He came out of his hallucination and dipping his hand in a vase of iced water, he held it on his forehead. By his will he chased away that throbbing of the blood in the brains which goes on silently in life but when heard means madness or death.
“Come, come, let us reason,” he said, “Lorenza is no more here, and consequently must have gone forth. How? Through Andrea de Taverney I can ascertain all—whether my incorruptible Fritz was bribed and—then, if love is a sham, if science is an error, and fidelity a snare—Balsamo will punish without pity or reservation—like the powerful man smites when he has put aside mercy and preserves but pride. I must let Fritz perceive nothing while I haste to Trianon.”
In taking up his hat to go, he stopped.
“Goodness, I am forgetting the old man,” he said. “I must attend to Althotas before all. In my monstrous love, I left my unfortunate friend to himself—I have been inhuman and ungrateful.”
With the fever animating his movements he sprang to the trap which he lowered and on which he stepped.
Scarcely had he reached the level of the laboratory, than he was struck by the old man’s voice crooning a song. To Balsamo’s high astonishment his first words were not a reproach as he expected; he was received by a natural and simple outburst of gaiety.
The old man was lolling back in his easy chair, snuffing the air as though he were drinking in new life at each sniff. His eyes were filled with dull fire, but the smile on his lips made them lighter as they were fastened on the visitor.
In this close, warm atmosphere, Balsamo felt giddy as if respiration and his strength failed him simultaneously.
“Master,” said he, looking for something to lean against, “you must not stay here: one cannot breathe. Let me open a window overhead for there seems to reek from the floor the odor of blood.”
“Blood? ha, ha, ha!” roared Althotas. “I noticed it but did not mind: it is you who have tender heart and brain who is easily affected.”