Blondel's thin lips were warrant--to such of the world as had eyes to see--that in the ordinary things of life he would have been one of the last to put faith in a man of Basterga's stamp: and one of the first, had the case been other than his own, to laugh at the credulity he was displaying. He would have seen--no one more clearly--that, in making the bargain he had made, he was in the position of a drowning man who clutches at a straw; not because he believes that the straw will support him, but because he has no other hope, and is loth to sink. He would have seen, too, another thing, which indeed he did see dimly. This was that, talk as he might, make terms as he might, repeat as firmly as he pleased, "The _remedium_ first and then Geneva," he would be forced when the time came to take the word for the deed. If he dared not trust Basterga, neither dared the scholar trust him. Once safe, once snatched from the dark fate that scared him, he would laugh at the notion of betraying the city. He would snap his fingers in the Paduan's face; and Basterga knew it. The scholar, therefore, dared not trust him; and either there was an end of the matter or he must trust Basterga, must eat his own words, and, content with the possession of something, must wait for proof of its efficacy until the die was cast! In his heart he knew this. He knew that on the brink of the extremity to which circumstances and Basterga were slowly pushing him it might not be in his power to check himself: that he must trust, whether he would or no, and where instinct bade him place no trust. And this doubt, this suspicion that when all was done he might find himself tricked, and learn that for nothing he had given all, added immeasurably to the torment of his mind; to the misery of his reflections when he awoke in the small hours and saw things coldly and clearly, and to the fever and suspense in which he passed his days. He clung to one thought and got what consolation he could from it; a bitter and saturnine comfort it was. The thought was this: if it turned out that, after all, he had been tricked, he could but die; and die he must if he made no bargain. And to a dead man what matter was it what price he had paid that he might live! What matter who won or who lost Geneva, who lived, who died, who were slaves, who free!