—Hold it right there, interrupted the Prior, sharply, We must not risk upsetting the customers…. All you need to do for the moment, as a precaution, is to keep a eye on yourself…. Let's see, how much does it take to fully establish the quality?… Lets say twenty drops…. It would need a hell of a devil to catch you out with just twenty drops…. Moreover, to avoid any possibility of accident, I am giving you a dispensation not to have to come to church. You can have a private evening service in the distillery…. And now, you may go in peace, Reverend, but … be sure to count the drops.
Unfortunately, it was no use counting the drops…. The demon held of him anyway, and having held him, wouldn't let go.
So, now it was the distillery that heard the unusual service!
* * * * *
In the daytime all went well … for a while. The Father was quite relaxed: he prepared the stoves, the stills, and carefully selected the herbs, fine, grey, dentate, the very scented essence of Provencal sunshine…. But in the evening while the basic ingredients were infusing and the elixir was cooling down in the large red coppers, the poor man's torture began.
—… Seventeen … eighteen … nineteen … twenty!…
The drops fell tantalisingly from the pipette into the silver-gilt goblet. These twenty, the Father swallowed in one go, almost without tasting them. Oh! How he would have loved to drink the health of that twenty first drop! To escape temptation, he had to lose himself in prayer kneeling at the far end of the laboratory. Unfortunately, the still warm liqueur was still releasing a hint of aromatic fumes, which swirled around him, and led him on regardless towards the vats…. The liqueur was of such a lovely golden green colour…. Poised above it, his nostrils aquiver, he stirred it very gently with his pipette, and in the twinkling eddies, which were spreading throughout the emerald ambrosia, he thought he saw the sparkling, laughing eyes of aunty Bégon looking back at him….
—Oh! Alright! Just one more drop!
One drop, yes. And then another. And another, and another, and another, until his goblet almost overflowed. By now, his struggle was over, and he collapsed into a large armchair, his body cast off, his eyelids half closed, in pleasure—and in pain—as he continued to sip his sinful cup and said with sweet remorse:
—Oh! I'm damned if I do…. I'm damned if I don't….