“Philosophers have often been in the pay of dukes,” I said.
“Those days have passed. I live my life without dukes.”
“Without the Duke of Carmona?”
“The Duke of Carmona? That is a mere name to me. Why do you speak it?”
“I think you can guess.”
“I fear that after all your brain is not clear. We must have a little more of the good medicine.”
Before I knew what he meant to do, he was out of the alcove, and out of sight in the room beyond. Again I tried my strength, and would have followed, but before I could do more than struggle up from the bed, the door had been unlocked, and locked again.
“He must keep the key in his pocket,” I thought.
I did not believe a word of the plausible explanations. The continued mental effort I had been making had cleared, rather than tired my brain; and I was out of that black sea of horror in which I had been drowning.
I had not been mad, and I could not have been in this house for many weeks, since the man in the capucha talked of Corpus Christi as still in the future.