tement. Slowly my
self-possession returned to me, and I said calmly:

"YOU forbid me, signor? Surely you forget yourself. What harm have I
done in helping myself to a simple glass of water in your studio? You
are not usually so inhospitable."

While I spoke his manner changed, the colour returned to his face, and
his eyes softened--he smiled.

"Forgive me, mademoiselle, for my brusquerie. It is true I forgot
myself for a moment. But you were in danger, and----"

"In danger!" I exclaimed incredulously.

"Yes, mademoiselle. This," and he held up the Venetian decanter to the
light, "is not water simply. If you will observe it now with the
sunshine beating full against it, I think you will perceive
peculiarities in it that will assure you of my veracity."

I looked as he bade me, and saw, to my surprise, that the fluid was
never actually still for a second. A sort of internal bubbling seemed
to work in its centre, and curious specks and lines of crimson and gold
flashed through it from time to time.

"What is it?" I asked; adding with a half-smile, "Are you the possessor
of a specimen of the far-famed Aqua Tofana?"

Cellini placed the decanter carefully on a shelf, and I noticed that he
chose a particular spot for it, where the rays of the sun could fall
perpendicularly upon the vessel containing it. Then turning to me, he
replied:

"Aqua Tofana, mademoiselle, is a deadly poison, known to the ancients
and also to many learned chemists of our day. It is a clear and
colourless liquid, but it is absolutely still--as still as a stagnant
pool. What I have just shown you is not poison, but quite the reverse.
I will prove this to you at once." And taking a tiny liqueur glass from
a side table, he filled it with the strange fluid and drank it off,
carefully replacing the stopper in the decanter.

"But, Signor Cellini," I urged, "if it is so harmless, why did you
forbid my tasting it? Why did you say there was danger for me when I
was about to drink it?"

"Because, mademoiselle, for YOU it would be dangerous. Your health is
weak, your nerves unstrung. That elixir is a powerful vivifying tonic,
acting with great rapidity on the entire system, and rushing through
the veins with the swiftness of ELECTRICITY. I am accustomed to it; it
is my daily medicine. But I was brought to it by slow, and almost
imperceptible degrees. A single teaspoonful of that fluid,
mademoiselle, administered to anyone not prepared to receive it, w