ler who leaves
his work half finished, and then looks on idly, trusting to chance for
what may come of it.

Enter DANIEL, with the wine.

Bring it here! Look me steadfastly in the face! How your knees knock
together! How you tremble! Confess, old man! what have you been
doing?

DANIEL. Nothing, my honored master, by heaven and my poor soul!

FRANCIS. Drink this wine! What? you hesitate? Out with it quickly!
What have you put into the wine?

DANIEL. Heaven help me! What! I in the wine?

FRANCIS. You have poisoned it! Are you not as white as snow? Confess,
confess! Who gave it you? The count? Is it not so? The count gave it
you?

DANIEL. The count? Jesu Maria! The count has not given me anything.

FRANCIS (grasping him tight). I will throttle you till you are black in
the face, you hoary-headed liar! Nothing? Why, then, are you so often
closeted together? He, and you, and Amelia? And what are you always
whispering about? Out with it! What secrets, eh? What secrets has he
confided to you?

DANIEL. I call the Almighty to witness that he has not confided any
secrets to me.

FRANCIS. Do you mean to deny it? What schemes have you been hatching
to get rid of me? Am I to be smothered in my sleep? or is my throat to
be cut in shaving? or am I to be poisoned in wine or chocolate? Eh?
Out with it, out with it! Or am I to have my quietus administered in my
soup? Out with it! I know it all!

DANIEL. May heaven so help me in the hour of need as I now tell you the
truth, and nothing but the pure, unvarnished truth!

FRANCIS. Well, this time I will forgive you. But the money! he most
certainly put money into your purse? And he pressed your hand more
warmly than is customary? something in the manner of an old
acquaintance?

DANIEL. Never, indeed, Sir.

FRANCIS. He told you, for instance, that he had known you before? that
you ought to know him? that the scales would some day fall from your
eyes? that--what? Do you mean to say that he never spoke thus to you?

DANIEL. Not a word of the kind.

FRANCIS. That certain circumstances restrained him--that one must
sometimes wear a mask in order to get at one's enemies--that he would be
revenged, most terribly revenged?

DANIEL. Not a syllable of all this.

FRANCIS. What? Nothing at all? Recollect yourself. That he knew the
old count well--most intimately--that he loved him--loved him
exceedingly--loved him like a son!

DANIEL. Something of that sort I remem