“Oh! you confess, then, that you are a sorcerer.”
“Indeed, I am one. I don’t say it before all the world, because they might burn me for it, but as we are alone, I don’t mind telling you.”
“Well, well, well,” answered Gryphus. “But if a sorcerer can change black bread into white, won’t he die of hunger if he has no bread at all?”
“What’s that?” said Cornelius.
“Consequently, I shall not bring you any bread at all, and we shall see how it will be after eight days.”
Cornelius grew pale.
“And,” continued Gryphus, “we’ll begin this very day. As you are such a clever sorcerer, why, you had better change the furniture of your room into bread; as to myself, I shall pocket the eighteen sous which are paid to me for your board.”
“But that’s murder,” cried Cornelius, carried away by the first impulse of the very natural terror with which this horrible mode of death inspired him.
“Well,” Gryphus went on, in his jeering way, “as you are a sorcerer, you will live, notwithstanding.”
Cornelius put on a smiling face again, and said,—