thrown away?"

"Well----"

"Not quite, I think?" the Syndic said, his small eyes twinkling. "Eh,
Messer Basterga, not quite? Now be candid."

"Well, I would not say," Basterga answered coldly, and as it seemed
unwillingly, "that I have not derived something from the researches with
which I have amused my leisure. But nothing of value to the general."

"Yet something of value to yourself," Blondel said, his head on one
side.

Basterga frowned, then shrugged his shoulders. "Well, yes," he said at
length, "as it happens, I have. But a thing of no use to any one else,
for the simple reason----"

"That you have only enough for yourself!"

The scholar looked astonished and a little offended.

"I do not know how you learned that," he said curtly, "but you are
right. I had no intention of telling you as much, but, as you have
guessed that, I do not mind adding that it is a remedy for a disease
which the most learned physicians do not pretend to cure."

"A remedy?"

"Yes, vital and certain."

"And you discovered it?"

"No, I did not discover it," Basterga replied modestly. "But the story
is so long that I will ask you to excuse me."

"I shall not excuse you if you do not favour me with it," the Syndic
answered eagerly. As he leaned forward there was a light in his eyes
that had not been in them a few minutes before. His hand, too, shook as
he moved it from the arm of his chair to his knee. "Nay, but, I pray
you, indulge me," he continued, in a tone anxious and almost submissive.
"I shall not betray your secrets. I am no philosopher, and no physician,
and, had I the will, I could make no use of your confidence."

"That is true," Basterga replied. "And, after all, the matter is simple.
I do not know why I should refuse to oblige you. I have said that I did
not discover this remedy. That is so. But it happened that in trying, by
way of amusement, certain precipitations, I obtained not that which I
sought--nor had I expected," he continued, smiling, "to obtain that, for
it was the Elixir of Life, which, as I have told you, does not
exist--but a substance new in my experience, and which seemed to me to
possess some peculiar properties. I tested it in all the ways known to
me, but without benefit or enlightenment; and in the end I was about to
cast it aside, when I chanced on a passage in the manuscript of Ibn
Jasher--the same, in fact, that I showed you a few minutes ago."

"And you found?" The Syndic's attitude a