“Now,” said he, “we are united by a bond the sweetest in the world—the sympathy of the palate. We have made of ourselves a little rosary of wine beads.”
He put his hand lightly on Gusman’s shoulder.
“This austerity,” he said—“this Bailly of the Municipality of the dead—I have purchased ye his favour with the one bribe to which he is susceptible. Kings might offer him their crowns; easy maids their honour. They should no more draw him from his reserve than Alexander drew Diogenes from his tub. But there is a séductrice to his integrity, and the name of it is right Hollands. My faith! I would not swear my fidelity to such a frowzy mistress; but taste is a matter of temperament. Is it not so, Jacques?”
“While the keg lasts, I will hold the safety of thy friends in pawn to thee.”
So replied the spectral figure—a voice, a phantom—the very enigma of this charnel city of echoes.
The liqueur had revived and comforted me amazingly. I raised myself on my elbow.
“Ah!” I cried, “if good intentions could find favour with thee, I would make thy keg a kilderkin, Citizen Gusman!”
The figure stood mute, like a man of bronze. Crépin laughed recklessly.
“He is the fast warden of these old catacombs,” he said—“the undying worm and sole master of their intricacies. Himself hath tunnelled them under the ground, I believe, like the tan-yard grub that bores into poplar-trees. Silence and secrecy are his familiars; but, I tell thee, monsieur, he will absorb Hollands till he drips with it as the roofs of his own quarries drip with water. The keg once drained, and—if thou renew’st it not—he will sell thee for a single measure of schnapps. Is it not so, Jacques?”
“It is so,” said the figure, in a deep, indifferent voice.