p fit of pain and the prospect of others like it, he would not
have yielded to the temptation, no, not to be the Grand Duke's
favourite, not to be Minister of Savoy! He ignored, in his looking
backward, the visions of glory and ambition in which he had revelled. He
saw himself on the rack, with life and immunity from pain drawing him
one way, the prospect of a miserable death the other; and he pleaded
that no man would have decided otherwise. After that experience the
straw did not float, so thin that he was not ready to grasp it rather
than die, rather than suffer again. Nor did the fact that the straw at
that moment lay on the table beside him go for much.

It did lie there. When he felt a little stronger and began to look about
him, he found a note at his elbow. It was a small, common-looking
letter, sealed with a B, that might signify Blondel or Basterga, or, for
the matter of that, Baudichon. He did not know the handwriting, and he
opened it idly, in the scorn of small things that pain induced.

He had not read a line of the contents, before his countenance changed.
The letter was from Basterga, and cunningly contrived. It gave him the
directions he needed, yet it was so worded that even after the event it
might pass for a trifling communication from a physician. The place and
the hour were specified--the latter so near that for a moment his cheek
grew pale. On that ensued the part which interested him most; but as the
whole was brief, the whole may be given.

"Sir" (here followed a cabalistic sign such as physicians were in the
habit of using to impose on the vulgar). "After paying a visit in the
Corraterie, where I have an appointment on Saturday evening next
between late and early, I will be with you. But the mixture with the
necessary directions shall be sent to you twelve hours in advance, so
that before my visit you may experience its good effects. As surely as
the wrong potion in the case you wot of deprived of reason, so surely
(as I hope for salvation) will this potion have the desired effect.

"The Physician of Aleppo."

"Saturday next, between late and early!" Blondel muttered, gazing at the
words with fascinated eyes. "It is for the day after to-morrow! The day
after to-morrow!" And in his thoughts he passed again over the road he
had travelled since his first visit to Basterga's room, since the hour
when the scholar had unrolled before him the map of the town he c