“Great news or a great danger,” he said to himself. “I should as lief meet a great danger.”
He rose upright.
“But why should I answer this appeal?” he asked without perceiving the sombre effect of his voice under the gloomy skylight and in the funeral chamber. “Is there anything in this world to alarm or interest me?”
As if to answer him the bell was so roughly shaken that the iron tongue broke loose and fell on a glass alembic which it shivered on the floor.
He held back no longer; besides, it was important that neither Fritz nor another should come here to find him.
With a tranquil tread he opened the trap and descended. When he opened the staircase door, Fritz stood on the top step, pale and breathless, holding a torch in one hand and the broken bell-pull in the other.
At sight of his master, he uttered a cry of satisfaction and then one of surprise and fright. Respectful as he usually was, he took the liberty of seizing him by the arm and dragging him up to a Venetian mirror.
“Look, excellency,” he said.
Balsamo shuddered. In an hour he had grown twenty years older. In his eyes were lustre; in his skin no blood; and over all his lineaments was spread an expression of stupor and lack of intelligence. Bloody foam bathed his lips, and on the white front of his shirt a large blood spot spread. He looked at himself for an instant without recognition. Then he plunged his glance steadily into that of his reflected self.
“You are quite right, Fritz,” he said. “But why did you call me?”