Then I understood what he meant; for he would have it that the drug was but a screen and a pretence, and that the power lay not in it, but in the man that gave it. Yet surely this is to explain what is obscure by a thing more obscure, and falls thus into a fault hated of the logicians. For Heaven may well have made a drug that binds the senses and limbs of men. Has not the poppy some such effect? And the ancients fabled the like of the lotus plant. But can we conceive that one man should by the mere glance of his eye have such power over another as to become to him, by these means and no other, a lord and master? In truth I find that hard to believe, and I doubt whether a man may lawfully believe it. Yet I know not. Knowledge spreads, and men grow wiser in hidden things; and although I who write may not live till the time when the thing shall be made clear, yet it may be God's will to send such light to the men of later days that, reading this story, they may find in it nothing that is strange or unknown to their science and skill. I pray that they may use the knowledge God sends in His holy service, and not in the work of the devil, as did the Wizard of Baratesta. But Count Antonio being, by his guile and adroitness, and by that strange power which he had from the drug or whence I know not, delivered out of the hands of Duke Valentine, abode with his company on the hills throughout the cold of winter, expecting the day when he might win the hand of the Lady Lucia; and she returned to her house, and said nothing of what had befallen the Duke. Yet the Duke showed her no tenderness, but rather used more severity with her. It is an evil service to a proud man to aid him in his day of humiliation. CHAPTER V. COUNT ANTONIO AND THE SACRED BONES.