As was his habit, the other summoned up all his patience to reply to his master.
“I thought you had only just called me, my friend,” he meekly said.
“Your friend, you vile human creature,” cried the alchemist, “I think you talk to me as if I were one of your sort. Friend? I should think I were more than that: more than your father, for I have reared you, instructed you and enriched you. But you are no friend to me, oh, no! for you have left me, you let me starve, and you will be my death.”
“You have a bilious attack, master, and you will make yourself ill by going on thus.”
“Illness—rubbish! Have I ever been ill save when you made me feel the petty miseries of your mean human life? I, ill, who you know am the physician to others.”
“At all events, master, here I am,” coldly observed Balsamo. “Let us not waste time.”
“You are a nice one to remind me of that. You force me to dole out what ought to be unmeasured to all human creatures. Yes, I am wasting time: my time, like others, is falling drop by drop into eternity when it ought to be itself eternity.”
“Come, master, let us know what is to be done?” asked the other, working the spring which closed the trap in the floor. “You said you were starved. How so, when you know you were doing your fortnight’s absolute fast?”
“Yes; the work of regeneration was commenced thirty-two days ago.”
“What are you complaining about in that case—I see yet two or three decanters of rainwater, the only thing you take.”