's answer would
have been one frenzied shriek of insults and reproaches. But face to
face with Basterga's massive quietude, with his giant bulk, with that
air, at once masterful and cynical, which proclaimed to those with whom
he talked that he gave them but half his mind while reading theirs, the
wrath of the smaller man cooled. A moment his lips writhed, without
sound; then, "Wrong?" he cried, his voice harsh and broken. "Wrong? All
is wrong!"

"You are not well?" Basterga said, eyeing him with concern.

"Well? I shall never be better! Never!" Blondel shrieked. And after a
pause, "Curse you!" he added. "It is your doing!"

Basterga stared. He was in the dark as to what had happened, though the
Syndic's manner on leaving the bridge had prepared him for something.
"My doing, Messer Blondel?" he said. "Why? What have I done?"

"Done?"

"Ay, done! It was not my fault," the scholar continued, with a touch of
sternness, "that I could not offer you the _remedium_ on easy terms. Nor
mine, that hard as the terms were, you did not accept them. Besides," he
continued, slowly and with meaning,

    "Terque quaterque redit!

You remember the Sibylline books? How often they were offered, and the
terms? It is not too late, Messer Blondel--even now. While there is life
there is hope, there is more than hope. There is certainty."

"Is there?" Blondel cried; he extended a lean hand, shaking with
vindictive passion. "Is there? Go and look in your casket, fool! Go and
look in your steel box!" he hissed. "Go! And see if it be not too late!"

For a moment Basterga peered at him, his brow contracted, his eyes
screwed up. The blow was unexpected. Then, "Have you taken the stuff?"
he muttered.

"I? No! But she has!" And on that, seeing the change in the other's
face--for, for once, the scholar's mask slipped and suffered his
consternation to appear--Blondel laughed triumphantly: in torture
himself, he revelled in a disaster that touched another. "She has! She
has!"

"She? Who?"

"The girl of the house! Anne you call her! Curse her! child of
perdition, as she is! She!" And he clawed the air.

"She has taken it?" Basterga spoke incredulously, but his brow was damp,
his cheeks were a shade more sallow than usual; he did not deceive the
other's penetration. "Impossible!" he continued, striving to rally his
forces. "Why should she take it? She has no illness, no disease!
Try"--he swallowed something--"to be clear, man. Try to be clear. Who
has told you this cock-and-bull story?"

"It is the truth."

"She has taken it?"

"To give to her mother--yes."

"And she?"

"Has taken it? Yes."

The scholar, ordinarily so cool and self-contained, could not withhold
an execration. His small eyes glittered, his face swelled with rage; for
a moment he was within a little of an explosion. Of what mad, what
insensate folly, unworthy of a schoolboy, worthy only of a sot, an
imbecile, a Grio, had he been guilty! To leave the potion, that if it
had not the virtues which he ascribed to it, had virtue--or it had not
served his purpose of deceiving the Syndic during some days or hours--to
leave the potion unprotected, at the mercy of a chance hand, of a
treacherous girl! Safeguarded, in appearance only, and to blind his
dupe! It seemed incredible that he could have been so careless!

True, he might replace the stuff at some expense; but not in a day or an
hour. And how--with one dose in all the world!--keep up the farce? The
dose consumed, the play was at an end. An end--or, no, was he losing his
wits, his courage? On the instant, in the twinkling of an eye, he shaped
a fresh course.

He cursed the girl anew, and apparently with the same fervour. "A
month's work it cost me!" he cried. "A month's work! and ten gold
pieces!"

The Syndic, pale, and almost in a state of collapse--for the bitter
satisfaction of imparting the news no longer supported him--stared. "A
month's work?" he muttered. "A month? Years you told me! And a fortune!"

"I told you? Never!" Basterga opened his eyes in seeming amazement.
"Never, good sir, in all my life!" he repeated emphatically.
"But"--returning grimly to his former point--"ten gold pieces, or a
fortune--no matter which, she shall pay dearly for it, the thieving
jade!"

The Syndic sat heavily in his seat, and, with a hand on either arm of
the abbot's chair, stared dully at the other. "A fortune, you told me,"
he said, in a voice little above a whisper. "And years. Was it a
fiction, all a fiction? About Ibn Jasher, and the Physician of Aleppo,
and M. Laurens of Paris, and--and the rest?"

Basterga deliberately took a turn to the window, came back, and stood
looking down at him. "Mon Dieu!" he muttered. "Is it possible?"

"Eh?"

"I can scarcely believe it!" The scholar spoke with a calmness half
cynical, half compassionate. "But I suppose you really think that of me,
though it seems incredible! You are under the impression that the drug
this jade stole was the _remedium_ of Ibn Jasher, the one incomparable
and sovereign result of long years of study and research? You believe
that I kept this in a mere locked box, the key accessible by all who
knew my habits, and the treasure at the mercy of the first thief! Mon
Dieu! Mon Dieu! If I said it a thousand times I could not express my
astonishment. I might be the vine grower of the proverb,

                              Cui saepe viator
    Cessisset magna compellans voce cucullum!"

The Syndic heard him without changing the attitude of weakness and
exhaustion into which he had fallen on sitting down. But midway in the
other's harangue, his lips parted, he held his breath, and in his eyes
grew a faint light of dawning hope. "But if it be not so?" he muttered
feebly. "If this be not so, why----"

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!"

"Why did you look so startled a moment ago?"

"Why, man? Because ten pieces of gold are ten pieces! To me at least!
And the potion, which was made after a recipe of that same Messer
Laurens of Paris, cost no less. It is a love-philtre, beneficent to the
young, but if taken by the old so noxious, that had you swallowed it,"
with a grin, "you had not been long Syndic, Messer Blondel!"

Blondel shook his head. "You do not deceive me," he muttered. For though
he was anxious to believe, as yet he could not. He could not; he had
seen the other's face. "It is the _remedium_ she has taken! I feel it."

"And given to her mother?"

Blondel inclined his head.

The scholar laughed contemptuously. "Then is the test easy," he said.
"If it be the _remedium_ you will find her mother, who has not left her
bed for three years, grown strong and well and vigorous, and like to him
who lifted up his bed and walked. But if it be the love-philtre, you
have but to come with me, and you will find her----" He did not finish
the sentence, but a shrug of his shoulders and a mysterious smile filled
the gap.

Imperceptibly Blondel had raised himself in his chair. The gleam of
hope, once lighted in his eyes, was growing bright. "How?" he asked.
"How shall we find her? If it be the philtre only that she has taken--as
you say?"

"If it be the philtre? The mother, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Mad! Mad!" Basterga repeated with decision, "and beside herself. As you
had been," he continued grimly, "had you by any chance taken the _aqua
Medeæ_."

"That you kept in the steel box?"

"Ay."

"You are sure it was not the _remedium_?" Blondel leaned forward. If
only he could believe it, if only it were the truth, how great the
difference! No wonder that the muscles of his lean throat swelled, and
his hands closed convulsively on the arms of his great chair, as he
strove to read the other's mind.

He had as soon read a printed page without light. The scholar saw that
it needed but a little to convince him, and took his line with
confidence; nor without some pride in the wits that had saved him. "The
_remedium_?" he repeated with impatient wonder. "Do you know that the
_remedium_ is unique? That it is a man's life? That in the world's
history it scarce appears once in five hundred years? That all the
wealth of kings cannot produce it, nor the Spanish Indies furnish it? Do
you remember these things, Messer Blondel, and do you ask if I keep it
like a common philtre in a box in my lodgings?" He snorted in contempt,
and going disdainfully to the hearth spat in the fire as if he could not
brook the idea. Then returning to the Syndic's side, he took up his
story in a different tone. "The _remedium_," he said, "my good friend,
is in the Grand Duke's Treasury at Turin. It is in a steel box, it is
true, but in one with three locks and three keys, sealed with the Grand
Duke's private signet and with mine; and laid where the Treasurer
himself cannot meddle with it."

The Syndic sat up straight, and with his eyes fixed sullenly on the
floor fingered his beard. He was almost persuaded, but not quite. Could
it be, could it really be that the thing still existed? That it was
still to be obtained, that life by its means was still possible?

"Well?" Basterga said, when the silence had lasted some time.

"The proof!" Blondel retorted, excitement once more over-mastering him.
"Let me have the proof! Let me see, man, if the woman be mad."

But the scholar, leaning Atlas-like, against the wall beside the long
low window, with his arms crossed, and his great head sunk on his
breast, did not move. He saw that this was his hour and he must use it.
"To what purpose?" he answered slowly: and he shrugged his shoulders.
"Why go to the trouble? The _remedium_ is in Turin. And if it be not, it
is the Grand Duke's affair only, and mine, since you will not come to
his terms. I would, I confess," he continued, in a more kindly tone,
"that it were your affair also, Messer Blondel. I would I could have
made you see things as they are and as I see them. As, believe me,
Messer Petitot would see them were he in your place; as Messer Fabri and
Messer Baudichon--I warrant it--do see them; as--pardon me--all who rank
themselves among the wise and the illuminate, see them. For all such,
believe me, these are times of enlightening, when the words which past
generations have woven into shackles for men's minds fall from them, and
are seen to be but the straw they are; when men move, like children
awaking from foolish dreams, and life----"

The Syndic's eyes glowed dully.

"Life," Basterga continued sonorously, "is seen to be that which it is,
the one thing needful which makes all other things of use, and without
which all other things are superfluities! Bethink you a minute, Messer
Blondel! Would Petitot give his life to save yours?"

The Syndic smiled after a sickly fashion. Petitot? The stickling pedant!
The thin, niggling whipster!

"Or Messer Fabri?"

Blondel shook his head.

"Or Messer Baudichon?"

"I called him but now--a fat hog!"

It was Basterga's turn to shake his head. "He is not one to forget," he
said gravely. "I fear you will hear of that again, Messer Blondel. I
fear it will make trouble for you. But if these will not, is there any
man in Geneva, any man you can name, who would give his life for you?"

"Do men give life so easily?" Blondel answered, moving painfully in his
chair.

"Yet you will give yours for them! You will give yours! And who will be
a ducat the better?"

"I shall at least die for freedom," the Syndic muttered, gnawing his
moustache.

"A word!"

"For the religion, then."

"It is that which men make it!" the scholar retorted. "There have been
good men of all religions, though we dare not say as much in public, or
in Geneva. 'Tis not the religion. 'Tis the way men live it! Was John
Bernardino of Assisi, whom some call St. Francis, a worse man than
Arnold of Brescia, the Reformer? Or is your Beza a better man than
Messer Francis of Sales? Or would the heavens fall if Geneva embraced
the faith of the good Archbishop of Milan? Words, Messer Blondel,
believe me, words!"

"Yet men die for them!"

"Not wise men. And when you have died for them, who will thank you?" The
Syndic groaned. "Who will know, or style you martyr?" Basterga continued
forcibly. "Baudichon, whom you have called a fat hog? He will sit in
your seat. Petitot--he said but a little while ago that he would buy
this house if he lived long enough."

"He did?" The Syndic came to his feet as if a spring had raised him.

"Certainly. And he is a rich man, you know."

"May the Bise search his bones!" Blondel cried, trembling with fury. For
this was the realisation of his worst fears. Petitot to live in his
house, lie warm in his bed, sneer at his memory across the table that
had been his, rule in the Council where he had been first! Petitot, that
miserable crawler who had clogged his efforts for years, who had shared,
without deserving, his honours, who had spied on him and carped at him
day by day and hour by hour! Petitot to succeed him! To be all and own
all, and sun himself in the popular eye, and say "Geneva, it is I!"
While he, Blondel, lay rotting and forgotten, stark, beneath snow and
rain, winter wind and summer drought!

Perish Geneva first! Perish friend and foe alike!

The Syndic wavered. His hand shook, his thin dry cheek burned with
fever, his lips moved unceasingly. Why should he die? They would not die
for him. Nay, they would not thank him, they would not praise him. A
traitor? To live he must turn traitor? Ay, but try Petitot, and see if
he would not do the same! Or Baudichon, who could not sleep of nights
for fear--how would he act with death staring him in the face? The
bravest soldiers when disarmed, or called upon to surrender or die,
capitulate without blame. And that was his position.

Life, too; dear, warm life! Life that might hold much for him still.
Hitherto these men and their fellows had hampered and thwarted him,
marred his plans and balked his efforts. Freed from them and supported
by an enlightened and ambitious prince, he might rise to heights
hitherto invisible. He might lift up and cast down at will, might rule
the Council as his creatures, might live to see Berne and the Cantons at
his feet, might leave Geneva the capital of a great and wealthy country.

All this, at his will; or he might die! Die and rot and be forgotten
like a dog that is cast out.

He did not believe in his heart that faith and honour were words;
fetters woven by wise men to hamper fools. He did not believe that all
religions were alike, and good or bad as men made them. But on the one
side was life, and on the other death. And he longed to live.

"I would that I could make you see things as I see them," Basterga
resumed, in a gentle tone. Patiently waiting the other's pleasure he had
not missed an expression of his countenance, and, thinking the moment
ripe, he used his last argument. "Believe me, I have the will, all the
will, to help you. And the terms are not mine. Only I would have you
remember this, Messer Blondel: that others may do what you will not, so
that after all you may find that you have cast life away, and no one the
better. Baudichon, for instance, plays the Brutus in public. But he is a
fearful man, and a timid; and to save himself and his family--he thinks
much of his family--he would do what you will not."

"He would do it!" the Syndic cried passionately. And he struck the
table. "He would, curse him!"

"And he would not forget," Basterga continued, with a meaning nod, "that
you had miscalled him!"

"No! But I will be before him!" The Syndic was on his feet again,
shaking like a leaf.

"Ay?" Basterga blew his nose to hide the flash of triumph that shone in
his eyes. "You will be wise in time? Well, I am not surprised. I thought
that you would not be so mad--that no man could be so mad as to throw
away life for a shadow!"

"But mind you," Blondel snarled, "the proof. I must have the proof," he
repeated. He was anxious to persuade himself that his surrender depended
on a condition; he would fain hide his shame under a show of bargaining.
"The proof, man, or I will not take a step."

"You shall have it."

"To-day?"

"Within the hour."

"And if she be not mad--I believe you are deceiving me, and it was the
_remedium_ the girl took--if she be not mad----" The Syndic, stammering
and repeating himself, broke off there. He could not meet the other's
eyes; between a shame new to him and the overpowering sense of what he
had done, he was in a pitiable state. "Curse you," with violence, "I
believe you have laid a trap for me!" he cried. "I say if she be not
mad, I have done."

"Let it stand so," Basterga answered placidly. "Trust me, if she has
taken the philtre she will be mad enough. Which reminds me that I also
have a crow to pick with Mistress Anne."

"Curse her!"

"We will do more than that," Basterga murmured. "If she be not very good
we will burn her, my friend.

    Uritur infelix Dido, totaque videtur
    Urbe furens!"

His eyes were cruel, and he licked his lips as he applied the
quotation.




CHAPTER XVIII.

THE BARGAIN STRUCK.


Claude, at the first sign of peril, had put himself between Anne and the
door; and, had not the fear which seized the girl at the sight of
Basterga robbed her of the power to think, she must have thrilled with a
new and delicious sensation. She, who had not for years known what it
was to be sheltered behind another, was now to know the bliss of being
protected. Nor did her lover remain on the defensive. It was he who
challenged the intruders.

"What is it?" he asked, as the Syndic crossed the threshold; which was
darkened a moment later by the scholar's huge form. "What is your
business here, Messer Syndic, if it please you?"

"With you, none!" Blondel answered; and pausing a little within the
door, he cast a look, cold and searching, round the apartment. His
outward composure hid a tumult of warring passions; shame and rage were
at odds within him, and rising above both was a venomous desire to exact
retribution from some one. "Nothing with you!" he repeated. "You may
stand aside, young man, or, better, go to your classes. What do you here
at this hour, and idle, were the fitting question; and not, what is my
business! Do you hear, sirrah?" with a rap of his staff of office on the
floor. "Begone to your work!"

But Claude, who had been thirsting this hour past for realms to conquer
and dragons to subdue, and who, with his mistress beside him, felt
himself a match for any ten, was not to be put aside. His manhood
rebelled against the notion of leaving Anne with men whose looks boded
the worst. "I am at home," he replied, breathing a little more quickly,
and aware that in defying the Syndic he was casting away the scabbard.
"I am at home in this house. I have done no wrong. I am in no inn now,
and I know of no right which you have to expel me without cause from my
own lodging."

Blondel's lean face grew darker. "You beard me?" he cried.

"I beard no one," Claude answered hardily. "I am at home here, that is
all. If you have lawful business here, do it. I am no hindrance to you.
If you have no lawful business--and as to that," he continued, recalling
with indignation the tricks which had been employed to remove him, "I
have my opinion--I have as much right to be here as you! The more, as it
is not very long," he went on, with a glance of defiance, directed at
Basterga, "since you gave the man who now accompanies you the foulest of
characters! Since you would have me rob him! Since you called him
reprobate of the reprobate! Is he reprobate now?"

"Silence!"

"A corrupter of women, as you called him?"

"Liar!" the Syndic cried, trembling with passion. "Be silent!" The blow
found him unprepared. "He lies!" he stammered, turning to his ally.

Basterga laughed softly. He had guessed as much: none the less he
thought it time to interfere, lest his tool be put too much out of
countenance. "Gently, young man," he said, "or perhaps you may go too
far. I know you."

"He is a liar!" Blondel repeated.

"Probably," Basterga said, "but it matters not. It is enough that our
business here lies not with him, but with this young woman. You seem to
have taken her under your protection," he continued, addressing Claude,
"and may choose, if you please, whether you will see her haled through
the streets, or will suffer her to answer our questions here. As you
please."

"Your questions?" Claude cried, recalling with rage the occasions on
which he had heard this man insult her. "Hear me one moment, and I will
very quickly prove----"

He was silent with the word on his lips. Her hand on his sleeve recalled
the necessity of prudence. He bit his lip and stood glowering at them.
It was she who spoke.

"What do you wish?" she asked in a low voice.

Naturally courageous as she was, she could not have spoken but for the
support of her lover. For the unexpected conjunction of these two, and
their entrance together, smote her with fear. "What is your desire?" she
repeated.

"To see your mother," Basterga answered. "We have no business with
you--at present," he added, after a perceptible pause, and with a slight
emphasis.

She caught her breath. "You want to see my mother?" she faltered.

"I spoke plainly," Basterga replied with sternness. "That was what I
said."

"What do you want with her?"

"That is our affair."

Pale to the lips, she hesitated. Yet, after all, why should they not go
up and see her mother? Things were not to-day as they had been
yesterday: or she had done in vain that which she had done, had sinned
in vain if she had sinned. And that was a thing not to be considered.
If they found her mother as she had left her, if they found the promise
of the morning fulfilled, even their unexpected entrance would do no
harm. Her mother was sane to-day: sane and well as other people, thank
God! It was on that account she had let her heart rise like a bird's to
her lips.

Yet, when she opened her mouth to assent, she found the words with
difficulty. "I do not know what you want," she said faintly. "Still if
you wish to see her you can go up."

"Good!" Basterga replied, and advancing, he opened the staircase door,
then stood aside for the Syndic to ascend first. "Good! The uppermost
floor, Messer Blondel," he continued, holding the door wide. "The stairs
are narrow, but I think I can promise you that at the top you will find
what you want."

He could not divest his tone of the triumph he felt. Slight as the
warning was, it sufficed; while the last word was still on his lips, she
snatched the door from his grasp, closed it and stood panting before it.
What inward monition had spoken to her, what she had seen, what she had
heard, besides that note of triumph in Basterga's voice, matters not.
Her mind was changed.

"No!" she cried. "You do not go up! No!"

"You will not let us see her?" Basterga exclaimed.

"No!" Her breast heaving, she confronted them without fear.

In his surprise at her action the scholar had recoiled a step: he was
fiercely angry. "Come, girl, no nonsense," he said roughly and brutally.
"Make way! Or we shall have a little to say to you of what you did in my
room last night! Do you mark me?" he continued. "I might have you
punished for it, wench! I might have you whipped and branded for it! Do
you mind me? You robbed me, and that which you took----"

"I took at his instigation!" she retorted, pointing an accusing finger
at Blondel, who stood gnawing his beard, hating the part he was playing,
and hating still more this white-faced girl who had come so near to
ruining, if she had not ruined, his last chance of life. Hate her? The
Syndic hated her for the hour of anguish through which he had just
passed, hated her for the price--he shuddered to think of it--which he
must now pay for his life. He hated her for his present humiliation, he
hated her for his future shame. She seemed to blame for all.

"You took it," Basterga answered, acknowledging her words only by a
disdainful shrug, "and gave it to your mother. Why, I care not. Now that
you see we know so much, will you let us go up!"

"No!" She faced him bravely and steadfastly. "No. If you know so much,
you know also why I took it, and why I gave it to her." And then, the
radiance of unselfish love illuminating her pallid face, "I would do it
again were it to do," she said. "And again, and yet again! For you, I
have done you wrong; I have robbed you, and you may punish me. I must
bear it. But as to him," pointing to Messer Blondel, "I am innocent!
Innocent," she repeated firmly. "For he would have done it himself and
for himself; it was he who would have me do it. And if I have done it, I
have done it for another. I have robbed you, if need be I must pay the
price; but that man has naught against me in this! And for the rest, my
mother is well."

"Ah?"

"Ay, well! well!" she repeated, the light of joy softening her eyes as
she repeated the word. "Well! and I fear nothing."

Basterga laughed cruelly. "Well?" he said. "Well, is she? Then let us go
up and see her. If she be well, why not?"

"No!"

"Why not?"

She did not answer, but she did not make way.

"Why not? I will tell you, if you please," he said. "And it will make
you pipe to another tune. You have given her, young woman, that which
will make her worse, and not better!"

"She is better!"

"For an hour, or for twelve hours!" he retorted. "That certainly. Then
worse."

"No!"

"No? But I see what it is," he continued--and, alas, his voice
strengthened the fear that like a dead hand was closing on her heart and
staying it; deepened the terror that like a veil was falling before her
eyes and darkening the room; so that she had much ado, gripping
finger-nails into palms, to keep her feet and let herself from fainting.
"I see what it is. You would fain play Providence," he continued--"that
is it, is it? You would play Providence? Then come! Come then, and see
what kind of Providence it is you have played. We will see if you are
right or I am right! And if she be well, or if she be ill!" And again he
moved towards the staircase.

But she stood obstinately between him and the door. "No," she said. "You
do not go up!" She was resolute. The fear that as she listened to his
gibing tones had driven the colour from her face, had hardened it too.
For, if he were right? If for that fear there were foundation? If that
which the Syndic had led her to give and that which she had given,
proved--though for a few hours it had seemed to impart marvellous
vigour--useless or worse than useless? Then the need to keep these men
from her mother was the greater, the more desperate. How they could be
kept, for how long it was possible to keep them, she did not pause to
consider, any more than the she-wolf that crouches, snarling, between
her whelps and the hunt, counts odds. It was enough for her that if they
were right the worst had come, and naught lay between her mother's
weakness and their cruel eyes and judgments but her own feeble strength.

Or no! she was wrong in that; she had forgotten! As she spoke, and as
Basterga with a scowl repeated the order to stand aside, Claude put her
gently but irresistibly by, and took her place. The young man's eyes
were bright, his colour high. "You will not go up!" he said, a mocking
note of challenge, replying to Basterga's tone, in his voice. "You will
not go up."

"Fool! Will you prevent us?"

"You will not go up! No!"

In the very act of falling on the lad, Basterga recoiled. Claude had not
been idle while the others disputed. He had gone to the corner for his
sword, and it was the glittering point, suddenly whipped out and
flickered before his eyes that gave the scholar pause, and made him leap
back. "Pollux!" he cried, "are you mad? Put down! Put down! Do you see
the Syndic? Do you know," he continued, stamping his foot, "that it is
penal to draw in Geneva?"

"I know that you are not going upstairs!" Claude answered gently. He was
radiant. He would not have exchanged his position for a crown. She was
looking, and he was going to fight.

"You fool," Basterga returned, "we have but to call the watch from the
Tertasse and you will be haled to the lock-up, and jailed and whipped,
if not worse! And that jade with you! _Stultus es?_ Do you hear? Messer
Syndic, will you be thwarted in this fashion? Call these lawbreakers to
order and bid them have done!"

"Put up!" the Syndic cried, hoarse with rage. He was beside himself,
when he thought of the position in which he had placed himself. He
looked at the two as if he would fain have slain them where they stood.
"Or I call the watch, and it will be the worse for you," he continued.
"Do you hear me? Put up?"

"He shall not go upstairs!" Claude answered, breathing quickly. He was
pale, but utterly and fixedly resolved. If Basterga made a movement to
attack him, he would run him through whatever the consequences.

"Then, fool, I will call the watch!" Blondel babbled, fairly beside
himself.

Claude had no answer to that; only they should not go up. It was the
girl's readier wit furnished the answer.

"Call them!" she cried, in a clear voice. "Call the watch, Messer
Syndic, and I will tell them the whole story. What Messer Blondel would
have had me do, and get, and give."

"It was for the State!" the Syndic hissed.

"And is it for the State that you come to-day with that man?" she
retorted, and with her outstretched finger she accused Basterga of
unspoken things. "That man! Last night you would have had me rob him.
The day before he was a traitor. To-day he and you are one. Are one!
What are you plotting together?"

The Syndic shrank from the other's side under the stab of her
words--words that, uttered at random, flew, straight as the arrow that
slew Ahab, to the joint of his armour. "To-day you and that man are
one," she repeated. "One! What are you plotting together?"

She knew as much as that, did she? She knew that they were one, and that
they were plotting together; while in the Council men were clamouring
for the Paduan's arrest, and were growing suspicious because he was not
arrested--Baudichon, whom he had called a fat hog, and Petitot, that
slow, plodding sleuth-hound of a patriot. What if light fell on the true
state of things--and less than the girl had said might cast that light?
Then the warrant might go, not for the Paduan only, but for himself. Ay,
for him! For with an enemy ever lying within a league of the gates
warrants flew quickly in Geneva. Men who sleep ill of nights, and take
the cock-crow for war's alarum, are suspicious, and, once roused,
without ruth or mercy.

There was the joint in his harness. Once let his name be published with
Basterga's,--as must happen if the watch were summoned and the girl
spoke out--and no one could say where the matter might end, or what
suspicions might not be awakened. Nay, the matter was worse, more
perilous and more lightly balanced; for, setting himself aside, none the
less was a brawl that brought up Basterga's name, a thing to be shunned.
The least thing might precipitate the scholar's arrest; his arrest must
lead to the loss of the _remedium_, if it existed; and the loss of the
_remedium_ to the loss of that which Messer Blondel had come to value
the more dearly the more he sacrificed to keep it--the Syndic's life.

He dared not call the watch, and he dared not use violence. 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. His intellect, his wit, his very mass
intimidated. Therefore it was with as much relief as surprise that Anne
read in his face the reflection of the other's doubts, and saw that he,
too, gave back.

"You are two fools!" he said. "Two great, big fools!" There was
resignation, there was something that was almost approval in his tones.
"You do not know what you are doing! Is there no way of making you hear
reason?"

"You cannot go up," Anne said. She had won, it seemed, without knowing
how she had won.

Basterga grunted; and then, "Ah, well," he said, addressing Claude, "if
I had you in the fields, my lad, it would not be that bit of metal would
save you!" And he spouted with appropriate gesture--

    "--Illum fidi aequales, genua aegra trahentem
    Jactantemque utroque caput, crassumque cruorem
    Ore ejectantem mixtosque in sanguine dentes
    Ducunt ad navis!

Half an hour in my company, and you would not be so bold."

Claude smiled with pardonable contempt, but made no reply, nor did he
change his attitude.

"Come!" Blondel muttered, addressing his ally with his eyes averted. "I
have reasons at present for letting them be!" They were strange reasons,
to judge by the hang-dog look of the proud magistrate. "But I shall know
how to deal with them by-and-by. Come, man, come!" he repeated
impatiently. And he turned towards the door and unlocked it.

Basterga moved reluctantly after him. "Ay, we go now," he said, with a
look full of menace. "But wait a while! Cæsar Basterga does not forget,
and his turn will come! Where is my cap?"

He had let it fall on the floor, and he turned to pick it up, stooping
slowly and with difficulty as stout men do. As he raised himself, his
head still low, he butted it suddenly and with an activity for which no
one would have given him credit full into Claude's chest. The unlucky
young man, who had lowered his weapon the instant before, fell back with
a "sough" against the wall, and leant there, pale and breathless. Anne
uttered one scream, then the scholar's huge arm enfolded her neck and
drew her backwards against his breast.

"Up! up! Messer Blondel!" he cried. "Now is your chance! Up and surprise
her!" And with his disengaged hand he gripped Claude, for further
safety, by the collar. "Up; I will keep them quiet!"

The Syndic wasted a moment in astonishment, then he took in the
situation and the other's cleverness. Before Basterga had ceased to
speak, he was at the door of the staircase, and had dragged it open. But
as he set his foot on the lowest stair, Anne, held as she was against
Basterga's breast, and almost stifled by the arm which covered her
mouth, managed to clutch the Syndic by his skirts, and, once having
taken hold, held him with the strength of despair. In vain he struggled
and strove and wrestled to jerk himself free; in vain Basterga, hampered
by Claude, tried to drag the girl away--Blondel came away with her! She
clung to him, and even, freeing her mouth for a moment, succeeded in
uttering a scream.

"Curse her!" Basterga foamed: and had he had a hand to spare, he would
have struck her down. "Pull, man, have you no strength! Let go, you
vixen! Let go, or----"

He tried to press her throat, but in changing his hold allowed her to
utter a second scream, louder, more shrill, more full of passion than
the other. At the same instant a chair, knocked down by Blondel in his
efforts, fell with a crash, throwing down a pewter platter; and Claude,
white and breathless as he was, began to struggle, seeing his mistress
so handled. The four swayed to and fro. Another moment, and either the
Syndic must have jerked himself free, or the contest must have attained
to dimensions that could not escape the notice of the neighbours, when a
sound--a sound from within, from upstairs--stayed the tumult as by
magic.

Blondel ceased to struggle, and stood aghast. Basterga relaxed his hold
upon his prisoners and listened. Claude leant back against the wall. The
girl alone--she alone moved. Without speaking, without looking, as a
bird flies to its young, she sprang to the stairs and fled up them.

The maniacal laugh, the crazy words--a moment only, they heard them: and
then the door above, which the poor woman, so long bedridden, had
contrived in her frenzy of fear to open, closed on the sounds and
stifled them. But enough had been heard: enough to convince Blondel,
enough to justify Basterga, enough to change the fortunes of more than
one in the room. The scholar's eyes met the Syndic's.

"Are you satisfied?" he asked, in a low voice.

Blondel, breathing hard, nodded.

"You heard?"

He nodded a second time. He looked scared.

"Then you have enough to burn the old witch and the young one with her!"
Basterga replied. He turned his small eyes, sparkling with malignity, on
the young man, who stood against the wall, pale, and but half recovered
from the blow he had sustained. "You thought to thwart me, did you,
Messer Claude? You thought yourself clever enough to play with Cæsar
Basterga, did you? To hold at bay--oh, clever fellow--a magistrate and a
scholar! And defy us both! Now I will tell you what will come of it!" He
shook his great finger in front of the young man. "Your pretty bit of
pink and white will burn! Burn, see you! A show for the little boys, a
holiday for the young men and the young women, a treat for the old men,
who will see her white limbs writhe in the smoke! Ha!" as Claude, with a
face of horror, would have waved him away, "that touches you, does it?
You had not thought of that? Nay, you had not thought of other things. I
tell you, before the sun sets this evening, this house shall be
anathema! Before night what we have heard will be known abroad, and
there will be much added to it. There was a child died in the fourth
house from this on Sunday! It will be odd if she did not overlook it.
And the young wife of the Lieutenant at the Porte Tertasse, who has
ailed since her marriage--a pale thing; who knows but he looked this way
once and Mistress Anne thought ill of his defection? Ha! Ha! You would
cross Cæsar Basterga, would you? No, Messer Claude," he set his huge
foot on the fallen sword which Claude had made a movement to recover. "I
fight with other weapons than that! And if you lay a finger on me"--he
extended his arms to their widest extent--"I will crush the life out of
you. That is better," as Claude stood glaring helplessly at him--"I
teach you prudence, at any rate. And as," with a sneer, "you are so apt
at learning, I will do you, if you choose, a greater kindness that man
ever did you, or woman either!"

The young man, breathing quickly, did not speak. Perhaps his eyes were
watching for an opening; at the least appearance of one he would have
flung himself upon his enemy.

"You do not choose. And yet, I will do it. In one word--Go!

    Teque his, puer, eripe flammis!"

He pointed to the door with a gesture tragic enough. "Go and live, for
if you stay you die! Wait not until the chain is drawn before the door,
until boards darken the windows, and men cross the street when they
would pass! Until women hide their heads as they go by, and the market
will not sell, nor the water run for you! For then, as surely as she
will perish, you will perish with her!"

"So be it!" Claude cried. And in his turn he pointed, not without
dignity, to the door. "Go you, and our blood be upon your head!"

Basterga shrugged his shoulders, and in one moment put the thing and his
grand manner away from him. "Enough! we will go," he said. "You are
satisfied, Messer Syndic? Yes. Farewell, young sir, you have my last
word." And while the young man stood glowering at him, he opened the
street door, and the two passed out.

"You will not go on with this?" Blondel muttered with a backward
gesture, as the two paused.

"Nothing," Basterga answered in a low voice, "will suit our purpose
better. It will amuse Geneva and fill men's mouths till the time come.
For you too, Messer Blondel," he continued, with a piercing look, "will
live and not die, I take it?"

The other knew then that the hour had come to set his seal to the
bargain: and equally, that if at this eleventh hour he would return, the
path was open. But _facilis_--known is the rest, and the grip which a
strong nature gains on a weaker, and how hardly fear, once admitted, is
cast out. Within the Syndic's sight rose one of the gates, almost within
touch rose the rampart of the city, long his own, which he was asked to
betray. The mountains of his native land, pure, cold and sunlit, stood
up against the blue depth of winter sky, eloquent of the permanence of
things, and the insignificance of men. The contemplation of them turned
his cheek a shade paler and struck terror to his heart; but did not stay
him. His eyes avoiding the other's gaze, his face shrinking and
pitiable, shame already his portion, he nodded.

"Precisely," Basterga said. "Then nothing can better serve our purpose
than this. Let your officers know what you have heard, and know that you
would hear more--of this house. That, and a hint of evil practices and
witch's spells dropped here and there, will give your townsfolk
something to talk of and stare at and swallow--till our time come."

"But if I bid them watch this house," Blondel muttered weakly--how fast,
how fast the thing was passing out of his hands!--"attention will be
called to you, and then, Messer Basterga----"

"My work is done here," Basterga replied calmly. "I have crossed that
threshold for the last time. When I leave you--and it is time we
parted--I go out of the gates, not again to return until--until things
have been brought to the point at which we would have them, Messer
Blondel."

"And that," the Syndic said with a shudder, "will be?"

"Towards the longest night. Say, in a week or so from now. The precise
moment--that and other things, I will let you know by a safe mouth."

"But the _remedium_? That first!" the Syndic muttered, a scowl, for a
second, darkening his face.

Basterga smiled. "Have no fear," he replied. "That first, by all means.
And afterwards--Geneva."




CHAPTER XIX.

THE DEPARTURE OF THE RATS.


The wood-ash on the hearth had sunk lower and grown whiter. The last
flame that had licked the black sides of the great pot had died down
among the expiring embers. Only under the largest log glowed a tiny
cavern, carbuncle-hued; and still Claude walked restlessly from the
window to the door, or listened with a frowning face at the foot of the
stairs. One hour, two hours had passed since the Syndic's departure with
Basterga; and still Anne remained with her mother and made no sign.
Once, spurred by anxiety and the thought that he might be of use, Claude
had determined to mount and seek her; but half-way up the stairs his
courage had failed he had recoiled from a scene so tender, and so
sacred. He had descended and fallen again to moving to and fro, and
listening, and staring remorsefully at the weapon--it lay where he had
dropped it on the floor--that had failed him in his need.

He had their threats in his ears, and by-and-by the horror of inaction,
the horror of sitting still and awaiting the worst with folded hands,
overcame him; and in a panic planning flight for them all, flight,
however hopeless, however desperate, he hurried into his bed-closet, and
began to pack his possessions. He packed impulsively until even the fat
text-books bulked in his bundle, and the folly of flying for life with a
Cæsar and Melancthon on his back struck him. Then he turned all out on
the floor in a fury of haste lest she should surprise him, and think
that he had had it in his mind to desert her.

Back he went on that to the living-room with its dying fire and
lengthening shadows; and there he resumed his solitary pacing. The room
lay silent, the house lay silent; even the rampart without, which the
biting wind kept clear of passers. He tried to reason on the position,
to settle what would happen, what steps Basterga and Blondel would take,
how the blow they threatened would fall. Would the officers of the
Syndic enter and seize the two helpless women and drag them to the
guard-house? In that case, what should he do, what could he do, since it
was most unlikely that he would be allowed to go with them or see them?
For a time the desperate notion of bolting and barring the house and
holding it against the law possessed his mind; but only to be quickly
dismissed. He was not yet mad enough for that. In the meantime was there
any one to whom he could appeal? Any course he could adopt?

The sound of the latch rising in its socket drew his eyes to the outer
door. It opened, and he saw Louis Gentilis on the threshold. Holding the
door ajar, the young man peered in. Meeting Claude's eyes, he looked to
the stairs, as if to seek the protection of Anne's presence; failing to
find her, he made for an instant as if he would shut the door again, and
go. But apparently he saw that Claude, thoroughly dispirited, was making
no motion to carry out his threats of vengeance; and he thought better
of it. He came in slowly, and closed the door after him. Turning his cap
in his hand, and with his eyes slyly fixed on Claude, he made without a
word for his bed-closet, entered it, and closed the door behind him.

His silence was strange, and his furtive manner impressed Claude
unpleasantly. They seemed to imply a knowledge that boded ill; nor was
the impression they made weakened when, two minutes later, the closet
door opened again, and he came out.

"What is it?" Claude asked, speaking sharply. He was not going to put up
with mystery of this sort.

For answer Louis' eyes met his a moment; then the young man, without
speaking, slid across the room to a chair on which lay a book. He took
up the volume; it was his. Next he discovered another possession--or so
it seemed--approached it and took seisin of it in the same dumb way; and
so with another and another. Finally, blinking and looking askance, he
passed his eyes from side to side to learn if he had overlooked
anything.

But Claude's patience, though prolonged by curiosity, was at an end. He
took a step forward, and had the satisfaction of seeing Louis drop his
air of mystery, and recoil two paces. "If you don't speak," Claude
cried, "I will break every bone in your body! Do you hear, you sneaking
rogue? Do you forget that you are in my debt already? Tell me in two
words what this dumb show means, or I will have payment for all!"

Master Louis cringed, divided between the desire to flee and the fear of
losing his property. "You will be foolish if you make any fuss here," he
muttered, his arm raised to ward off a blow. "Besides, I'm going," he
continued, swallowing nervously as he spoke. "Let me go."

"Going?"

"Yes."

"Do you mean," Claude exclaimed in astonishment, "that you are going for
good?"

"Yes, and if you will take my advice"--with a look of sinister
meaning--"you will go too. That is all."

"Why? Why?" Claude repeated.

Louis' only answer was a shudder, which told Claude that if the other
did not know all, he knew much. Dismayed and confounded, Mercier
stepped back, and, with a secret grin of satisfaction, Louis turned
again to his task of searching the room. He found presently that for
which he had been looking--his cloak. He disentangled it, with a
peculiar look, from a woman's hood, contact with which he avoided with
care. That done, he cast it over his arm, and got back into his closet.
Claude heard him moving there, and presently he emerged a second time.

Precisely as he did so Claude caught the sound of a light footstep on
the stairs, the stair door opened, and Anne, her face weary, but
composed, came in. Her first glance fell on Louis, who, with his sack
and cloak on his arm, was in the act of closing the closet door. Habit
carried her second look to the hearth.

"You have let the fire go out," she said. Then, turning to Louis, in a
voice cold and free from emotion, "Are you going?" she asked.

He muttered that he was, his face a medley of fear and spite and shame.

She nodded, but to Claude's astonishment expressed no surprise.
Meanwhile Louis, after dropping first his cloak and then his sack, in
his haste to be gone, shuffled his way to the door. The two looked on,
without moving or speaking, while he opened it, carried out his bag,
and, turning about, closed the door upon himself. They heard his
footsteps move away.

At length Claude spoke. "The rats, I see, are leaving," he muttered.

"Yes, the rats!" she echoed, and carried for a moment her eyes to his.
Then she knelt on the hearth, and uncovering the under side of the log,
where a little fire still smouldered, she fed it with two or three
fir-cones, and, stooping low, blew steadily on them until they caught
fire and blazed. He stood looking down at her, and marvelled at the
strength of mind that allowed her to stoop to trifles, or to think of
fires at such a time as this. He forgot that habit is of all stays the
strongest, and that to women a thousand trifles make up--God reward them
for it--the work of life: a work which instinct moves them to pursue,
though the heavens fall.

Several hours had elapsed since he had entered hotfoot to see her; and
the day was beginning to wane. The flame of the blazing fir-cones, a
hundred times reflected in the rows of pewter plates and the surface of
the old oaken dressers, left the corners of the room in shadow.
Immediately within the windows, indeed, the daylight held its own; but
when she rose and turned to him her back was towards the casement, and
the firelight which lit up her face flickered uncertainly, and left him
in doubt whether she were moved or not.

"You have eaten nothing!" she said, while he stood pondering what she
would say. "And it is four o'clock! I am sorry!" Her tone, which took
shame to herself, gave him a new surprise.

He stopped her as she turned to the dresser. "Your mother is better?" he
said gently.

"She is herself now," she replied, with a slight quaver, and without
looking at him. And she went about her work.

Did she know? Did she understand? In his world was only one fact, in his
mind only one tremendous thought: the fact of their position, the
thought of their isolation and peril. In her treatment of Louis she had
seemed to show knowledge and a comprehension as wide as his own. But if
she knew all, could she be as calm as she was? Could she go about her
daily tasks? Could she cut and lay and fetch with busy fingers, and all
in silence?

He thought not; and though he longed to consult her, to assure her and
comfort her, to tell her that the very isolation, the very peril in
which they stood were a happiness and a joy to him, whatever the issue,
because he shared them with her, he would not, by reason of that doubt.
He did not yet know the courage which underlies the gentlest natures:
nor did he guess that even as it was a joy to him to stand beside her in
peril, so it was a joy to her, even in that hour, to come and go for
him, to cut his bread and lay for him, to draw his wine from the great
cask under the stairs, and pour for him in the tall horn mug.

And little said. By him, because he shrank from opening her eyes to the
danger of their position; by her, because her mind was full and she
could not trust herself to speak calmly. But he knew that she, too, had
fasted since morning, and he made her eat with him: and it was in the
thoughts of each that they had never eaten together before. For commonly
Anne took her meal with her mother, or ate as the women of her time
often ate, standing, alone, when others had finished. There are moments
when the simplest things put on the beauty and significance of rites,
and this first eating together at the small table on the fire-lit hearth
was one of such moments. He saw that she did eat; and this care for her,
and the reverence of his manner, so moved her, that at last tears rose
and choked her, and to give her time and to hide his own feelings, he
stood up and affected to get something from the fireside.

Before he turned again, the latch rattled and the door flew open. The
freezing draught that entered, arrested him between the table and the
fire. The intruder was Grio. He stood an instant scowling on them, then
he entered and closed the door. He eyed the two with a sneering laugh,
and, turning, flung his cloak on a chair. It was ill-aimed and fell to
the ground.

"Why the devil don't you light?" he cried violently. "Eh?" He added
something in which the words "Old hag's devilry!" were alone audible.
"Do you hear?" he continued, more coherently. "Why don't you light? What
black games are you playing, I'd like to know? I want my things!"

Claude's fingers tingled, but danger and responsibility are sure
teachers, and he restrained himself. Neither of them answered, but Anne
fetched the lamp, and kindling a splinter of wood lighted it, and placed
it on the table. Then bringing the Spaniard's rushlight from the three
or four that stood on the dresser, she lighted it and held it out to
him.

"Set it down!" he said, with tipsy insolence. He was not quite sober.
"Set it down! I am not going to--hic!--risk my salvation! Avaunt, Satan!
It is possible to palm the evil one, like a card I am told,
and--hic!--soul out, devil in, all lost as easy as candle goes out!"

He had taken his candle with an unsteady hand, and unconsciously had
blown it out himself. She restrained Claude by a look, and patiently
taking the rushlight from Grio, she re-lit it and set it on the table
for him to take.

"As a candle goes out!" he repeated, eyeing it with drunken wisdom.
"Candle out, devil in, soul lost, there you have it in three
words--clever as any of your long-winded preachers! But I want my
things. I am going before it is too late. Advise you to go too, young
man," he hiccoughed, "before you are overlooked. She is a witch! She's
the devil's mark on her, I tell you! I'd like to have the finding it!"
And with an ugly leer he advanced a step as if he would lay hands on
her.

She shrank back, and Claude's eyes blazed. Fortunately, the bully's mind
passed to the first object of his coming; or it may be that he was sober
enough to read a warning in the younger man's face.

"Oh! time enough," he said. "You are not so nice always, I'll be bound.
And things come--hic!--to those who wait! I don't belong to your
Sabbaths, I suppose, or you'd be freer! But I want my things, and I am
going to have them! I defy thee, Satan! And all thy works!"

Still growling under his breath he burst open the staircase door, and
stumbled noisily upwards, the light wavering in his hand. Anne's eyes
followed him; she had advanced to the foot of the stairs, and Claude
understood the apprehension that held her. But the sounds did not
penetrate to the room on the upper floor, or Madame Royaume did not take
the alarm; perhaps she slept. And after assuring herself that Grio had
entered his room the girl returned to the table.

The Spaniard had spoken with brutal plainness; it was no longer possible
to ignore what he had said, or to lie under any illusion as to the
girl's knowledge of her peril. Claude's eyes met hers: and for a moment
the anguished human soul peered through the mask of constancy, for a
moment the woman in her, shrinking from the ordeal and the fire, from
shame and death, thrust aside the veil, and held out quivering, piteous
hands to him. But it was for a moment only. Before he could speak she
was brave as before, quiet as he had ever seen her, patient, mistress of
herself. "It is as you said," she muttered, smiling wanly, "the rats are
leaving us."

"Vermin!" he whispered. He could not trust himself to say more. His
voice shook, his eyes were full.

"They have not lost time," she continued in a low tone. She did not
cease to listen, nor did her eyes leave the staircase door. "Louis
first, and now Grio. How has it reached them so quickly, do you think?"

"Louis is hand in glove with the Syndic," he murmured.

"And Grio?"

"With Basterga."

She nodded. "What do you think they will do--first?" she whispered. And
again--it went to his heart--the woman's face, fear-drawn, showed as it
were beneath the mask with which love and faith and a noble resignation
had armed her. "Do you think they will denounce us at once?"

He shook his head in sheer inability to foresee; and then, seeing that
she continued to look anxiously for his answer, that answer which he
knew to be of no value, for minute by minute the sense of his
helplessness was weighing upon him, "It may be," he muttered. "God
knows. When Grio is gone we will talk about it."

She began, but always with a listening ear and an eye to the open door,
to remove from the table the remains of their meal. Midway in her task,
she glanced askance at the window, under the impression that some one
was looking through it; and in any case now the lamp was lit it exposed
them to the curiosity of the rampart. She was going to close the
shutters when Claude interposed, raised the heavy shutters and bolted
and barred them. He was turning from them when Grio's step was heard
descending.

Strange to say the Spaniard's first glance was at the windows, and he
looked genuinely taken aback when he saw that they were closed. "Why the
devil did you shut?" he exclaimed, in a rage; and passing Anne with a
sidelong movement, he flung a heavy bundle on the floor by the door. As
he turned to ascend again he met her eyes, and backing from her he made
with two of his fingers the ancient sign which southern people still use
to ward off the evil eye. Then, half shamefacedly, half recklessly, he
blundered upstairs again. A moment, and he came stumbling down; but this
time he was careful to keep the great bundle he bore between himself
and her eyes, until he had got the door open.

That precaution taken, as if he thought the free cold air which entered
would protect him from spells, he showed himself at his ease, threw down
his bundle and faced her with an air of bravado.

"I need not have feared," he said with a tipsy grin, "but I had
forgotten what I carry. I have a hocus-pocus here "--he touched his
breast--"written by a wise man in Ravenna, and sealed with a dead Goth's
hand, that is proof against devil or dam! And I defy thee, mistress."

"Why?" she cried. "Why?" And the note of indignation in her voice, the
passionate challenge of her eyes, enforced the question. In the human
mind is a desire for justice that will not be denied; and even from this
drunken ruffian a sudden impulse bade her demand it. "Why should you
defy me or fear me? What have I done to you, what have I done to any
one," she continued, with noble resentment, "that you should spread this
of me? You have eaten and drunk at my hand a hundred times; have I
poisoned or injured you? I have looked at you a hundred times; have I
overlooked you? You have lain down under this roof by night a hundred
times; have I harmed you sleeping or waking, full moon or no moon?"

For answer he leered at her slyly. "Not a whit," he said. "No."

"No?" Her colour rose.

"No; but you see"--with a grin--"it never leaves me, my girl." He
touched his breast. "While I wear that I am safe."

She gasped. "Do you mean that I----"

"I do not know what you would have done--but for that!" he retorted.
"Maimed me or wizened me, perhaps! Or, may be, made me waste away as
you did the child that died three doors away last Sunday!"

Her face changed slowly. Prepared as she had been for the worst by many
an hour of vigil beside her mother's bed, the horror of this precise
accusation--and such an accusation--overcame her. "What?" she cried.
"You dare to say that I--that I----" She could not finish.

But her eyes lightened, her form dilated with passion; and tipsy,
ignorant, brutish as he was, the Spaniard could not be blind to the
indignation, the resentment, the very wonder which stopped her breath
and choked her utterance. At the sight some touch of shame, some touch
of pity, made itself felt in the dull recesses even of that brain. "I
don't say it," he muttered awkwardly. "It is what they are saying in the
street."

"In the street?"

"Ay, where else?" He knew who said it, for he knew whence his orders
came: but he was not going to tell her. Yet the spark of kindliness
which she had kindled still lived--how could it be otherwise in presence
of her youth and gentleness? "If you'll take my advice," he continued
roughly, "you'll not show yourself in the streets unless you wish to be
mishandled, my girl. It will be time enough when the time comes. Even
now, if you were to leave your old witch of a mother and get good
protection, there is no knowing but you might be got clear! You are a
fair bit of red and white," with a grin. "And it is not far to Savoy!
Will you come if I risk it?"

A gesture, half refusal, half loathing, answered him.

"Oh, very well!" he said. The short-lived fit of pity passed from him;
he scowled. "You'll think differently when they have the handling of
you. I'm glad to be going, for where there's one fire there are apt to
be more; and I am a Christian, no matter who's not! Let who will burn,
I'll not!"

He picked up one bundle and, carrying it out, raised his voice. A man,
who had shrunk, it seemed, from entering the house, showed his face in
the light which streamed from the door. To this fellow he gave the
bundle, and shouldering the other, he went heavily out, leaving the door
wide open behind him.

Claude strode to it and closed it; but not so quickly that he had not a
glimpse of three or four pairs of eyes staring in out of the darkness;
eyes so curious, so fearful, so quickly and noiselessly withdrawn--for
even while he looked, they were gone--that he went back to the hearth
with a shiver of apprehension.

Fortunately, she had not seen them. She stood where he had left her, in
the same attitude of amazement into which Grio's accusation had cast
her. As she met his gaze--then, at last, she melted. The lamplight
showed her eyes brimming over with tears; her lips quivered, her breast
heaved under the storm of resentment.

"How dare they say it?" she cried. "How dare they? That I would harm a
child? A child?" And, unable to go on, she held out protesting hands to
him. "And my mother? My mother, who never injured any one or harmed a
hair of any one's head! That she--that they should say that of her! That
they should set that to her! But I will go this instant," impetuously,
"to the child's mother. She will hear me. She will know and believe me.
A mother? Yes, I will go to her!"

"Not now," he said. "Not now, Anne!"

"Yes, now," she persisted, deaf to his voice. She snatched up her hood
from the ground on which it had fallen, and began to put it on.

He seized her arm. "No, not now," he said firmly. "You shall not go now.
Wait until daylight. She will listen to you more coolly then."

She resisted him. "Why?" she said. "Why?"

"People fancy things at night," he urged. "I know it is so. If she saw
you enter out of the darkness"--the girl with her burning eyes, her wet
cheeks, her disordered hair looked wild enough--"she might refuse to
believe you. Besides----"

"What?"

"I will not have you go now," he said firmly. That instant it had
flashed upon him that one of the faces he had seen outside was the face
of the dead child's mother. "I will not let you go," he repeated. "Go in
the daylight. Go to-morrow morning. Go then, if you will!" He did not
choose to tell her that he feared for her instant safety if she went
now; that, if he had his will, the streets would see her no more for
many a day.

She gave way. She took off her hood, and laid it on the table. But for
several minutes she stood, brooding darkly and stormily, her hands
fingering the strings. To foresee is not always to be forearmed. She had
lived for months in daily and hourly expectation of the blow which had
fallen; but not the more easily for that could she brook the concrete
charge. Her heart burned, her soul was on fire. Justice, give us justice
though the heavens fall, is an instinct planted deep in man's nature! Of
the Mysterious Passion of our Lord our finite minds find no part worse
than the anguish of innocence condemned. A child? She to hurt a child?
And her mother? Her mother, so harmless, so ignorant, so tormented! She
to hurt a child?

After a time, nevertheless, the storm began to subside. But with it died
the hope which is inherent in revolt; in proportion as she grew more
calm the forlornness of her situation rose more clearly before her. At
last that had happened which she had so long expected to happen. The
thing was known. Soon the full consequences would be upon her, the
consequences on which she dared not dwell. Shudderingly she tried to
close her eyes to the things that might lie before her, to the things at
which Grio had hinted, the things of which she had lain thinking--even
while they were distant and uncertain--through many a night of bitter
fear and fevered anticipation.

They were at hand now, and though she averted her thoughts, she knew it.
But the wind is tempered to the shorn. Even as the prospect of future
ill can dominate the present, embitter the sweetest cup, and render
thorny the softest bed, so, sometimes, present good has the power to
obscure the future evil. As Anne sank back on the settle, her trembling
limbs almost declining to bear her, her eyes fell on her companion.
Failing to rouse her, he had seated himself on the other side of the
hearth, his elbows on his knees, his chin on his hands, in an attitude
of deep thought. And little by little, as she looked at him, her cheeks
grew, if not red, less pale, her eyes lost their tense and hopeless
gaze. She heaved a quivering sigh, and slowly carried her look round the
room.

Its homely comfort, augmented by the hour and the firelight, seemed to
lap them round. The door was locked, the shutters were closed, the lamp
burned cheerfully. And he sat opposite--sat as if they had been long
married. The colour grew deeper in her face as she gazed; she breathed
more quickly; her eyes shone. What evil cannot be softened, what
misfortune cannot be lightened to a woman by the knowledge that she is
loved by the man she loves? That where all have fled, he remains, and
that neither fear of death nor word of man can keep him from her side?

He looked up in the end, and caught the look on her face, the look that
a woman bestows on one man only in her life. In a moment he was on his
knees beside her, holding her hands, covering them with kisses, vowing
to save her, to save her--or to die with her!




CHAPTER XX.

IN THE DARKENED ROOM.


Claude flung the cloak from his head and shoulders, and sat up. It was
morning--morning, after that long, dear sitting together--and he stared
confusedly about him. He had been dreaming; all night he had slept
uneasily. But the cry that had roused him, the cry that had started that
quick beating of the heart, the cry that still rang in his waking ears
and frightened him, was no dream.

As he rose to his feet, his senses began to take in the scene; he
remembered what had happened and where he was. The shutters were lowered
and open. The cold grey light of the early morning at this deadest
season of the year fell cheerlessly on the living-room; in which for the
greater safety of the house he had insisted on passing the night. Anne,
whose daily task it was to open the shutters, had been down then: she
must have been down, or whence the pile of fresh cones and splinters
that crackled, and spirted flame about the turned log. Perhaps it was
her mother's cry that had roused him; and she had re-ascended to her
room.

He strode to the staircase door, opened it softly and listened. No, all
was silent above; and then a new notion struck him, and he glanced
round. Her hood was gone. It was not on the table on which he had seen
it last night.

It was so unlikely, however, that she had gone out without telling him,
that he dismissed the notion; and, something recovered from the strange
agitation into which the cry had cast him, he yawned. He returned to the
hearth and knelt and re-arranged the sticks so that the air might have
freer access to the fire. Presently he would draw the water for her, and
fill the great kettle, and sweep the floor. The future might be gloomy,
the prospect might lower, but the present was not without its pleasures.

All his life his slowness to guess the truth on this occasion was a
puzzle to him. For the materials were his. Slowly, gradually, as he
crouched sleepily before the fire, it grew upon him that there was a
noise in the air; a confused sound, not of one cry, but of many, that
came from the street, from the rampart. A noise, now swelling a little,
now sinking a little, that seemed as he listened not so distant as it
had sounded a while ago. Not distant at all, indeed; quite close--now! A
sound of rushing water, rather soothing; or, as it swelled, a sound of a
crowd, a gibing, mocking crowd. Yes, a crowd. And then in one instant
the change was wrought.

He was on his feet; he was at the door. He, who a moment before had
nodded over the fire, watching the flames grow, was transformed in five
seconds into a furious man, tugging at the door, wrestling madly with
the unyielding oak. Wrestling, and still the noise rose! And still he
strained in vain, back and sinew, strained until with a cry of despair
he found that he could not win. The door was locked, the key was gone!
He was a prisoner!

And still the noise that maddened him, rose. He sprang to the right-hand
window, the window nearest the commotion. He tore open a panel of the
small leaded panes, and thrust his head between the bars. He saw a
crowd; for an instant, in the heart of the crowd and raised above it,
he saw an uplifted arm and a white woman's face from which blood was
flowing. He drew in his head, and laid his hands to one of the bars and
flung his weight this way and that, flung it desperately, heedless of
injury. But in vain. The lead that soldered the bar into the strong
stone mullion held, and would have held against the strength of four.
With heaving breast, and hands from which the blood was starting, he
stood back, glared round him, then with a cry flung himself upon the
other window, tore it open and seized a bar--the middle one of the
three. It was loose he remembered. God! why had he not thought of it
before? Why had he wasted time?

He wasted no more, with those shouts of cruel glee in his ears. The bar
came out in his hands. He thrust himself feet first through the
aperture. Slight as he was, it was small for him, and he stuck fast at
the hips, and had to turn on his side. The rough edges of the bars
scraped the skin, but he was through, and had dropped to his feet, the
bar which he had plucked out still in his hands. For a fraction of a
second, as he alighted, his eyes took in the crowd, and the girl at bay
against the wall. She was raised a little above her tormentors by the
steps on which she had taken refuge.

On one side her hair hung loose, and the cheek beneath it was cut and
bleeding, giving her a piteous and tragic aspect. Four out of five of
her assailants were women; one of these had torn her face with her
nails. Streaks of mud were mingled with the blood which ran down her
neck; and even as Claude recovered himself after the drop from the
window, a missile, eluding the bent arm with which she strove to shield
her face, struck and bespattered her throat where the collar of her
frock had been torn open--perhaps by the same rough clutch which had
dragged down her hair. The ring about her--like all crowds in the
beginning--were strangely silent; but a yell of derision greeted this
success, and a stone flew, narrowly missing her, and another, and
another. A woman, holding a heavy Bible after the fashion of a shield,
was stooping and striking at her knees with a stick, striving to bring
her to the ground; and with the cruel laughter that hailed the hag's
ungainly efforts were mingled other and more ugly sounds, low curses,
execrations, and always one fatal word, "Witch! Witch!"--fatal word spat
at her by writhing mouths, hissed at her by pale lips, tossed broadcast
on the cold morning wind, to breed wherever it flew fear and hate and
suspicion. For, even while they mocked her they feared her, and shielded
themselves against her power with signs and crossings and the Holy Book.

To all, curse and blow and threat, she had only one word. Striving
patiently to shield her face, "Let me go!" she wailed pitifully. "Let me
go! Let me go!" Strange to say, she cried even that but softly; as who
should say, "If you will not, kill me quietly, kill me without noise!"
Ay, even then, with the blood running down her face, and with those eyes
more cruel than men's eyes hemming her in, she was thinking of the
mother whom she had sheltered so long.

"Let me go! Let me go!" she repeated.

"Witch, you shall go!" they answered ruthlessly. "To hell!"

"Ay, with her dam! To the water with her! To the water!"

"Look for the devil's mark! Search her! Again, Martha! Bring her down!
Bring her down, and we'll soon see whether----"

Then he reached them. The man, one of the few present, who had bidden
them search her fell headlong on his face in the gutter, struck behind
as by a thunder-bolt. The great Bible flew one way, the hag's stick flew
another--and in its flight felled a second woman. In a twinkling Claude
was on the steps, and in the heart of the crowd stood two people, not
one; in a twinkling his arm was round the girl, his pale, furious face
confronted her tormentors, his blazing eyes beat down theirs! More than
all, his iron bar, brandished recklessly this way and that, threatened
the brains of the man or the woman who was bold enough to withstand him.

For he was beside himself with rage. He learned in that moment that he
was of those who fight with joy and rejoicing, and laugh where others
shake. The sight of that white, bleeding face, of that hanging hair, of
that suppliant arm, above all, the sound of that patient "Let me go! Let
me go!" that expected nothing and hoped nothing, had turned his blood to
fire. The more numerous his opponents--if they were men--the better he
would be pleased; and if they were women, such women, unsexed by hate
and superstition, as he saw before him, women looking a millionfold more
like witches than the girl they accused, the worse for them! His arm
would not falter!

It seemed of steel indeed. The bar quivered like a reed in his grasp,
his eyes darted hither and thither, he stood an inch taller than at
other times. He was like the war-horse that sniffs the battle.

And yet he was cool after a fashion. He must get her home, and to do so
he must not lose a moment. The vantage of the steps on which they stood,
raised a hand's breath above their assailants, was a thing to be
weighed; but it would not serve them if these cursed women mustered, and
the cowardly crew before him throve to a mob. He must home with her. But
the door was locked, and she could only go in as he had come out. Still,
she must go.

He thought all this between one stride and another--and other thoughts
thick as leaves falling in a wind. Then, "Fools!" he thundered, and had
her down the steps, and was dragging her towards her door before they
awoke from their surprise, or thought of attacking him. The woman with
the big Bible had had her fill--though he had not struck her but her
stick--and sat where she had fallen in the mud. The other woman hugged
herself in pain. The man was in no hurry to be up, having once felt
Claude's knee in the small of his back. For a few seconds no one moved;
and when they recovered themselves he was half-way to the Royaumes'
door.

They snatched up mud, then, and flung it after the pair with shrill
execrations. And the woman who had picked up the stick hurled it in a
frenzy after them, but wide of the mark. A dozen stones fell round them,
and the cry of "The Witch! The Witch!"--cry so ominous, so cruel, cry
fraught with death for so many poor creatures--followed hard on them.
But they were within five paces of the door now, and if he could lift
her to the window----

"The key," she murmured in his ear. "The key is in the lock!"

She had her wits, too, then, and her courage! He felt a glow of pride,
his arm pressed her more closely to him. "Unlock it!" he answered, and
leaving her to it, having now no fear that she would faint or fall, he
turned on the rabble with his bar.

But they were for words, not blows, a rabble of cowards and women. They
turned tail with screams and fled to a distance, more than one falling
in the sudden _volte-face_. He made no attempt to pursue them along the
rampart, but looked behind him, and found that she had opened the door.
She had taken out the key, and was waiting for him to enter.

He went up the steps, entered, and she closed the door quickly. It shut
out in a moment the hootings of the returning women. While she locked it
on the inside, he raised the bars and slid them into their places. Then,
not till then, he turned to her.

Her face averted, she was staunching the blood which trickled from her
cheek. "It was the child's mother!" she faltered, a sob in her voice. "I
went to her. I thought--that she would believe. Get me some water,
please! I must go upstairs. My mother will be frightened."

He was astonished: on fire himself, with every pulse beating madly, he
was prepared for her to faint, to fall, to fling herself into his arms
in gratitude; prepared for everything but this self-forgetfulness.
"Water?" he said doubtfully, "but had you not better--take some wine,
Anne?"

"To wash! To wash!" she replied sharply, almost angrily. "How can I go
to her in this state? And do you shut the shutters."

A stone had that moment passed through a pane of one of the windows. The
rout of women were gathering before the house; the step she advised was
plainly necessary. Fortunately the Royaumes' house, like all in the
Corraterie--which formed an inner line of defence pierced by the
Tertasse gate--had outside shutters of massive thickness, capable of
being lowered from within. He closed these in haste and found, when he
turned from the task and looked for her--a small round hole in each
shutter made things dimly visible--that she was gone to soothe her
mother.

He could not but love her the more for it. He could not but respect her
the more for her courage, for her thoughtfulness, her self-denial. But
when the heart is full and would unburden itself, when the brain teems
with pent-up thoughts, when the excitement of action and of peril wanes
and the mind would fain tell and hear and compare and remember--then to
be alone, to be solitary, is to sink below one's self.

For a time, while his pulses still beat high, while the heat of battle
still wrought in him, and the noise without continued, and there seemed
a prospect of things to be done, he stood up against this. Thump! Thump!
They were stoning the shutters. Let them! He placed the settle across
the hearth, and in this way cut off the firelight that might have
betrayed those in the room to eyes peeping through the holes. By-and-by
the shrill vixenish cries rose louder, he caught the sound of voices in
altercation, and of hoarse orders: and slowly and reluctantly the babel
seemed to pass away. An anxious moment followed: fearfully he listened
for the knock of the law, the official summons which must make all his
efforts useless. But it did not come.

It was when the silence which ensued had lasted some minutes that the
strangeness and aloofness of his position in this darkened room began to
weigh on his spirits. His eyes had adapted themselves to the gloom, and
he could make out the shapes of the furniture. But it was morning! It
was day! Outside, the city was beginning to go about its ordinary work,
its ordinary life. The streets were filling, the classes were mustering.
And he sat here in the dark! The longer he stared into the strange,
depressing gloom, the farther he seemed from life; the more solitary,
the more hopeless, the more ominous seemed the position.

Alone with two women whom the worst of fates threatened! Whose pains and
ultimate lot the brawl in which he had taken part foreshadowed too
clearly. For thus and with as little cause perished in those days
thousands of the helpless and the friendless. Alone with these two,
under the roof from which all others had fled, barred with them behind
the gloomy shutters until the hour came, and their fellows, shuddering,
cast them out--what chance had he of escaping their lot?

Or what desire to escape it? None, he told himself. None! But he who
fights best when blows are to be struck and things can be done finds it
hard to sit still where it is the inevitable that must be faced. And
while Claude told himself that he had no desire to escape, since escape
for her was impossible, his mind sought desperately the means of saving
all. The frontier lay but a league away. Conceivably they might lower
themselves from the wall by night; conceivably his strength might avail
to carry her mother to the frontier. But, alas! the crime of witchcraft
knew no frontier; the reputation of a witch once thrown abroad, flew
fast as the swiftest horse. Before they had been three days in Savoy,
the women would be reported, seized and examined; and their fate at
Faucigny or Bonneville would be no less tragic than in the Bourg du Four
of Geneva.

Yet, something must be done, something could surely be done. But what?
The bravest caught in a net struggles the most desperately, and involves
himself the most hopelessly. And Claude felt himself caught in a net. He
felt the deadly meshes cling about his limbs, the ropes fetter and
benumb him. From the sunshine of youth, from freedom, from a life
without care, he had passed in a few days into the grip of this [Greek:
anagkê], this dire necessity, this dark ante-chamber of death. Was it
wonderful that for a moment, recognising the sacrifice he was called
upon to make and its inefficacy to save, he rebelled against the love
that had drawn him to this fate, that had led him to this, that in
others' eyes had ruined him? Ay, but for a moment only. Then with a
heart bursting with pity for her, with love for her, he was himself. If
it must be, it must be. The prospect was dark as the room in which he
stood, confined and stifling, sordid and shameful; the end one which
would make his name a marvel and an astonishment. But the prospect and
the end were hers too; they would face them together. Haply he might
spare her some one pang, haply he might give her some one moment of
happiness, the support of one at least who knew her pure and spotless.
And while he thought of it--surprise of surprises--he bowed his head on
his folded arms and wept.

Not in pity for himself, but for her. It was the thought of her
gentleness, her loving nature, her harmlessness--and the end this, the
reward this--which overcame him; which swelled his breast until only
tears could relieve it. He saw her as a dove struggling in cruel hands;
and the pity which, had there been chance or hope, or any to smite,
would have been rage, could find no other outlet. He wept like a woman;
but it was for her.

And she, who had descended unheard, and stood even now at the door, with
a something almost divine in her face--a something that was neither love
nor compassion, maid's fancy nor mother's care, but a mingling of all
these, saw. And her heart bled for him; her arms in fancy went round
him, in fancy his head was on her breast, she comforted him. She, who a
moment before had almost sunk down on the stairs, worn out by her
sufferings and the strain of hiding them from her mother's eyes, forgot
her weakness in thought for him.

She had no contempt for his tears. She had seen him stand between
herself and her tormentors, she had seen the flash of his eye, heard his
voice, knew him brave. But the fate, for which long thought and hours on
her knees had prepared her--so that it seemed but a black and bitter
passage with peace beyond--appalled her for him; and might well appal
him. The courage of men is active, of women passive; with a woman's
instinct she knew this, allowed for it, and allowed, too, for another
thing--that he was fasting.

When he looked up, startled by the tinkle of pewter and the rustle of
her skirt, she was kneeling between the settle and the fire, preparing
food. He flattered himself that in the dark she had not seen him, and
when he had regained his self-control he stepped to the settle-back and
looked over it.

"You did not see me?" he said.

She did not answer at once, but finished what she was doing. Then she
stood up and handed him a bowl. "The bread is on the table," she said,
indicating it. She was a woman, and, dark as it was, she kept the
disfigured cheek turned from him.

He would have replied, but she made a sign to him to eat, and, seating
herself on a stool in the corner with her plate on her lap, she set him
an example. Apart from her weary attitude, and the droop of her head, he
might have deemed the scene in which they had taken part a figment of
his brain. But round them was the gloom of the closed room!

"You did not see me?" he repeated presently.

She stood up. "I would I had never seen you!" she cried; and her
anguished tone bore witness to the truth of her words. "It is the worst,
it is the bitterest thing of all! of all!" she repeated. The settle was
between them, and she rested her hands on the back of it. He stooped,
and, in the darkness, covered them with kisses, while his breast heaved
with the swell of the storm which her entrance had cut short. "For all
but that I was prepared," she continued; "I was ready. I have seen for
weeks the hopelessness of it, the certain end, the fate before us. I
have counted the cost, and I have learned to look beyond for--for all we
desire. It is a sharp passage, and peace. But you"--her voice rested on
the same tragic note of monotony--"are outside the sum, and spoil all. A
little suffering will kill my mother, a little, a very little fear. I
doubt if she will live to be taken hence. And I--I can suffer. I have
known all, I have foreseen all--long! I have learned to think of it, and
I can learn by God's help to bear it! And in a little while, a very
little while, it will be over, and I shall be at rest. But you--you, my
love----"

Her voice broke, her head sunk forward. His lips met hers in a first
kiss; a kiss, salted by the tears that ran unchecked down his face. For
a long minute there was silence in the room, a silence broken only by
the low, inarticulate murmur of his love--love whispered brokenly on her
tear-wet lips, on her cold, closed eyelids. She made no attempt to
withdraw her face, and presently the murmur grew to words of defiance,
of love that mocked at peril, mocked at shame, mocked at death, having
assurance of its own, having assurance of her.

They fell on her ears as warm thaw-rain on frozen sward; and slowly into
the pallor of her face, the whiteness of her closed eyelids, crept a
tender blush. Strange that for a few brief moments they were happy;
strange, proof marvellous of the dominance of the inner life over the
outer, of love over death.

"My love, my love!"

"Again!"--he murmured.

"My love, my love!"

But at length she came to herself, she remembered. "You will go?" she
said. She put him from her and held him fondly at arm's length, her
hands on his shoulders. "You will go? It is all you can do for me. You
will go and live?"

"Without you?"

"Yes. Better, a hundred times better so--for me."

"And for me? Why may I not save you and her?"

"It is impossible!"

"Nothing is impossible to love," he answered. "The nights are long, the
wall is not too high! No wall is too high for love! It is but a league
to the frontier, and I am strong."

"Who would receive us?" she asked sadly. "Who would shelter us? In
Savoy, if we were not held for sorcery, we should be delivered to the
Inquisition."

"We might gain friends?"

"With what? No," she continued, her hands cleaving more tightly to him;
"you must go, dear love! Dear love! You must go! It is all you can do
for me, and it is much! Oh, indeed, it is much! It is very much!"

He drew her to him as near as the settle would permit, until she was
kneeling on it, and in spite of her faint resistance he could look into
her eyes. "Were you in my place, would you leave me?" he asked.

"Yes," she lied bravely, "I would."

But the flash of resentment in her eyes gave her voice the lie, and he
laughed joyfully. "You would not!" he said. "You would not leave me on
this side of death!"

She tried to protest.

"Nor will I you," he continued, stopping her mouth with fresh kisses.
"Nor will I you till death! Did you think me a coward?" He held her from
him and looked into her reproachful eyes. "Or a Tissot? Tissot left you.
Or Louis Gentilis?"

But she made him know that he was none of these in a way that satisfied
him; and a moment later her mother's voice called her from the room. He
thought, having no experience of a woman's will, that he had done with
that; and in her absence he betook himself to examining the defences of
the house. He replaced the bar which he had wrested from the window;
wedging it into its socket with a morsel or two of molten lead. The
windows of the bedrooms, his own and Louis', looked into a narrow lane,
the Rue de la Cité, that ran at the back of the Corraterie in a line
with the ramparts; but not only were they almost too small to permit the
passage of a full-grown man, they were strongly barred. Against such a
rabble, as had assaulted Anne, or even a more formidable mob, the house
was secure. But if the law intervened neither bar nor bolt could save
them.

He fell to thinking of this, and stood, arrested in the middle of the
darkened room that, as the hours went by, was beginning to take on a
familiar look. The day was passing, all without remained quiet, nothing
had happened. Was it possible that nothing would happen? Was it possible
that the girl through long brooding exaggerated the peril? And that the
worst to be feared was such an outbreak as had occurred that morning?
Such an outbreak as might not take place again, since mobs were fickle
things.

He dwelt a while on this more hopeful view of things. Then he recalled
Basterga's threats, the Syndic's face, the departure of Louis and Grio;
and his heart sank as lead sinks. The rumour so quickly spread--by what
hints, what innuendoes, what cunning inquiries, what references to the
old, invisible, bedridden woman, he could but guess--that rumour bore
witness to a malice and a thirst for revenge which were not likely to
stop at words. And Louis' flight? And Grio's? And Basterga's?--for he
did not return. To believe that all these, taken together, these and the
outrage of the morning, portended anything but danger, anything but the
worst, demanded a hopefulness that even his youth and his love could not
compass.

Yet when she descended he met her with brave looks.




CHAPTER XXI.

THE _REMEDIUM_.


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. He would have seen--no one more clearly--that, in making the
bargain he had made, he was in the position of a drowning man who
clutches at a straw; not because he believes that the straw will support
him, but because he has no other hope, and is loth to sink.

He would have seen, too, another thing, which indeed he did see dimly.
This was that, talk as he might, make terms as he might, repeat as
firmly as he pleased, "The _remedium_ first and then Geneva," he would
be forced when the time came to take the word for the deed. If he dared
not trust Basterga, neither dared the scholar trust him. Once safe, once
snatched from the dark fate that scared him, he would laugh at the
notion of betraying the city. He would snap his fingers in the Paduan's
face; and Basterga knew it. The scholar, therefore, dared not trust him;
and either there was an end of the matter or he must trust Basterga,
must eat his own words, and, content with the possession of something,
must wait for proof of its efficacy until the die was cast!

In his heart he knew this. He knew that on the brink of the extremity
to which circumstances and Basterga were slowly pushing him it might not
be in his power to check himself: that he must trust, whether he would
or no, and where instinct bade him place no trust. And this doubt, this
suspicion that when all was done he might find himself tricked, and
learn that for nothing he had given all, added immeasurably to the
torment of his mind; to the misery of his reflections when he awoke in
the small hours and saw things coldly and clearly, and to the fever and
suspense in which he passed his days.

He clung to one thought and got what consolation he could from it; a
bitter and saturnine comfort it was. The thought was this: if it turned
out that, after all, he had been tricked, he could but die; and die he
must if he made no bargain. And to a dead man what matter was it what
price he had paid that he might live! What matter who won or who lost
Geneva, who lived, who died, who were slaves, who free!

And again, the very easiness of the thing he was asked to do tempted
him. It was a thing that to one in his position presented no difficulty
and scarcely any danger. He had but to withdraw the guards, or the
greater part of them, from a portion of the wall, and to stop on one
pretext or another--the bitter cold of the wintry weather would
avail--the rounds that at stated intervals visited the various posts.
That was all; as a man of tried loyalty, intrusted with the safeguarding
of the city, and to whom the officer of the watch was answerable, he
might make the necessary arrangements without incurring, even after the
catastrophe, more than a passing odium, a breath of suspicion.

And Baudichon and Petitot? He tasted, when he thought of them, the only
moments of comfort, of pleasure, of ease, that fell to his lot
throughout these days. They would thwart him no more. Petty worms,
whose vision went no farther than the walls of the city, he would have
done with them when the flag of Savoy fluttered above St. Pierre; and
when for the confines of a petty canton was substituted, for those who
had eyes to see and courage to adapt themselves, the wide horizon of the
Italian Kingdom. When he thought of them--and then only--he warmed to
the task before him; then only he could think of it without a shiver and
without distaste. And not the less because on that side, in their
suspicion, in their grudging jealousy, in their unwinking integrity, lay
the one difficulty.

A difficulty exasperated by the insult that, in a moment of bitter
disappointment, he had flung in Baudichon's face. That hasty word had
revealed to the speaker a lack of self-control that terrified him, even
as it had revealed to Baudichon a glimpse of something underneath the
Fourth Syndic's dry exterior that might well set a man thinking as well
as talking. This matter Blondel saw plainly he must deal with at once,
or it might do harm. To absent himself from the next day's council might
rouse a storm beyond his power to weather, or short of that might give
rise at a later period to a dangerous amount of gossip and conjecture.

He was early at the meeting, therefore, but to his surprise found it in
session before the hour. This, and the fact that the hubbub of voices
and discussion died down at his entrance--died down and was succeeded by
a chilling silence--put him on his guard. He had not come unprepared for
opposition; to meet it he had wound himself to a pitch, telling himself
that after this all would be easy; that he had this one peril to face,
this one obstacle to surmount, and having succeeded might rest.
Nevertheless, as he passed up the Great Council Chamber amid that
silence, and met strange looks on faces which were wont to smile, his
courage for one moment, even in that familiar scene--conscience makes
cowards of all--wavered. His smile grew sickly, his nerves seemed
suddenly unstrung, his knees shook under him. It was a dreadful instant
of physical weakness, of mental terror, under the eyes of all. To
himself, he seemed to stand still; to be self-betrayed, self-convicted!

Then--and so brief was the moment of weakness no eye detected it--he
moved on to his place, and with his usual coolness took his seat. He
looked round.

"You are early," he said, ignoring the glances, hostile or doubtful,
that met his gaze. "The hour has barely struck, I believe?"

"We were of opinion," Fabri answered, with a dry cough, "that minutes
were of value."

"Ah!"

"That not even one must be lost, Messer Blondel!"

"In doing?" Blondel asked in a negligent tone, well calculated to annoy
those who were eager in the matter. "In doing what, if I may ask?"

"In doing, Messer Syndic," Petitot answered sharply, "that which should
have been done a week ago; and better still a fortnight ago. In issuing
a warrant for the arrest of the person whose name has been several times
in question here."

"Messer Basterga?"

"The same."

"You may save yourselves the trouble," the Syndic replied, with a little
contempt. "The warrant has been issued. It was issued yesterday, and
would have been executed in the afternoon, if he had not got wind of it,
and left the town. And on this let me say one more word," Blondel
continued, leaning forward and speaking in sudden heat, before any one
could take up the question. "That word is this. If it had not been for
the importunity of some who are here, the warrant had _not_ been issued,
the man had still been within the walls, and we had been able still to
trace his plans! We had not been as we now are, and as I foretold we
should be, in the dark, ignorant from which quarter the blow may fall,
and not a whit the wiser for the hint given us."

"You have let him escape!" The words were Petitot's.

"I? No! I have not let him escape, but those who forced my hand!"
Blondel retorted in passion, so real, or so well simulated, that it
swept away the majority of his listeners. "They have let him escape!
Those who had no patience or craft! Those whose only notion of
statesmanship, whose only method of making use of the document we had
under our hand was to tear it up. Only yesterday morning I was with
him----"

"Ay?" Baudichon cried, his eyes glowing with dull passion. "You were
with him! And he went in the afternoon! Mark that!" He turned quickly to
his fellows. "He went in the afternoon! Now, I would like to know----"

Blondel stood up. "Whether I am a traitor?" he said, in a tone of fury;
and he extended his arms in protest. "Whether I am in league with this
Italian, I, Philibert Blondel of Geneva? That is what you ask, what you
wish to know! Whether I sought him yesterday in the hope of worming his
secrets from him, and doing what I could for the benefit of the State in
a matter too delicate to be left to underlings? Or went there, one with
him, to betray my country? To sell the Free City? That--that is what you
ask?"

His passion was full, overpowering, convincing; so convincing--it almost
stopped his speech--that he believed in it himself, so convincing that
it swept away all but his steady and professed opponents. "No, no!"
cried a dozen voices, in tones that reflected his indignation. "No, no!
Shame!"

"No?" Blondel took up the word, his eyes sparkling, his adust complexion
heated and full of fire. "But it is--yes, they say! Yes, they say whom
you have to thank if we have lost our clue, they who met me going to him
but yesterday and threatened me! Threatened me!" he repeated, in a voice
of astonishment. "Me, who desired only, sought only, was going only to
do my duty! I used, I admit the fault," he allowed his voice to drop to
a tone more like his own, "words on that occasion that I now regret. But
is blood water? Does no man besides Councillor Baudichon love his
country? Is the suspicion, the open suspicion of such an one, no insult,
that he must cavil if he be repaid in insult? I have given my proofs. If
any man can be trusted to sound the enemy, it is I! But I have done! Had
Messer Baudichon not pressed me to issue the warrant, not driven me
beyond my patience, it had not been issued yesterday. It had been in the
office, and the man within the walls! Ay, and not only within the walls,
but fresh from a conference with the Sieur d'Albigny, primed with all we
need to know, and in doubt by which side he could most profit!"

"It was about that you saw him?" Petitot said slowly, his eyes fixed
like gimlets to the other's face.

"It was about that I saw him," Blondel answered. "And I think in a few
hours more I had won him. But in the street he had some secret word or
warning; for when I handed the warrant--against my better sense--to the
officers, they, who had never lost sight of him between gate and gate,
answered that he had crossed the bridge and left the town an hour
before. Mon Dieu!"--he struck his two hands together and snapped his
teeth--"when I think how foolish I was to be over-ridden, I could--I
could say more, Messer Baudichon"--with a saturnine look--"than I said
yesterday!"

"At any rate the bird is flown!" Baudichon replied, with sullen temper.
"That is certain! And it was you who were set to catch him!"

"But it was not I who scared him," Blondel rejoined.

"I don't know what you would have had of him!"

"Oh, I see that plainly enough," said Fabri. He was an honest man,
without prejudice, and long the peace-maker between the two parties.

"I thank you," Blondel replied dryly. "But, by your leave, I will make
it clear to Messer Baudichon also, who will doubtless like to know. I
would have had of him the time and place and circumstance of the attack,
if such be in preparation. And then, when I knew all, I would have made
dispositions, not only to safeguard the city, but to give the enemy such
a reception that Italy should ring with it! Ay, and such as should put
an end for the rest of our lives to these treacherous attacks!"

The picture which he drew thus briefly of a millennium of safety,
charmed not only his own adherents, but all who were neutral, all who
wavered. They saw how easily the thing might have been done, how
completely the treacherous blow might have been parried and returned.
Veering about they eyed Baudichon, on whom the odium of the lost
opportunity seemed to rest, with resentment--as an honest man, but a
simpleton, a dullard, a block! And when Blondel added, after a pause,
"But there, I have done! The office of Fourth Syndic I leave to you to
fill," they barely allowed him to finish.

"No! No!" came from almost all mouths, and from every part of the
council table.

"No," Fabri said, when silence was made. "There is no provision for a
change, unless a definite accusation be laid."

"But Messer Baudichon may have one to make," Blondel said proudly. "In
that case, let him speak."

Baudichon breathed hard, and seemed to be on the point of pouring forth
a torrent of words. But he said nothing. Instinct told him that his
enemy was not to be trusted, but he had the wit to discern that Blondel
had forestalled him, and had drawn the sting from his charges. He could
have wept in dull, honest indignation; but for accusations, he saw that
the other held the game, and he was silent. "Fat hog!" the man had
called him. "Fat hog!" A tear gathered slowly in his eye as he recalled
it.

Fabri gave him time to speak; and then with evident relief, "He has none
to make, I am sure," he said.

"Let him understand, then," Blondel replied firmly, "let all understand,
that while I will do my duty I am no longer in the position to guard
against sudden strokes, in which I should have been, had I been allowed
to go my own way. If a misfortune happen, it is not on me the blame must
rest." He spoke solemnly, laughing in his sleeve at the cleverness with
which he was turning his enemy's petard against him. "All that man can
do in the dark shall be done," he continued. "And I do not--I am free to
confess that--anticipate anything while the negotiations with the
President Rochette are in progress."

"No, it is when they are broken off, they will fall back on the other
plan," one of the councillors said with an air of much wisdom.

"I think that is so. Nor do I think that anything will be done during
the present severe weather."

"They like it no better than we do!"

"But the roads are good in this frost," Fabri said. "If it be a question
of moving guns or wagons----"

"But it is not, by your leave, Messer Fabri, as I am informed," the man
who had spoken before objected; supporting his opinion simply because he
had voiced it, a thing seen every day in such assemblies. Fabri replied
on him in the other sense: and presently Blondel had the satisfaction of
listening to a discussion in which the one party said a dozen things
that he saw would be of use to him--some day.

One only said not a word, and that was Petitot. He listened to all with
a puzzled look. He resented the insult which Blondel had flung at his
friend Baudichon, but he saw all going against them, and no chance of
redress; nay, capital was being made out of that which should have been
a disadvantage. Worst of all, he was uneasy, fancying--he was very
shrewd--that he caught a glimpse, under the Fourth Syndic's manner, of
another man: that he detected signs of emotion, a feverishness and
imperiousness not quite explained by the circumstances.

He got the notion from this that the Fourth Syndic had learned more from
Basterga than he had disclosed. His notion, even so, went no further
than the suspicion that Blondel was hiding knowledge out of a desire to
reap all the glory. But he did not like it. "He was always for risking,
for risking!" he thought. "This is another case of it. God grant it go
well!" His wife, his children, his daughters, rose in a picture before
him, and he hated Blondel, who had none of these. He would have put him
to death for running the tithe of a risk.

When the council broke up, Fabri drew Blondel aside. "The bird is flown,
but what of the nest?" he asked. "Has he left nothing?"

"Between you and me," Blondel replied under his breath, as his eyes
sought the other's, "I hope to make him speak yet. But not a word!"

"Ah!"

"Not a word! But there is just a chance. And it will be everything to us
if I can induce him to speak."

"I see that. But the house? Could you not search it?"

"That would be to scare him finally."

"You have made no perquisition there?"

"None. I have heard," Blondel continued, hesitating as if he had not
quite made up his mind to speak, "some things--strange things in respect
to the house. But I will tell you more of that when I know more."

He was too clever to state that he held the house in suspicion for
sorcery and kindred things. Charges such as that spread, he knew,
upwards from the lower classes, not downwards to them. The poison,
disseminated as he had known how to disseminate it, by hints and
innuendoes dropped among his officers and ushers, was already in the
air, and would do its work. Fabri, a man of sense, might laugh to-day,
and to-morrow; but the third day, when the report came to him from a
dozen quarters, mainly by women's mouths, he would not laugh. And
presently he would shrug his shoulders and stand aside, and leave the
matter in more earnest hands.

Blondel dropped no more than that hint, therefore, and as he passed
homeward applauded his discretion. He was proud of the turn things had
taken at the Council; elated by the part he had played, and the proof he
had given of his mastery, he felt able to carry anything through. His
mind, leaping over the immediate future, pictured a wider theatre, in
which his powers would have full scope, and a larger stage on which he
might aspire to play the first part. He saw himself not only wealthy,
but ennobled, the fount of honour, the favourite, and, in time, the
master of princes. Such as he was to-day the Medicis had been, and many
another whom the world held noble. He had but to live and to dare; only
to live and to dare! Only in order to do the one he must--it was no
choice of his--do the other!

Before he was five minutes older he was reminded of the necessity. At
the door of his house the pains of the disease from which he
suffered--aggravated, perhaps, by the excitement through which he had
just passed, or by the cold of the weather--seized him with unusual
violence. He leant, pale and almost fainting, against the door-jamb,
unable at the moment to do so much as raise the latch. The golden dreams
in which he had lost himself by the way, the visions of power and fame,
vanished as he had so many times seen the after-glow vanish from the
snow-peaks; leaving only cold images of death and desolation. Presently,
with an effort, he staggered within doors, poured out such medicine as
he had, and, bent double and almost without breath, swallowed it; and
so, by-and-by, a wan and wild-eyed image of himself came out of the fit.

He told himself in after days that it was that decided him; that but for
that sharp fit of pain and the prospect of others like it, he would not
have yielded to the temptation, no, not to be the Grand Duke's
favourite, not to be Minister of Savoy! He ignored, in his looking
backward, the visions of glory and ambition in which he had revelled. He
saw himself on the rack, with life and immunity from pain drawing him
one way, the prospect of a miserable death the other; and he pleaded
that no man would have decided otherwise. After that experience the
straw did not float, so thin that he was not ready to grasp it rather
than die, rather than suffer again. Nor did the fact that the straw at
that moment lay on the table beside him go for much.

It did lie there. When he felt a little stronger and began to look about
him, he found a note at his elbow. It was a small, common-looking
letter, sealed with a B, that might signify Blondel or Basterga, or, for
the matter of that, Baudichon. He did not know the handwriting, and he
opened it idly, in the scorn of small things that pain induced.

He had not read a line of the contents, before his countenance changed.
The letter was from Basterga, and cunningly contrived. It gave him the
directions he needed, yet it was so worded that even after the event it
might pass for a trifling communication from a physician. The place and
the hour were specified--the latter so near that for a moment his cheek
grew pale. On that ensued the part which interested him most; but as the
whole was brief, the whole may be given.

    "Sir" (here followed a cabalistic sign such as physicians were in the
    habit of using to impose on the vulgar). "After paying a visit in the
    Corraterie, where I have an appointment on Saturday evening next
    between late and early, I will be with you. But the mixture with the
    necessary directions shall be sent to you twelve hours in advance, so
    that before my visit you may experience its good effects. As surely as
    the wrong potion in the case you wot of deprived of reason, so surely
    (as I hope for salvation) will this potion have the desired effect.

    "The Physician of Aleppo."

"Saturday next, between late and early!" Blondel muttered, gazing at the
words with fascinated eyes. "It is for the day after to-morrow! The day
after to-morrow!" And in his thoughts he passed again over the road he
had travelled since his first visit to Basterga's room, since the hour
when the scholar had unrolled before him the map of the town he called
"Aurelia," and had told him the story of Ibn Jasher and the Physician of
Aleppo.

"No, I am not well," he answered. He sat, warmly wrapped up, in the high
chair in his parlour, his face so drawn with want of sleep that Captain
Blandano of the city guard, who had come to take his orders, had no
difficulty in believing him. "I am not well," he repeated peevishly. "It
is the weather." He had some soup before him. Beside it stood a tiny
phial of medicine; a phial strangely shaped and strange looking,
containing something not unlike the green cordial of the Carthusians.

"It troubles me a good deal, too," Blandano said. "There are seven men
absent in the fourth ward. And two men, whose wives are urgent with me
that they should have leave."

"Leave?" the Syndic cried. "Do they think naught"--leaning forward in a
passion--"of the safety of the city? If I were not ill, I would take
service on the wall myself to set an example!"

"There is no need of that," the Captain answered respectfully, "if I
might have permission to withdraw a few men from the west side so as to
fill the places on the east----"

"Ay, ay!"

"From the Rhone side of the town----"

"From the Corraterie? That is least open to assault."

"Yes, from that part perhaps would be best," Blandano assented, nodding.
"Yes, I think so. If I might do that, I think I could manage."

"Well, then do it," Blondel answered. "And make a note that I assented
to your suggestion to take them from the Corraterie and put them on the
lower part of the wall. After all, the nights are very bitter now, and
there are limits. Do the men grumble much?"

"It is as much as I can do to make them go the rounds," Blandano
answered. "Some plead the weather; and some argue that, with President
Rochette, whose word is as good as his bond, on the point of coming to
an agreement with us, the rounds are a farce!"

The Syndic shrugged his shoulders. "Well!" he muttered, rubbing his chin
and looking thoughtfully before him, "we must not wear the men out.
There is no moon now, is there?"

"No."

"And the enemy can attempt nothing without light," Blondel continued,
thinking aloud. "See here, Blandano, we must not put too heavy a burden
on our people. I see that. As it is so cold, I think you may pass the
word to pretermit the rounds to-night--save two. At what hours would you
suggest?"

Blandano considered his own comfort--as the other expected he would--and
answered, "Early and late, say an hour before midnight and an hour
before dawn".

"Then let be it as you suggest. But see"--with returning asperity--"that
those rounds go, and at their hours. Let there be no remissness. I will
make a note," he continued, "of the hours fixed. An hour before midnight
and an hour before dawn".

He extended his arm and drew the ink-horn towards him. Midway in the
act, whether it was that his hand shook by reason of his illness, or
that he was in a hurry to close an interview which tried him more
severely than appeared, his sleeve caught the little phial of green
water that stood beside the soup on the table. It reeled an instant on
its edge, toppled on its side, and rolling, in one-tenth of the time it
takes to tell the tale, to the verge of the table--fell over.

Messer Blondel made a strange noise in his throat.

But the Captain had seen what was happening. Dexterously he caught the
bottle in his huge palm, and with an air of modest achievement was going
to set it on the table, when he saw that the Syndic had fallen back in
his chair, his face ghastly. Blandano was more used to death in the
field than in the house; and in a panic he took two steps towards the
door to call for help. Before he could take a third, Blondel gasped, and
made an uncertain movement with his hand, as if he would reassure him.

Blandano returned and leant over him. "You are ill, Messer Syndic," he
said anxiously. "Let me call some one."

The Syndic could not speak, but he pointed to the table. And when
Blandano, unable to make out what he wanted, and suspecting a stroke of
a mortal disease, turned again to the door, persisting in his intention
of getting aid, the Syndic found strength to seize his sleeve, and
almost instantly regained his speech. "There!" he gasped, "there! The
phial! Put it down!"

Captain Blandano placed it on the table, wondering much. "I was afraid
you were ill, Messer Blondel," he said.

"I was ill," the Syndic answered; and he pushed his chair back so that
no part of him was in contact with the table. He looked at the little
bottle with fascinated eyes, and slowly, as he looked, the colour
returned to his face. "I--was ill," he repeated, with a sigh that seemed
to relieve his breast. "I had a fright!"

"You thought it was broken?" Blandano said, wondering much, and looking
in his turn at the phial.

"Yes, I thought that it was broken. I am much obliged to you. Much, very
much obliged to you," the Syndic repeated, with a deep sigh, his hands
still moving nervously about his dress. Then, after a moment's pause,
"Will you ring the bell?" he said.

The Captain, marvelling much, rang the hand-bell which lay on a
neighbouring table. He marvelled still more when he heard Messer
Blondel order the servant to place six bottles of his best wine in a
basket and take them to the Captain's lodging.

Blandano stared. He knew the wine to be choice and valuable; and he eyed
the tiny phial respectfully. "It is something rare, I expect?" he said.

The Syndic nodded.

"And costly too, I doubt not?" with an admiring glance.

"Costly?" Messer Blondel repeated the word, and when he had done so
turned on the other a look that led the Captain to think that he was
going to be ill again. Then, "It cost me--it will cost me"--again a
spasm contorted the Syndic's face--"I don't know what it will not have
cost me before it is paid for, Messer Blandano!"




CHAPTER XXII.

TWO NAILS IN THE WALL.


The long day during which the lovers had drained a cup at once so sweet
and so bitter, and one of the two had felt alike the throb of pain and
the thrill of kisses, came to an end at last; and without further
incident. Encouraged by the respite--for who that is mortal does not
hope against hope--they ventured on the following morning to lower the
shutters, and this to a great extent restored the house to its normal
aspect. Anne would have gone so far as to attend the morning preaching
at St. Pierre, for it was Friday; but her mother awoke low and nervous,
the girl dared not quit her side, and Claude had no field for the urgent
dissuasions which he had prepared himself to use.

The greater part of the day she remained above stairs, busied in the
petty offices, and moving to and fro--he could hear her tread--upon the
errands of love, to see her in the midst of which might well have
confuted the slanders that crept abroad. But there were times in the day
when Madame Royaume slept; and then, who can blame Anne, if she stole
down and sat hand in hand with Claude on the settle, whispering
sometimes of those things of which lovers whisper, and will whisper to
the world's end; but more often of the direr things before these two
lovers, and so of faith and hope and the love that does not die. For the
most part it was she who talked. She had so much to tell him of the long
nightmare, the nightmare of months, that had oppressed her; of her
prayers, and fears and fits of terror; of Basterga's discovery of the
secret and the cruel use he had made of it; of the slow-growing
resignation, the steadfast resolve, the onward look to something, beyond
that which the world could do to her, that had come to be hers. With her
face hidden on his breast she told him of her thoughts upon her knees,
of the pain and obloquy through which, if the worst came, she knew she
must pass, and of her trust that she would be able to bear them;
speaking in such terms, so simply, so bravely, and with so lofty a
contemplation, that he who listened, and had been but a week before a
young man as other young men, grew as he listened to another stature,
and thought for himself thoughts that no man can have and remain as he
was, before the tongues of fire touched his heart.

And then again, once--but that was in the darkening of the Friday
evening when the wound in her cheek burned and smarted and recalled the
wretched moment of infliction--she showed him another side; as if she
would have him know that she was not all heroic. Without warning, she
broke down; overcome by the prospect of death, she clung to him, weeping
and shuddering, and begging him and imploring him to save her. To save
her! Only to save her! At that sight and at those sounds, under the
despairing grasp of her arms about his neck, the young man's heart was
red-hot; his eyes burned. Vainly he held her closer and closer to him;
vainly he tried to comfort her. Vainly he shed tears of blood. He felt
her writhe and shudder in his arms.

And what could he do? He strove to argue with her. He strove to show her
that accusation of her mother, condemnation of her mother, dreadful as
they must be to her, so dreadful that he scarcely dared speak of them,
need not involve her own condemnation. She was young, of blameless life,
and without enemies. What could any cast up against her, what adduce in
proof of a charge so dark, so improbable, so abnormal?

For answer she touched the pulsing wound in her cheek.

"And this?" she said. "And the child that I killed?"--with a bitter
laugh unlike her own. "If they say so much already, if they say that
to-day, what will they say to-morrow? What will they say when they have
heard her ravings? Will it not be, the old and the young, the witch and
her brood--to the fire? To the fire?"

The spasm that shook her as she spoke defied his efforts to soothe her.
And how could he comfort her? He knew the thing to be too likely, the
argument too reasonable, as men reasoned then; strange and foolish as
their reasoning seems to us now. But what could he do. What? He who sat
there alone with her, a prisoner with her, witness to her agony, scalded
by her tears, tortured by her anguish, burning with pity, sorrow,
indignation--what could he do to help her or save her?

He had wild thoughts, but none of them effectual; the old thoughts of
defending the house, or of escaping by night over the town wall; and
some new ones. He weighed the possibility of Madame Royaume's death
before the arrest; surely, then, he could save the girl, and they two,
young, active and of ordinary aspect, might escape some whither? Again,
he thought of appealing to Beza, the aged divine, whom Geneva revered
and Calvinism placed second only to Calvin. He was a Frenchman, a man of
culture and of noble birth; he might stand above the common
superstition, he might listen, discern, defend. But, alas, he was so old
as to be bed-ridden and almost childish. It was improbable, nay, it was
most unlikely, that he could be induced to interfere.

All these thoughts Anne drove out of his head by begging him, in moving
terms of self-reproach, to forgive her her weakness. She had regained
her composure as abruptly, if not as completely, as she had lost it; and
would have had him believe that the passion he had witnessed was less
deep than it seemed, and rather a womanish need of tears than a proof of
suffering. A minute later she was quietly preparing the evening meal,
while he, with a sick heart, raised the shutters and lighted the lamp.
As he looked up from the latter task, he found her eyes fixed upon him,
with a peculiar intentness: and for a while afterwards he remarked that
she wore an absent air. But she said nothing, and by-and-by, promising
to return before bed-time, she went upstairs to her mother.

The nights were at their longest, and the two had closed and lighted
before five. Outside the cold stillness of a winter night and a freezing
sky settled down on Geneva; within, Claude sat with sad eyes fixed on
the smouldering fire. What could he do? What could he do? Wait and see
her innocence outraged, her tenderness racked, her gentle body given up
to unspeakable torments? The collapse which he had witnessed gave him as
it were a foretaste, a bitter savour of the trials to come. It did not
seem to him that he could bear even the anticipation of them. He rose,
he sat down, he rose again, unable to endure the intolerable thought. He
flung out his arms; his eyes, cast upwards, called God to witness that
it was too much! It was too much!

Some way of escape there must be. Heaven could not look down on, could
not suffer such deeds in a Christian land. But men and women, girls and
young children had suffered these things; had appealed and called Heaven
to witness, and gone to death, and Heaven had not moved, nor the angels
descended! But it could not be in her case. Some way of escape there
must be. There must be.

Why should she not leave her mother to her fate? A fate that could not
be evaded? Why need she, whose capacity for suffering was so great, who
had so much of life and love and all good things before her, remain to
share the pains of one whose span in any case was nearing its end? Of
one who had no longer power--or so it seemed--to meet the smallest
shock, and must succumb before she knew more of suffering than the name.
One whom a rude word might almost extinguish, and a rough push thrust
out of life? Why remain, when to remain was to sacrifice two lives in
lieu of one, to give and get nothing, to die for a prejudice? Why
remain, when by remaining she could not save her mother, but, on the
contrary, must inflict the sharpest pang of all, since she destroyed the
being who was dearest to her mother, the being whom her mother would die
to save?

He grew heated as he dwelt on it. Of what use to any, the feeble
flickering light upstairs, that must go out were it left for a moment
untended? The light that would have gone out this long time back had she
not fostered it and cherished it and sheltered it in her bosom? Of what
avail that weak existence? Or, if it were of avail, why, for its sake,
waste this other and more precious life that still could not redeem it?

Why?

He must speak to her. He must persuade her, press her, convince her;
carry her off by force were it necessary. It was his duty, his clear
call. He rose and walked the room in excitement, as he thought of it. He
had pity for the old, abandoned and left to suffer alone; and an
enlightening glimpse of the weight that the girl must carry through life
by reason of this desertion. But no doubt, no hesitation--he told
himself--no scruple. To die that her mother might live was one thing.
To die--and so to die--merely that her mother's last hours might be
sheltered and comforted, was another, and a thing unreasonable.

He must speak to her. He would not hesitate to tell her what he thought.

But he did hesitate. When she descended half an hour later, and paused
at the foot of the stairs to assure herself that her passage downstairs
had not roused her mother from sleep, the light fell on her listening
face and tender eyes; and he read that in them which checked the words
on his lips; that which, whether it were folly or wisdom--a wisdom
higher than the serpent's, more perfect than the most accurate
calculation of values and chances--drove for ever from his mind the
thought that she would desert her charge. He said not a word of what he
had thought; the indignant reasoning, the hot, conclusive arguments fell
from him and left him bare. With her hands in his, seeking no more to
move her or convince her, he sat silent; and by mute looks and dumb
love--more potent than eloquence or oratory--strove to support and
console her.

She, too, was silent. Stillness had fallen on both of them. But her
hands clung to his, and now and again pressed them convulsively; and now
and again, too, she would lift her eyes to his, and gaze at him with a
pathetic intentness, as if she would stamp his likeness on her brain.
But when he returned the look, and tried to read her meaning in her
eyes, she smiled. "You are afraid of me?" she whispered. "No, I shall
not be weak again."

But even as she reassured him he detected a flicker of pain in her eyes,
he felt that her hands were cold; and but that he feared to shake her
composure he would not have rested content with her answer.

This sudden silence, this new way of looking at him, were the only
things that perplexed him. In all else, silent as they sat, their
communion was perfect. It was in the mind of each that the women might
be arrested on the morrow; in the mind of each that this was their last
evening together, the last of few, yet not so few that they did not seem
to the man and the girl to bulk large in their lives. On that hearth
they had met, there she had proved to him what she was, there he had
spoken, there spent the clouded never-to-be-forgotten days of their
troubled courtship. No wonder that as they sat hand in hand, their hair
almost mingling, their eyes on the red glow of the smouldering log, and,
not daring to look forward, looked back--no wonder that their love grew
to be something other than the common love of man and maid, something
higher and more beautiful, touched--as the hills are touched at
sunset--by the evening glow of parting and self-sacrifice.

Silent amid the silence of the house; living moments never to be
forgotten; welcoming together the twin companions, love and death.

But from the darkest outlook of the mind, as of the eye, morning dispels
some shadows; into the most depressing atmosphere daylight brings hope,
brings actuality, brings at least the need to be doing. Claude's heart,
as he slipped from his couch on the settle next morning, and admitted
the light and turned the log and stirred the embers, was sad and full of
foreboding. But as the room, its disorder abated, took on a more
pleasant aspect, as the fire crackled and blazed on the hearth, and the
flush of sunrise spread over the east, he grew--he could not but grow,
for he was young--more cheerful also. He swept the floor and filled the
kettle and let in the air; and had done almost all he knew how to do,
before he heard Anne's foot upon the stairs.

She had slept little and looked pale and haggard; almost more pale and
wan than he had ever seen her look. And this must have sunk his heart to
zero, if a certain item in her aspect had not at the same time diverted
his attention. "You are not going out?" he cried in astonishment. She
wore her hood.

"I am not going to defend myself again," she answered, smiling sadly.
"Have no fear. I shall not repeat that mistake. I am only going----"

"You are not going anywhere!" he answered firmly.

She shook her head with the same wan smile. "We must live," she said.

"Well?"

"And to live must have water."

"I have filled the kettle."

"And emptied the water-pot," she retorted.

"True," he said. "But surely it will be time to refill it when we want
it."

"I shall attract less attention now," she answered quietly, "than later
in the day. There are few abroad. I will draw my hood about my face, and
no one will heed me."

He laughed in tender derision. "You will not go!" he said. "Did you
think that I would let you run a risk rather than fetch the water from
the conduit."

"You will go?"

"Where is the pot?"

He fetched the jar from its place under the stairs, snatched up his cap,
and turning the key in the lock was in the act of passing out when she
seized his arm. "Kiss me," she murmured. She lifted her face to his, her
eyes half closed.

He drew her to him, but her lips were cold; and as he released her she
sank passively from his embrace, and was near falling. He hesitated.
"You are not afraid to be left?" he said. "You are sure?"

"I am afraid of nothing if I know you safe," she answered faintly. "Go!
go quickly, and God be with you!"

"Tut! I run no danger," he rejoined. "I have a strong arm and they will
leave me alone." He thought that she was overwrought, that the strain
was telling on her; his thoughts did not go beyond that. "I shall be
back in five minutes," he continued cheerfully. And he went, bidding her
lock the door behind him and open only at his knock.

He made the more haste for her fears, passed into the town through the
Porte Tertasse, and hastened to the conduit. The open space in front of
the fountain, which a little later in the day would be the favourite
resort of gossips and idlers, was a desert; the bitter morning wind saw
to that. But about the fountain itself three or four women closely
muffled were waiting their turns to draw. One looked up, and, as he
fancied, recognised him, for she nudged her neighbour. And then first
the one woman and then the other, looking askance, muttered something;
it might have been a prayer, or a charm, or a mere word of gossip. But
he liked neither the glance nor the action, nor the furtive, curious
looks of the women; and as quickly as he could he filled his pot and
carried it away.

He had splashed his fingers, and the cold wind quickly numbed them. At
the Tertasse Gate, where the view commanding the river valley opened
before him, he was glad to set down the vessel and change hands. On his
left, the watch at the Porte Neuve, the gate in the ramparts which
admitted from the country to the Corraterie--as the Tertasse admitted
from the Corraterie to the town proper--was being changed, and he paused
an instant, gazing on the scene. Then remembering himself, and the need
of haste, he snatched up his jar and, turning to the right, hurried to
the steps before the Royaumes' door, swung up them and, with his eyes
on the windows, set down his burden.

He knocked gently, sure that she would not keep him waiting. But she did
not come at once; and by-and-by, seeing that a woman at an open door a
little farther down the Corraterie was watching him with scowling
eyes--and that strange look, half fear, half loathing, which he was
growing to know--he knocked more loudly, and stamped to warm his feet.

Still, to his astonishment, she did not come; he waited, and waited, and
she did not come. He would have begun to feel alarmed for her, but, what
with the cold and the early hour, the place was deserted; no idle gazers
such as a commotion leaves behind it were to be seen. The wind, however,
began to pierce his clothes; he had not brought his cloak, and he
shivered. He knocked more loudly.

Perhaps she had been called to her mother? That must be it. She had gone
upstairs and could not on the instant leave her charge. He clothed
himself in reproaches; but they did not warm him, and he was beginning
to stamp his feet again when, happening to look down, he saw beside the
water-can and partly hidden by its bulge, a packet about the size of a
letter, but a little thicker. If he had not mounted the steps with his
eyes on the windows, searching for her face, he would have seen it at
once, and spared himself these minutes of waiting. He took it up in
bewilderment, and turned it in his numbed hands; it was heavy, and from
it, leaving only a piece of paper in his grasp, his purse fell to the
ground. More and more astonished, he picked up the purse, and put it in
his pocket. He looked at the window, but no one showed; then at the
paper in his hand. Inside the letter were three lines of writing.

His face fell as he read them. "_I shall not admit you_," they ran.
"_If you try to enter, you will attract notice and destroy me. Go, and
God bless and reward you. You cannot save me, and to see you perish were
a worse pang than the worst._"

The words swam before his eyes. "I will beat down the door," he
muttered, tears in