"Can one procure it?"
"Certainly; it is three drops of a child's arterial blood."
"And have you the child?" gasped Balsamo, horrified.
"No, I expect you to find one for me."
"Master, you are mad."
"In what respect?" asked the emotionless old man, licking with his tongue the stopper of the phial, from which a little of the nectar had oozed.
"The child would be killed."
"What of it—the finer the child, the better the heart's blood."
"It cannot be; children are no longer butchered, but brought up with care."
"Indeed! how fickle is the world. Three years ago, we were offered more children than we knew what to do with, for four charges of gunpowder or a pint of traders' whiskey."