[11] This incident has suggested to Sir Walter Scott the catastrophe of the diabolical Alasco, in Kenilworth:
"The old woman assured Varney that Alasco had scarce eaten or drunk since her master's departure, living perpetually shut up in the laboratory, and talking as if the world's continuance depended on what he was doing there.
"'I will teach him that the world hath other claims on him,' said Varney, seizing a light and going in search of the alchemist. He returned, after a considerable absence, very pale, but yet with his habitual sneer on his cheek and nostril. 'Our friend,' he said, 'has exhaled.'
"'How! what mean you?' said Foster; 'run away—fled with my forty pounds, that should have been multiplied a thousand fold? I will have Hue and Cry!'
"'I will tell thee a surer way,' said Varney.
"'How! which way?' exclaimed Foster. 'I will have back my forty pounds—I deemed them as surely a thousand pounds multiplied—I will have back my in-put at the least.'
"'Go hang thyself, then, and sue Alasco in the devil's court of Chancery, for thither he has carried the cause.'
"'How!—what dost thou mean?—is he dead?'
"'Ay, truly is he,' said Varney, 'and properly swollen already in the face and body. He had been mixing some of his devil's medicines, and the glass mask, which he used constantly, had fallen from his face, so that the subtle poison entered the brain and did its work.'
"'Sancta Maria!' said Foster; 'I mean, God in his mercy preserve us from covetousness and deadly sin!'"