"Take but a cup of this elixir, my lord," answered the druggist. "Mind you not, how it refreshed you yesterday morning?"
"Surely," cried the old lord, in a peevish tone. "Have you any more? Why did you not give it me sooner? How could you see me suffer so all night, and not give me that which alone eases me?"
"Because, if used too often, it loses its effect," replied the druggist.
"Give it me--give it me now, then!" cried the invalid, impatiently. "When would you give a man medicine but when he is ill and in pain? Spare not, man--let the dose be full. Thou shalt be well paid for thy drugs."
Ganay took up a cup from the table, and nearly filled it with a dark-coloured liquid from a phial which he drew out of his bosom. He then gave it to the old noble, who drank off the contents at once, while the druggist gazed on him with an eye which seemed almost starting from its socket, so intense was the look of eager interest with which he regarded him.
"Are you sure it is the same?" said the Lord of Neufchatel, returning the cup; "it tastes differently; it is bitterer, and has a faint taste as of earth. It is--it is--not so----"
But, as he spoke, the lids of his eyes fell; he opened them drowsily once or twice, added a few more almost inarticulate words, and then sunk back upon his pillow. Ganay looked at him intently for two or three minutes; then stole out of the room; and, descending with a quiet step to the hall, he woke his own serving-boy, who was sitting by the fire. "Hie thee to the Prevot," he whispered; "bid him hither instantly!"
"Who goes there?" cried the servant on watch, who had been asleep also, but was now wakened by the boy opening the door, "Who goes there?"
"Only my boy," answered Ganay, "going for some drugs against my good lord wakes--I would have healed him sooner than all the leeches in the town, had I but tried it before; but, of course, I could not meddle till he dismissed the surgeon in such wrath."
"How goes he now, Master Ganey?" demanded the man.