scholar, therefore, dared not trust him;
and either there was an end of the matter or he must trust Basterga,
must eat his own words, and, content with the possession of something,
must wait for proof of its efficacy until the die was cast!

In his heart he knew this. He knew that on the brink of the extremity
to which circumstances and Basterga were slowly pushing him it might not
be in his power to check himself: that he must trust, whether he would
or no, and where instinct bade him place no trust. And this doubt, this
suspicion that when all was done he might find himself tricked, and
learn that for nothing he had given all, added immeasurably to the
torment of his mind; to the misery of his reflections when he awoke in
the small hours and saw things coldly and clearly, and to the fever and
suspense in which he passed his days.

He clung to one thought and got what consolation he could from it; a
bitter and saturnine comfort it was. The thought was this: if it turned
out that, after all, he had been tricked, he could but die; and die he
must if he made no bargain. And to a dead man what matter was it what
price he had paid that he might live! What matter who won or who lost
Geneva, who lived, who died, who were slaves, who free!

And again, the very easiness of the thing he was asked to do tempted
him. It was a thing that to one in his position presented no difficulty
and scarcely any danger. He had but to withdraw the guards, or the
greater part of them, from a portion of the wall, and to stop on one
pretext or another--the bitter cold of the wintry weather would
avail--the rounds that at stated intervals visited the various posts.
That was all; as a man of tried loyalty, intrusted with the safeguarding
of the city, and to whom the officer of the watch was answerable, he
might make the necessary arrangements without incurring, even after the
catastrophe, more than a passing odium, a breath of suspicion.

And Baudichon and Petitot? He tasted, when he thought of them, the only
moments of comfort, of pleasure, of ease, that fell to his lot
throughout these days. They would thwart him no more. Petty worms,
whose vision went no farther than the walls of the city, he would have
done with them when the flag of Savoy fluttered above St. Pierre; and
when for the confines of a petty canton was substituted, for those who
had eyes to see and courage to adapt themselves, the wide horizon of the
Italian Kingdom. When he thou