Calm and resigned, analysing his sensations, listening to his own pangs as the last voices of earth, the old Magus let his farewell sullenly escape to life, hope and power.
“I die with no regret,” he said; “I have enjoyed all earthly boons; I have known everything; I have held all given to the creature to possess—and I am going into immortality.”
Balsamo sent forth a gloomy laugh which attracted the old man’s attention.
Althotas darted on him a look through the veiling flames, which was impressed with ferocious majesty.
“Yea, you are right: I had not foreseen one Thing—God!”
As if this mighty word had snatched the soul out of him, he dwindled up in the chair: his last breath had gone up to the Giver whom he had thought to deprive of it.
Balsamo heaved a sigh, and without trying to save a thing from the pyre of this modern Zoroaster dying, he went down to Lorenza, having set the trap so that it closed in all the fire as in an immense kiln.
All through the night the volcano blazed over Balsamo with the roaring of a whirlwind, but he neither sought to extinguish it or to flee. After having burnt up all that was combustible, and left the study bare to the sky, the fire went out, and Balsamo heard its last roar die away like Althota’ in a sigh.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE FAINTING FITS.
ANDREA was in her room, giving a final touch to her rebellious curls when she heard the step of her father, who appeared as she crossed the sill of the antechamber with a book under her arm.