was a bitter pill. He asked himself if it was for this
he had betrayed his city; if it was for this he had sold his friends.
And then--then he remembered that it was not for this--not for this, but
for life, dear life, warm life, that he had done this thing. And,
swallowing the rage that was rising within him, he calmed himself.

"It is better to cease to be Syndic than cease to live," he said
coldly.

But the other had no mind to return to their former relations. "True, O
sage!" he answered contemptuously. "But why not both? Because--shall I
tell you?"

"I hear----"

"Yes, and I hear too! The city is rising!" Basterga listened a moment.
"Presently they will ring the alarm-bell, and----"

"If you stay here some one may find you!"

"And find me with you?" Basterga rejoined. He knew that he ought to go,
for his own sake as well as the Syndic's. He knew that nothing was to be
made and much might be lost by the disclosure that was on his tongue.
But he was intoxicated with the success which he had gained; with the
clang of arms, and the glitter of his armed presence. The true spirit of
the man, as happens in intoxication of another kind, rose to the
surface, cruel, waggish, insolent--of an insolence long restrained, the
insolence of the scholar, who always in secret, now in the light, panted
to repay the slights he had suffered, the patronage of leaders, the
scoffs of power. "Ay," he continued, "they may find me with you! But if
you do not mind, I need not. And I was just asking you--why not both?
Life and power, my friend?"

"You know," Blondel answered, breathing quickly. How he hated the man!
How gladly would he have laid him dead at his feet! For if the fool
stayed here prating, if he were found here by those who within a few
moments would come with the alarm, he was himself a lost man. All would
be known.

That was the fear in Blondel's mind; the alarm was growing louder each
moment, and drawing nearer. And then in a twinkling, in two or three
sentences, Basterga put that fear into the second place, and set in its
seat emotions that brooked no rival.

"Why not both?" he said, jeering. "Live and be Syndic, both? Because you
had the scholar's ill, eh, Messer Blondel? Or because your physician
_said_ you had it--to whom I paid a good price--for the advice?" The
devil seemed to look out of the man's eyes, as he spoke in short
sentences, each pointed, each conveying a heart-stab to its hearer.

"To whom--you ga