"Ay," with a grin, "burns! It seems to come home to you. Burns! Fie, young man; you hate, I fear, beyond measure, or love beyond measure, if you so fear the fire. What, you must leave us? It is not very mannerly," with sarcasm, "to go while I speak!" But Claude could bear no more. He snatched his cap from the table, and with an incoherent word, aimed at the Syndic and meant for leave-taking, he made for the door, plucked it open and disappeared. The scholar smiled as he looked after him. "A foolish young man," he said, "who will assuredly, if he be not stayed, end unfortunate. It is the way of Frenchmen, Messer Blondel. They act without method and strike without intention, bear into age the follies of youth, and wear the gravity neither of the north nor of the south. But that reminds me," he continued, speaking low and bending towards the other with a look of sympathy--"you are better, I hope?" The words were harmless, but they conveyed more than their surface meaning, and they touched the Syndic to the quick. He had begun to compose himself; now he had much ado not to gnash his teeth in the scholar's face. "Better?" he ejaculated bitterly. "What chance have I of being better? Better? Are you?" He began to tremble, his hands on the arms of his chair. "Otherwise, if you are not, you will soon have cause to know what I feel." "I am better," Basterga answered with fervour. "I thank Heaven for it." Blondel rose to his feet, his hands still clutching the chair. "What!" he cried. "You--you have not tried the----" "The _remedium_?" The scholar shook his head. "No, on the contrary, I am relieved from my fears. The alarm was baseless. I have it not, I thank Heaven. I have not the disease. Nor, if there be any certainty in medicine, shall have it." The Syndic, alas for human nature, could have struck him in the face! "You have it not?" he snarled. "You have it not?" And then regaining control of himself, "I suppose I ought," with a forced and ghastly smile, "to felicitate you on your escape." "Rather to felicitate yourself," Basterga answered. "Or so I had hoped two days ago." "Myself?" "Yes," Basterga replied lightly. "For as soon as I found that I had no need of the _remedium_, I thought of you. That was natural. And it occurred to me--nay, calm yourself!" "Quick! Quick! "Nay, calm yourself, my dear Messer Blondel," Basterga repeated with outward solicitude and inward amusement. "Be calm, or you will do yourself an injury; you will indeed! In your state you should be prudent; you should govern yourself--one never knows. And besides, the thought, to which I refer--I see you recognise what it was----" "Yes! yes! Go on! Go on!" "Proved futile." "Futile?" "Yes, I am sorry to say it. Futile."