The Long Night by Stanley Weyman (audio ebook reader .TXT) 📖

lips and a hand on each knee, betrayed an interest so abnormal that it was odd that Basterga did not notice it.

Instead, "I found that he had made," the scholar replied quietly, "as far back as the tenth century the same experiment which I had just completed. And with the same result."

"He obtained the substance?"

Basterga nodded.

"And discovered? What?" Blondel asked eagerly. "Its use?"

"A certain use," the other replied cautiously. "Or, rather, it was not he, but an associate, called by him the Physician of Aleppo, who discovered it. This man was the pupil of the learned Rhazes, and the tutor of the equally learned Avicenna, the link, in fact, between them; but his name, for some reason, perhaps because he mixed with his practice a greater degree of mysticism than was approved by the Arabian schools of the next generation, has not come down to us. This man identified the product which had defied Ibn Jasher's tests with a substance even then considered by most to be fabulous, or to be extracted only from the horn of the unicorn if that animal existed. That it had some of the properties of the fabled substance, he proceeded to prove to the satisfaction of Ibn Jasher by curing of a certain incurable disease five persons."

"No more than five?"

"No."

"Why?"

"The substance was exhausted."

Blondel gasped. "Why did he not make more?" he cried. His voice was querulous, almost savage.

"The experiment," Basterga answered, "of which it was the product was costly."

Blondel's face turned purple. "Costly?" he cried. "Costly? When the lives of men hung in the balance."

"True," Basterga replied with a smile; "but I was about to say that, costly as it was, it was not its price which hindered the production of a further supply. The reason was more simple. He could not extract it."

"Could not? But he had made it once?"

"Precisely."

"Then why could he not make it again?" the Syndic asked. He was genuinely, honestly angry. It was strange how much he took the matter to heart.

"He could not," Basterga answered. "He repeated the process again and again, but the peculiar product, which at the first trial had resulted from the precipitation, was not obtained."

"There was something lacking!"

"There was something lacking," Basterga answered. "But what that was which was lacking, or how it had entered into the alembic in the first instance, could not be discovered. The sage tried the experiment under all known conditions, and particularly when the moon was in the same quarter and when the sun was in the same house. He tried it, indeed, thrice on the corresponding day of the year, but--the product did not issue."

"How do you account for that?"

"Probably, in the first instance, an impurity in one of the drugs introduced a foreign substance into the alembic. That chance never occurred again, as far as I can learn, until, amusing myself with the same precipitation, I--I, Caesar Basterga of Padua," the scholar continued, not boastfully but in a tone thoughtful and almost absent, "in the last year of the last century, hit at length upon the same result."

The Syndic leaned forward; his hands gripped his knees more tightly. "And you," he said, "can repeat it?"

Basterga shook his head sorrowfully. "No," he said, "I cannot. Not that I have myself essayed the experiment more than thrice. I could not afford it. But a correspondent, M. de Laurens, of Paris, physician to the King, has, at the expense of a wealthy patient, spent more than fifteen thousand florins in essays. Alas, without result."

The big man spoke with his eyes on the floor. Had he turned them on the Syndic he must have seen that he was greatly agitated. Beads of moisture stood on his brow, his face was red, he swallowed often and with difficulty. At length, with an effort at composure, "Possibly your product--is not, after all, the same as Ibn Jasher's?" he said.

"I tested it in the same way," Basterga answered quietly.

"What? By curing persons of that disease?"

"Yes," Basterga rejoined. "And I would to Heaven," he continued, with the first spirt of feeling which he had allowed to escape him, "that I had held my hand after the first proof. Instead, I must needs try it again and again, and again."

"For nothing?"

Basterga shrugged his shoulders. "No," he said, "not for nothing." By a gesture he indicated the objects about him. "I am not a poor man now, Messer Blondel. Not for nothing, but too cheaply. And so often that I have now remaining but one portion of that substance which all the science of Padua cannot renew. One portion, only, alas!" he repeated with regret.

"Enough to cure one person?" the Syndic exclaimed.

"Yes."

"And the disease?" Blondel rose as he spoke. "The disease?" he repeated. He extended his trembling arms to the other. No longer, even if he wished it, could Basterga feign himself blind to the agitation which shook, which almost convulsed, the Syndic's meagre frame. "The disease? Is it not that which men call the Scholar's? Is it not that? But I know it is."

Basterga with something of astonishment in his face inclined his head.

"And I have that disease! I!" the Syndic cried, standing before him a piteous figure. He raised his hands above his head in a gesture which challenged the compassion of gods and men. "I! In two years----" His voice failed, he could not go on.

"Believe me, Messer Blondel," Basterga answered after a long and sorrowful pause, "I am grieved. Deeply grieved," he continued in a tone of feeling, "to hear this. Do the physicians give no hope?"

"Sons of the Horse-Leech!" the Syndic cried, a new passion shaking him in its turn. "They give me two years! Two years! And it may be less. Less!" he cried, raising his voice. "I, who go to and fro here and there, like other men with no mark upon me! I, who walk the streets in sunshine and rain like other men! Yet, for them the sky is bright, and they have years to live. For me, one more summer, and--night! Two more years at the most--and night! And I, but fifty-eight!"

The big man looked at him with eyes of compassion. "It may be," he said, after a pause, "that the physicians are wrong, Messer Blondel. I have known such a case."

"They are, they shall be wrong!" Blondel replied. "For you will give me your remedy! It was God led me here to-day, it was God put it in your heart to tell me this. You will give me your remedy and I shall live! You will, will you not? Man, you can pity!" And joining his hands he made as if he would kneel at the other's feet. "You can pity, and you will?"

"Alas, alas," Basterga replied, much and strongly moved. "I cannot."

"Cannot?"

"Cannot."

The Syndic glared at him. "Why?" he cried, "Why not? If I give you----"

"If you were to give me the half of your fortune," Basterga answered solemnly, "it were useless! I myself have the first symptoms of the disease."

"You?"

"Yes, I."

The Syndic fell back in his chair. A groan broke from him that bore witness at once to the bitterness of his soul and the finality of the argument. He seemed in a moment shrunk to half his size. In a moment disease and the shadow of death clouded his features; his cheeks were leaden; his eyes, without light or understanding, conveyed no meaning to his brain. "You, too!" he muttered mechanically. "You, too!"

"Yes," Basterga replied in a sorrowful voice. "I, too. No wonder I feel for you. I have not known it long, nor has it proceeded far in my case. I have even hopes, at least there are times when I have hopes, that the physicians may be mistaken."

Blondel's small eyes bulged suddenly larger. "In that event?" he cried hoarsely. "In that event surely----"

"Even in that event I cannot aid you," the big man answered, spreading out his hands. "I am pledged by the most solemn oath to retain the one portion I have for the use of the Grand Duke, my patron. And apart from that oath, the benefits I have received at his hand are such as to give him a claim second only to my necessity. A claim, Messer Blondel, which--I say it sorrowfully--I dare not set aside for any private feeling or private gain."

Blondel rose violently, his hands clawing the air. "And I must die?" he cried, his voice thick with rage. "I must die because he _may_ be ill? Because--because----" He stopped, struggling with himself, unable, it seemed, to articulate. By-and-by it became apparent that the pause had another origin, for when he spoke he had conquered his passion. "Pardon me," he said, still hoarsely, but in a different tone--the tone of one who saw that violence could not help him. "I was forgetting myself. Life--life is sweet to all, Messer Basterga, and we cannot lightly see it pass from us. To have life within sight, to know it within this room, perhaps within reach----"

"Not quite that," Basterga murmured, his eyes wandering to the steel casket, chained to the wall beside the hearth. "Still, I understand; and, believe me," he added in a tone of sympathy, "I feel for you, Messer Blondel. I feel deeply for you."

"Feel?" the Syndic muttered. For an instant his eyes gleamed savagely, the veins of his temples swelled. "Feel!"

"But what can I do?"

Blondel could have answered, but to what advantage? What could words profit him, seeing that it was a life for a life, and that, as all that a man hath he will give for his life, so there is nothing another hath that he will take for it. Argument was useless; prayer, in view of the other's confession, beside the mark. The magistrate saw this, and made an effort to resume his dignity. "We will talk another day," he murmured, pressing his hand to his brow, "another day!" And he turned to the door. "You will not mention what I have said to you, Messer Basterga?"

"Not a syllable," his host answered, as he followed him out. The abruptness of the departure did not surprise him. "Believe me, I feel for you, Messer Blondel."

The Syndic acknowledged the phrase by a gesture not without pathos, and, passing out, stumbled blindly down the narrow stairs. Basterga attended him with respect to the outer door, and there they parted in silence. The magistrate, his shoulders bowed, walked slowly to the left, where, turning into the town through the inner gate, the Porte Tertasse, he disappeared. The big man waited a while, sunning himself on the steps, his face towards the ramparts.

"He will come back, oh, yes, he will come back," he purred, smiling all over his large face. "For I, Caesar Basterga, have a brain. And 'tis better a brain than thews and sinews, gold or lands, seeing that it has all these at command when I need them. The fish is hooked. It will be strange if I do not land him before the year is out. But the bribe to his physician--it was a happy thought: a happy thought of this brain of Caesar Basterga, graduate of Padua, _viri valde periti, doctissimique_!"


CHAPTER VI.

TO TAKE OR LEAVE.

The house in the Corraterie, near the Porte Tertasse, differed in no outward respect from