he
dose consumed, the play was at an end. An end--or, no, was he losing his
wits, his courage? On the instant, in the twinkling of an eye, he shaped
a fresh course.

He cursed the girl anew, and apparently with the same fervour. "A
month's work it cost me!" he cried. "A month's work! and ten gold
pieces!"

The Syndic, pale, and almost in a state of collapse--for the bitter
satisfaction of imparting the news no longer supported him--stared. "A
month's work?" he muttered. "A month? Years you told me! And a fortune!"

"I told you? Never!" Basterga opened his eyes in seeming amazement.
"Never, good sir, in all my life!" he repeated emphatically.
"But"--returning grimly to his former point--"ten gold pieces, or a
fortune--no matter which, she shall pay dearly for it, the thieving
jade!"

The Syndic sat heavily in his seat, and, with a hand on either arm of
the abbot's chair, stared dully at the other. "A fortune, you told me,"
he said, in a voice little above a whisper. "And years. Was it a
fiction, all a fiction? About Ibn Jasher, and the Physician of Aleppo,
and M. Laurens of Paris, and--and the rest?"

Basterga deliberately took a turn to the window, came back, and stood
looking down at him. "Mon Dieu!" he muttered. "Is it possible?"

"Eh?"

"I can scarcely believe it!" The scholar spoke with a calmness half
cynical, half compassionate. "But I suppose you really think that of me,
though it seems incredible! You are under the impression that the drug
this jade stole was the _remedium_ of Ibn Jasher, the one incomparable
and sovereign result of long years of study and research? You believe
that I kept this in a mere locked box, the key accessible by all who
knew my habits, and the treasure at the mercy of the first thief! Mon
Dieu! Mon Dieu! If I said it a thousand times I could not express my
astonishment. I might be the vine grower of the proverb,

Cui saepe viator
Cessisset magna compellans voce cucullum!"

The Syndic heard him without changing the attitude of weakness and
exhaustion into which he had fallen on sitting down. But midway in the
other's harangue, his lips parted, he held his breath, and in his eyes
grew a faint light of dawning hope. "But if it be not so?" he muttered
feebly. "If this be not so, why----"

"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!"

"Why did you look so startled a moment ago?"

"Why, man? Because ten pieces of gold are ten pieces! To me at least!
And the potion,