say, though she drinks only water).
Then I tilted the cup, and my mouth was full of the wine. I was
conscious of a taste in it, a strange acrid taste. Why, it was poor
wine, turned sour; it should go back to-morrow; that fool Jonah was a
fool in all things; and I stood disgraced for offering this acrid stuff
to a friend. And he gave it to the King! It was the cruellest chance.
Why----

Suddenly, when I had gulped down but one good mouthful, I saw M. de
Perrencourt lean right across the table. Yet I saw him dimly, for my
eyes seemed to grow glazed and the room to spin round me, the figures at
the table taking strange shapes and weird dim faces, and a singing
sounding in my ears, as though the sea roared there and not on Dover
beach. There was a woman's cry, and a man's arm shot out at me. I felt a
sharp blow on my wrist, the cup was dashed from my hand on to the stone
floor, breaking into ten thousand pieces, while the wine made a puddle
at my feet. I stood there for an instant, struck motionless, glaring
into the face that was opposite to mine. It was M. de Perrencourt's, no
longer calm, but pale and twitching. This was the last thing I saw
clearly. The King and his companions were fused in a shifting mass of
trunks and faces, the walls raced round, the singing of the sea roared
and fretted in my ears. I caught my hand to my brow and staggered; I
could not stand, I heard a clatter as though of a sword falling to the
floor, arms were stretched out to receive me and I sank into them,
hearing a murmur close by me, "Simon, Simon!"

Yet one thing more I heard, before my senses left me--a loud, proud,
imperious voice, the voice that speaks to be obeyed, whose assertion
brooks no contradiction. It rang in my ears where nothing else could
reach them, and even then I knew whence it came. The voice was the voice
of M. de Perrencourt, and it seemed that he spoke to the King of
England.

"Brother," he cried, "by my faith in God, this gentleman is innocent,
and his life is on our heads, if he lose it."

I heard no more. Stupor veiled me round in an impenetrable mist. The
figures vanished, the tumultuous singing ceased. A great silence
encompassed me, and all was gone.

CHAPTER XV

M. DE PERRENCOURT WHISPERS

Slowly the room and the scene came back to me, disengaging themselves
from the darkness which had settled on my eyes, regaining distinctness
and their proper form. I was sitting in a chair, and there were wet
b