panion, 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