d vehemently. "God knows! And what matter?
'Tis the _remedium_, I tell you, whoever has it! It is life, strength,
youth!" he repeated, his eyes glittering, his face working, and the
impulse to tell her not the truth only, but more even than the truth, if
he might thereby dazzle her, carrying him away. "It is health of body,
though you be dying, as I am! And health of mind though you be
possessed of devils! It is a cure for all ills, for all weaknesses, all
diseases, even," with a queer grimace, "for the Scholar's evil! Think
you, if it were not rare, if it were not something above the common, if
it were not what leeches seek in vain, I should be here! I should have
more than enough to buy it, I, Messer Blondel of Geneva!" He ceased,
lacking breath.

"But," she said timidly, "will not Messer Basterga give it to you? Or
sell it to you?"

"Give it to me? Sell it to me? He?" Blondel's hands flew out and clawed
the air as if he had the Paduan before him, and would tear it from him.
"He give it me? No, he will not. Nor sell it! He is keeping it for the
Grand Duke! The Grand Duke? Curse him; why should he escape more than
another?"

Anne stared. Was she dreaming or had her brain given way? Or was this
really Messer Blondel the austere Syndic, this man standing before her,
shaking in his limbs as he poured forth this strange farrago of
_remedia_ and scholars and princes and the rest? Or if she were not mad
was he mad? Or could there be truth, any truth, any fact in the medley?
His clammy face, his trembling hands, answered for his belief in it. But
could there be such a thing in nature as this of which he spoke? She had
heard of panaceas, things which cured all ills alike; but hitherto they
had found no place in her simple creed. Yet that he believed she could
not doubt; and how much more he knew than she did! Such things might be;
in the cabinets of princes, perhaps, purchasable by a huge fortune and
by the labour, the engrossment, the devotion of a life. She did not
know; and for him his acts spoke.

"It was this that Louis Gentilis was seeking?" she murmured.

"What else?" he retorted, opening and shutting his hands. "Had I told
him the truth, as I have told you, the thing had been in my grasp now!"

"But are you sure," she ventured to ask with respect, "that it will do
these things, Messer Blondel?"

He flung up his hands in a gesture of impatience. "And more! And more!"
he cried. "It is life and strength, I tell yo