The blood left Claude's face. "What do you mean?" he muttered, finding his voice at last.
"Who hates, burns. Who loves, burns also. But that is by the way."
"Burns?"
"Ay," with a grin, "burns! It seems to come home to you. Burns! Fie, young man; you hate, I fear, beyond measure, or love beyond measure, if you so fear the fire. What, you must leave us? It is not very mannerly," with sarcasm, "to go while I speak!"
But Claude could bear no more. He snatched his cap from the table, and with an incoherent word, aimed at the Syndic and meant for leave-taking, he made for the door, plucked it open and disappeared.
The scholar smiled as he looked after him. "A foolish young man," he said, "who will assuredly, if he be not stayed, end unfortunate. It is the way of Frenchmen, Messer Blondel. They act without method and strike without intention, bear into age the follies of youth, and wear the gravity neither of the north nor of the south. But that reminds me," he continued, speaking low and bending towards the other with a look of sympathy—"you are better, I hope?"
The words were harmless, but they conveyed more than their surface meaning, and they touched the Syndic to the quick. He had begun to compose himself; now he had much ado not to gnash his teeth in the scholar's face. "Better?" he ejaculated bitterly. "What chance have I of being better? Better? Are you?" He began to tremble, his hands on the arms of his chair. "Otherwise, if you are not, you will soon have cause to know what I feel."
"I am better," Basterga answered with fervour. "I thank Heaven for it."
Blondel rose to his feet, his hands still clutching the chair. "What!" he cried. "You—you have not tried the——"
"The remedium?" The scholar shook his head. "No, on the contrary, I am relieved from my fears. The alarm was baseless. I have it not, I thank Heaven. I have not the disease. Nor, if there be any certainty in medicine, shall have it."