"Upstairs?"
"Yes, the room which she occupies with her mother. And kneeling and listening, and seeing what I could for your sake," the knave continued, not a feature evincing the shame he should have felt, "I saw her handle the phial at a little table opposite the door, but hidden by a curtain from the bed."
The Syndic's eyes conveyed the question his lips refused to frame. No man, submitted to the torture, has ever suffered more than he was suffering.
But Louis had as much mind to avenge himself as the bravest, if he could do so safely; and he would not be hurried. "She held it to the light," he said, dwelling on every syllable, "and turned it this way and that, and I could see bubbles as of gold——"
"Ah!"
"Whirling and leaping up and down in it as if they lived—God guard us from the evil one! Then she knelt——"
The Syndic uttered an involuntary cry.
"And prayed," Louis continued, confirming his astonishing statement by a nod. "But whether to it—'twas on the table before her—or to the devil, or otherwise, I know not. Only"—with damnatory candour—"it had a strange aspect. Certainly she knelt, and it was on the table in front of her, and her forehead rested on her hands, and——"
"What then? What then? By Heaven, the point!" gasped Blondel, writhing in torture. "What then? blind worm that you are, can you not see that you are killing me? What did she do with it? Tell me!"
"She poured it into a glass, and——"