The Syndic's eyes sparkled. His passion overcame him. "Girl, don't play with me!" he cried. "Don't dare to play with me!" And then as she shrank back alarmed by his tone, and shocked by this sudden peeping forth of the tragic and the real, lo, in a twinkling he was another man, trembling, and holding out shaking hands to her. "Get it for me!" he said. "Get it for me, girl! I will tell you what it is! If I had told you before, I had had it now, and I should be whole and well! whole and well. You have a heart and can pity! Women can pity. Then pity me! I am rich, but I am dying! I am a dying man, rising up and lying down, counting the days as I walk the streets, and seeing the shroud rise higher and higher upon my breast!" He paused for breath, endeavouring to gain some command of himself; while she, carried off her feet by this rush of words, stared at him in stupefaction. Before he came he had made up his mind to tell her the truth--or something like the truth. But he had not intended to tell the truth in this way until, face to face with her and met by her scruples, he let the impulse to tell the whole carry him away. He steadied his lips with a shaking hand. "You know now why I want it," he resumed, speaking huskily and with restrained emotion. "'Tis life! Life, girl! In that"--he fought with himself before he could bring out the word--"in that phial is my life! Is life for whoever takes it! It is the _remedium_, it is strength, life, youth, and but one--but one dose in all the world! Do you wonder--I am dying!--that I want it? Do you wonder--I am dying!--that I will have it? But"--with a strange grimace intended to reassure her--"I frighten you, I frighten you." "No!" she said, though in truth she had unconsciously retreated almost to the door of the staircase before his extended hands. "But I--I scarcely understand, Messer Blondel. If you will please to tell me----" "Yes, yes!" "What Messer Basterga--how he comes to have this?" She must parley with him until she could collect her thoughts; until she could make up her mind whether he was sane or mad and what it behoved her to do. "Comes to have it!" he cried vehemently. "God knows! And what matter? 'Tis the _remedium_, I tell you, whoever has it! It is life, strength, youth!" he repeated, his eyes glittering, his face working, and the impulse to tell her not the truth only, but more even than the truth, if he might thereby dazzle her, carrying him away. "It is health of body, though you be dying, as I am! And health of mind though you be possessed of devils! It is a cure for all ills, for all weaknesses, all diseases, even," with a queer grimace, "for the Scholar's evil! Think you, if it were not rare, if it were not something above the common, if it were not what leeches seek in vain, I should be here! I should have more than enough to buy it, I, Messer Blondel of Geneva!" He ceased, lacking breath.