"Yes, and I hear too! The city is rising!" Basterga listened a moment. "Presently they will ring the alarm-bell, and——"
"If you stay here some one may find you!"
"And find me with you?" Basterga rejoined. He knew that he ought to go, for his own sake as well as the Syndic's. He knew that nothing was to be made and much might be lost by the disclosure that was on his tongue. But he was intoxicated with the success which he had gained; with the clang of arms, and the glitter of his armed presence. The true spirit of the man, as happens in intoxication of another kind, rose to the surface, cruel, waggish, insolent—of an insolence long restrained, the insolence of the scholar, who always in secret, now in the light, panted to repay the slights he had suffered, the patronage of leaders, the scoffs of power. "Ay," he continued, "they may find me with you! But if you do not mind, I need not. And I was just asking you—why not both? Life and power, my friend?"
"You know," Blondel answered, breathing quickly. How he hated the man! How gladly would he have laid him dead at his feet! For if the fool stayed here prating, if he were found here by those who within a few moments would come with the alarm, he was himself a lost man. All would be known.
That was the fear in Blondel's mind; the alarm was growing louder each moment, and drawing nearer. And then in a twinkling, in two or three sentences, Basterga put that fear into the second place, and set in its seat emotions that brooked no rival.
"Why not both?" he said, jeering. "Live and be Syndic, both? Because you had the scholar's ill, eh, Messer Blondel? Or because your physician said you had it—to whom I paid a good price—for the advice?" The devil seemed to look out of the man's eyes, as he spoke in short sentences, each pointed, each conveying a heart-stab to its hearer.
"To whom—you gave?" Blondel muttered, his eyes dilated.
"A good price—for the advice! A good price to tell you, you had it."
The magistrate's face swelled till it was almost purple, his hands gripped the front of his coat, and pressed hard against his breast. "But—the pains?" he muttered. "Did you—but no," with a frightful grimace, "you lie! you lie!"
"Did I bribe him—to give you those too?" the other answered, with a ruthless laugh. "You have alighted on it, most grave and reverend sage. You have alighted on the exact fact, so clever are you! That was precisely what I did some months back, after I heard that you, being fearful as rich men are, had been to him for some fancied ill. You had two medicines? You remember? The one gave, the other soothed your trouble. And now that you understand, now that your mind is free from care, and you can sleep without fear of the scholar's ill—will you not thank me for your cure, Messer Blondel?"