nii,
and it is greater than all the riches of the world. It and the castle
likewise shall be yours. I can transport everything into any part of the
world you choose, and can by my arts make you prince or king or emperor.
Come."

"Stop," said Gebhart. "I must first do as my master bade me."

He led the way into the other room, the lady following him, and so they
both stood together by the couch where the wise man lay. When the lady
saw his face she cried out in a loud voice: "It is the great master!
What are you going to do?"

"I am going to sprinkle his face with this water," said Gebhart.

"Stop!" said she. "Listen to what I have to say. In your hand you hold
the water of life and the dagger of death. The master is not dead, but
sleeping; if you sprinkle that water upon him he will awaken, young,
handsome and more powerful than the greatest magician that ever lived.
I myself, this castle, and everything that is in it will be his, and,
instead of your becoming a prince or a king or an emperor, he will be so
in your place. That, I say, will happen if he wakens. Now the dagger
of death is the only thing in the world that has power to kill him. You
have it in your hand. You have but to give him one stroke with it
while he sleeps, and he will never waken again, and then all will be
yours--your very own."

Gebhart neither spoke nor moved, but stood looking down upon his master.
Then he set down the goblet very softly on the floor, and, shutting his
eyes that he might not see the blow, raised the dagger to strike.

"That is all your promises amount to," said Nicholas Flamel the wise
man. "After all, Babette, you need not bring the bread and cheese, for
he shall be no pupil of mine."

Then Gebhart opened his eyes.

There sat the wise man in the midst of his books and bottles and
diagrams and dust and chemicals and cobwebs, making strange figures upon
the table with jackstraws and a piece of chalk.

And Babette, who had just opened the cupboard door for the loaf of
bread and the cheese, shut it again with a bang, and went back to her
spinning.

So Gebhart had to go back again to his Greek and Latin and algebra and
geometry; for, after all, one cannot pour a gallon of beer into a quart
pot, or the wisdom of a Nicholas Flamel into such an one as Gebhart.

As for the name of this story, why, if some promises are not bottles
full of nothing but wind, there is little need to have a name for
anything.

"Since we are