ruck me, and I rose in my place.

"I shall be happy to do so," I said aloud, and made my way round to the
front of the platform.

At the moment when he took it from me, I spoke to him.

"Monsieur Proudhine," I whispered, "you are ill! What can I do for you?"

"Nothing, _mon enfant_," he answered, in the same low tone. "I suffer;
_mais il faut se resigner_."

"Break off the performance--retire for half an hour."

"Impossible. See, they already observe us!"

And he drew back abruptly. There was a seat vacant in the front row. I
took it, resolved at all events to watch him narrowly.

Not to detail too minutely the events of a performance which since that
time has become sufficiently familiar, I may say that he carried out his
programme with dreadful exactness, and, after appearing to burn the
handkerchief to ashes and mix up a quantity of eggs and flour in the
hat, proceeded very coolly to smash the works of my watch beneath his
ponderous pestle. Notwithstanding my faith, I began to feel seriously
uncomfortable. It was a neat little silver watch of foreign
workmanship--not very valuable, to be sure, but precious to me as the
most precious of repeaters.

"He is very tough, your watch, Monsieur," said the Wizard, pounding away
vigorously. "He--he takes a long time ... _Ah! mon Dieu!_"

He raised his hand to his head, uttered a faint cry, and snatched at the
back of the chair for support.

My first thought was that he had destroyed my watch by mistake--my
second, that he was very ill indeed. Scarcely knowing what I did, and
quite forgetting the audience, I jumped on the platform to his aid.

He shook his head, waved me away with one trembling hand, made a last
effort to articulate, and fell heavily to the ground.

All was confusion in an instant. Everybody crowded to the stage; whilst
I, with a presence of mind which afterwards surprised myself, made my
way out by a side-door and ran to fetch my father. He was fortunately at
home, and in less than ten minutes the Chevalier was under his care. We
found him laid upon a sofa in one of the sitting-rooms of the inn, pale,
rigid, insensible, and surrounded by an idle crowd of lookers-on. They
had taken off his cap and beard, and the landlady was endeavoring to
pour some brandy down his throat; but his teeth were fast set, and his
lips were blue and cold.

"Oh, Doctor Arbuthnot! Doctor Arbuthnot!" cried a dozen voices at once,
"the Conjuror is dying!"

"For which r