The Long Night: Chapter 21

Chapter 21

THE _REMEDIUM_.

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!

And again, the very easiness of the thing he was asked to do tempted
him. It was a thing that to one in his position presented no difficulty
and scarcely any danger. He had but to withdraw the guards, or the
greater part of them, from a portion of the wall, and to stop on one
pretext or another--the bitter cold of the wintry weather would
avail--the rounds that at stated intervals visited the various posts.
That was all; as a man of tried loyalty, intrusted with the safeguarding
of the city, and to whom the officer of the watch was answerable, he
might make the necessary arrangements without incurring, even after the
catastrophe, more than a passing odium, a breath of suspicion.

And Baudichon and Petitot? He tasted, when he thought of them, the only
moments of comfort, of pleasure, of ease, that fell to his lot
throughout these days. They would thwart him no more. Petty worms,
whose vision went no farther than the walls of the city, he would have
done with them when the flag of Savoy fluttered above St. Pierre; and
when for the confines of a petty canton was substituted, for those who
had eyes to see and courage to adapt themselves, the wide horizon of the
Italian Kingdom. When he thought of them--and then only--he warmed to
the task before him; then only he could think of it without a shiver and
without distaste. And not the less because on that side, in their
suspicion, in their grudging jealousy, in their unwinking integrity, lay
the one difficulty.

A difficulty exasperated by the insult that, in a moment of bitter
disappointment, he had flung in Baudichon's face. That hasty word had
revealed to the speaker a lack of self-control that terrified him, even
as it had revealed to Baudichon a glimpse of something underneath the
Fourth Syndic's dry exterior that might well set a man thinking as well
as talking. This matter Blondel saw plainly he must deal with at once,
or it might do harm. To absent himself from the next day's council might
rouse a storm beyond his power to weather, or short of that might give
rise at a later period to a dangerous amount of gossip and conjecture.

He was early at the meeting, therefore, but to his surprise found it in
session before the hour. This, and the fact that the hubbub of voices
and discussion died down at his entrance--died down and was succeeded by
a chilling silence--put him on his guard. He had not come unprepared for
opposition; to meet it he had wound himself to a pitch, telling himself
that after this all would be easy; that he had this one peril to face,
this one obstacle to surmount, and having succeeded might rest.
Nevertheless, as he passed up the Great Council Chamber amid that
silence, and met strange looks on faces which were wont to smile, his
courage for one moment, even in that familiar scene--conscience makes
cowards of all--wavered. His smile grew sickly, his nerves seemed
suddenly unstrung, his knees shook under him. It was a dreadful instant
of physical weakness, of mental terror, under the eyes of all. To
himself, he seemed to stand still; to be self-betrayed, self-convicted!

Then--and so brief was the moment of weakness no eye detected it--he
moved on to his place, and with his usual coolness took his seat. He
looked round.

"You are early," he said, ignoring the glances, hostile or doubtful,
that met his gaze. "The hour has barely struck, I believe?"

"We were of opinion," Fabri answered, with a dry cough, "that minutes
were of value."

"Ah!"

"That not even one must be lost, Messer Blondel!"

"In doing?" Blondel asked in a negligent tone, well calculated to annoy
those who were eager in the matter. "In doing what, if I may ask?"

"In doing, Messer Syndic," Petitot answered sharply, "that which should
have been done a week ago; and better still a fortnight ago. In issuing
a warrant for the arrest of the person whose name has been several times
in question here."

"Messer Basterga?"

"The same."

"You may save yourselves the trouble," the Syndic replied, with a little
contempt. "The warrant has been issued. It was issued yesterday, and
would have been executed in the afternoon, if he had not got wind of it,
and left the town. And on this let me say one more word," Blondel
continued, leaning forward and speaking in sudden heat, before any one
could take up the question. "That word is this. If it had not been for
the importunity of some who are here, the warrant had _not_ been issued,
the man had still been within the walls, and we had been able still to
trace his plans! We had not been as we now are, and as I foretold we
should be, in the dark, ignorant from which quarter the blow may fall,
and not a whit the wiser for the hint given us."

"You have let him escape!" The words were Petitot's.

"I? No! I have not let him escape, but those who forced my hand!"
Blondel retorted in passion, so real, or so well simulated, that it
swept away the majority of his listeners. "They have let him escape!
Those who had no patience or craft! Those whose only notion of
statesmanship, whose only method of making use of the document we had
under our hand was to tear it up. Only yesterday morning I was with
him----"

"Ay?" Baudichon cried, his eyes glowing with dull passion. "You were
with him! And he went in the afternoon! Mark that!" He turned quickly to
his fellows. "He went in the afternoon! Now, I would like to know----"

Blondel stood up. "Whether I am a traitor?" he said, in a tone of fury;
and he extended his arms in protest. "Whether I am in league with this
Italian, I, Philibert Blondel of Geneva? That is what you ask, what you
wish to know! Whether I sought him yesterday in the hope of worming his
secrets from him, and doing what I could for the benefit of the State in
a matter too delicate to be left to underlings? Or went there, one with
him, to betray my country? To sell the Free City? That--that is what you
ask?"

His passion was full, overpowering, convincing; so convincing--it almost
stopped his speech--that he believed in it himself, so convincing that
it swept away all but his steady and professed opponents. "No, no!"
cried a dozen voices, in tones that reflected his indignation. "No, no!
Shame!"

"No?" Blondel took up the word, his eyes sparkling, his adust complexion
heated and full of fire. "But it is--yes, they say! Yes, they say whom
you have to thank if we have lost our clue, they who met me going to him
but yesterday and threatened me! Threatened me!" he repeated, in a voice
of astonishment. "Me, who desired only, sought only, was going only to
do my duty! I used, I admit the fault," he allowed his voice to drop to
a tone more like his own, "words on that occasion that I now regret. But
is blood water? Does no man besides Councillor Baudichon love his
country? Is the suspicion, the open suspicion of such an one, no insult,
that he must cavil if he be repaid in insult? I have given my proofs. If
any man can be trusted to sound the enemy, it is I! But I have done! Had
Messer Baudichon not pressed me to issue the warrant, not driven me
beyond my patience, it had not been issued yesterday. It had been in the
office, and the man within the walls! Ay, and not only within the walls,
but fresh from a conference with the Sieur d'Albigny, primed with all we
need to know, and in doubt by which side he could most profit!"

"It was about that you saw him?" Petitot said slowly, his eyes fixed
like gimlets to the other's face.

"It was about that I saw him," Blondel answered. "And I think in a few
hours more I had won him. But in the street he had some secret word or
warning; for when I handed the warrant--against my better sense--to the
officers, they, who had never lost sight of him between gate and gate,
answered that he had crossed the bridge and left the town an hour
before. Mon Dieu!"--he struck his two hands together and snapped his
teeth--"when I think how foolish I was to be over-ridden, I could--I
could say more, Messer Baudichon"--with a saturnine look--"than I said
yesterday!"

"At any rate the bird is flown!" Baudichon replied, with sullen temper.
"That is certain! And it was you who were set to catch him!"

"But it was not I who scared him," Blondel rejoined.

"I don't know what you would have had of him!"

"Oh, I see that plainly enough," said Fabri. He was an honest man,
without prejudice, and long the peace-maker between the two parties.

"I thank you," Blondel replied dryly. "But, by your leave, I will make
it clear to Messer Baudichon also, who will doubtless like to know. I
would have had of him the time and place and circumstance of the attack,
if such be in preparation. And then, when I knew all, I would have made
dispositions, not only to safeguard the city, but to give the enemy such
a reception that Italy should ring with it! Ay, and such as should put
an end for the rest of our lives to these treacherous attacks!"

The picture which he drew thus briefly of a millennium of safety,
charmed not only his own adherents, but all who were neutral, all who
wavered. They saw how easily the thing might have been done, how
completely the treacherous blow might have been parried and returned.
Veering about they eyed Baudichon, on whom the odium of the lost
opportunity seemed to rest, with resentment--as an honest man, but a
simpleton, a dullard, a block! And when Blondel added, after a pause,
"But there, I have done! The office of Fourth Syndic I leave to you to
fill," they barely allowed him to finish.

"No! No!" came from almost all mouths, and from every part of the
council table.

"No," Fabri said, when silence was made. "There is no provision for a
change, unless a definite accusation be laid."

"But Messer Baudichon may have one to make," Blondel said proudly. "In
that case, let him speak."

Baudichon breathed hard, and seemed to be on the point of pouring forth
a torrent of words. But he said nothing. Instinct told him that his
enemy was not to be trusted, but he had the wit to discern that Blondel
had forestalled him, and had drawn the sting from his charges. He could
have wept in dull, honest indignation; but for accusations, he saw that
the other held the game, and he was silent. "Fat hog!" the man had
called him. "Fat hog!" A tear gathered slowly in his eye as he recalled
it.

Fabri gave him time to speak; and then with evident relief, "He has none
to make, I am sure," he said.

"Let him understand, then," Blondel replied firmly, "let all understand,
that while I will do my duty I am no longer in the position to guard
against sudden strokes, in which I should have been, had I been allowed
to go my own way. If a misfortune happen, it is not on me the blame must
rest." He spoke solemnly, laughing in his sleeve at the cleverness with
which he was turning his enemy's petard against him. "All that man can
do in the dark shall be done," he continued. "And I do not--I am free to
confess that--anticipate anything while the negotiations with the
President Rochette are in progress."

"No, it is when they are broken off, they will fall back on the other
plan," one of the councillors said with an air of much wisdom.

"I think that is so. Nor do I think that anything will be done during
the present severe weather."

"They like it no better than we do!"

"But the roads are good in this frost," Fabri said. "If it be a question
of moving guns or wagons----"

"But it is not, by your leave, Messer Fabri, as I am informed," the man
who had spoken before objected; supporting his opinion simply because he
had voiced it, a thing seen every day in such assemblies. Fabri replied
on him in the other sense: and presently Blondel had the satisfaction of
listening to a discussion in which the one party said a dozen things
that he saw would be of use to him--some day.

One only said not a word, and that was Petitot. He listened to all with
a puzzled look. He resented the insult which Blondel had flung at his
friend Baudichon, but he saw all going against them, and no chance of
redress; nay, capital was being made out of that which should have been
a disadvantage. Worst of all, he was uneasy, fancying--he was very
shrewd--that he caught a glimpse, under the Fourth Syndic's manner, of
another man: that he detected signs of emotion, a feverishness and
imperiousness not quite explained by the circumstances.

He got the notion from this that the Fourth Syndic had learned more from
Basterga than he had disclosed. His notion, even so, went no further
than the suspicion that Blondel was hiding knowledge out of a desire to
reap all the glory. But he did not like it. "He was always for risking,
for risking!" he thought. "This is another case of it. God grant it go
well!" His wife, his children, his daughters, rose in a picture before
him, and he hated Blondel, who had none of these. He would have put him
to death for running the tithe of a risk.

When the council broke up, Fabri drew Blondel aside. "The bird is flown,
but what of the nest?" he asked. "Has he left nothing?"

"Between you and me," Blondel replied under his breath, as his eyes
sought the other's, "I hope to make him speak yet. But not a word!"

"Ah!"

"Not a word! But there is just a chance. And it will be everything to us
if I can induce him to speak."

"I see that. But the house? Could you not search it?"

"That would be to scare him finally."

"You have made no perquisition there?"

"None. I have heard," Blondel continued, hesitating as if he had not
quite made up his mind to speak, "some things--strange things in respect
to the house. But I will tell you more of that when I know more."

He was too clever to state that he held the house in suspicion for
sorcery and kindred things. Charges such as that spread, he knew,
upwards from the lower classes, not downwards to them. The poison,
disseminated as he had known how to disseminate it, by hints and
innuendoes dropped among his officers and ushers, was already in the
air, and would do its work. Fabri, a man of sense, might laugh to-day,
and to-morrow; but the third day, when the report came to him from a
dozen quarters, mainly by women's mouths, he would not laugh. And
presently he would shrug his shoulders and stand aside, and leave the
matter in more earnest hands.

Blondel dropped no more than that hint, therefore, and as he passed
homeward applauded his discretion. He was proud of the turn things had
taken at the Council; elated by the part he had played, and the proof he
had given of his mastery, he felt able to carry anything through. His
mind, leaping over the immediate future, pictured a wider theatre, in
which his powers would have full scope, and a larger stage on which he
might aspire to play the first part. He saw himself not only wealthy,
but ennobled, the fount of honour, the favourite, and, in time, the
master of princes. Such as he was to-day the Medicis had been, and many
another whom the world held noble. He had but to live and to dare; only
to live and to dare! Only in order to do the one he must--it was no
choice of his--do the other!

Before he was five minutes older he was reminded of the necessity. At
the door of his house the pains of the disease from which he
suffered--aggravated, perhaps, by the excitement through which he had
just passed, or by the cold of the weather--seized him with unusual
violence. He leant, pale and almost fainting, against the door-jamb,
unable at the moment to do so much as raise the latch. The golden dreams
in which he had lost himself by the way, the visions of power and fame,
vanished as he had so many times seen the after-glow vanish from the
snow-peaks; leaving only cold images of death and desolation. Presently,
with an effort, he staggered within doors, poured out such medicine as
he had, and, bent double and almost without breath, swallowed it; and
so, by-and-by, a wan and wild-eyed image of himself came out of the fit.

He told himself in after days that it was that decided him; that but for
that sharp fit of pain and the prospect of others like it, he would not
have yielded to the temptation, no, not to be the Grand Duke's
favourite, not to be Minister of Savoy! He ignored, in his looking
backward, the visions of glory and ambition in which he had revelled. He
saw himself on the rack, with life and immunity from pain drawing him
one way, the prospect of a miserable death the other; and he pleaded
that no man would have decided otherwise. After that experience the
straw did not float, so thin that he was not ready to grasp it rather
than die, rather than suffer again. Nor did the fact that the straw at
that moment lay on the table beside him go for much.

It did lie there. When he felt a little stronger and began to look about
him, he found a note at his elbow. It was a small, common-looking
letter, sealed with a B, that might signify Blondel or Basterga, or, for
the matter of that, Baudichon. He did not know the handwriting, and he
opened it idly, in the scorn of small things that pain induced.

He had not read a line of the contents, before his countenance changed.
The letter was from Basterga, and cunningly contrived. It gave him the
directions he needed, yet it was so worded that even after the event it
might pass for a trifling communication from a physician. The place and
the hour were specified--the latter so near that for a moment his cheek
grew pale. On that ensued the part which interested him most; but as the
whole was brief, the whole may be given.

"Sir" (here followed a cabalistic sign such as physicians were in the
habit of using to impose on the vulgar). "After paying a visit in the
Corraterie, where I have an appointment on Saturday evening next
between late and early, I will be with you. But the mixture with the
necessary directions shall be sent to you twelve hours in advance, so
that before my visit you may experience its good effects. As surely as
the wrong potion in the case you wot of deprived of reason, so surely
(as I hope for salvation) will this potion have the desired effect.

"The Physician of Aleppo."

"Saturday next, between late and early!" Blondel muttered, gazing at the
words with fascinated eyes. "It is for the day after to-morrow! The day
after to-morrow!" And in his thoughts he passed again over the road he
had travelled since his first visit to Basterga's room, since the hour
when the scholar had unrolled before him the map of the town he called
"Aurelia," and had told him the story of Ibn Jasher and the Physician of
Aleppo.

"No, I am not well," he answered. He sat, warmly wrapped up, in the high
chair in his parlour, his face so drawn with want of sleep that Captain
Blandano of the city guard, who had come to take his orders, had no
difficulty in believing him. "I am not well," he repeated peevishly. "It
is the weather." He had some soup before him. Beside it stood a tiny
phial of medicine; a phial strangely shaped and strange looking,
containing something not unlike the green cordial of the Carthusians.

"It troubles me a good deal, too," Blandano said. "There are seven men
absent in the fourth ward. And two men, whose wives are urgent with me
that they should have leave."

"Leave?" the Syndic cried. "Do they think naught"--leaning forward in a
passion--"of the safety of the city? If I were not ill, I would take
service on the wall myself to set an example!"

"There is no need of that," the Captain answered respectfully, "if I
might have permission to withdraw a few men from the west side so as to
fill the places on the east----"

"Ay, ay!"

"From the Rhone side of the town----"

"From the Corraterie? That is least open to assault."

"Yes, from that part perhaps would be best," Blandano assented, nodding.
"Yes, I think so. If I might do that, I think I could manage."

"Well, then do it," Blondel answered. "And make a note that I assented
to your suggestion to take them from the Corraterie and put them on the
lower part of the wall. After all, the nights are very bitter now, and
there are limits. Do the men grumble much?"

"It is as much as I can do to make them go the rounds," Blandano
answered. "Some plead the weather; and some argue that, with President
Rochette, whose word is as good as his bond, on the point of coming to
an agreement with us, the rounds are a farce!"

The Syndic shrugged his shoulders. "Well!" he muttered, rubbing his chin
and looking thoughtfully before him, "we must not wear the men out.
There is no moon now, is there?"

"No."

"And the enemy can attempt nothing without light," Blondel continued,
thinking aloud. "See here, Blandano, we must not put too heavy a burden
on our people. I see that. As it is so cold, I think you may pass the
word to pretermit the rounds to-night--save two. At what hours would you
suggest?"

Blandano considered his own comfort--as the other expected he would--and
answered, "Early and late, say an hour before midnight and an hour
before dawn".

"Then let be it as you suggest. But see"--with returning asperity--"that
those rounds go, and at their hours. Let there be no remissness. I will
make a note," he continued, "of the hours fixed. An hour before midnight
and an hour before dawn".

He extended his arm and drew the ink-horn towards him. Midway in the
act, whether it was that his hand shook by reason of his illness, or
that he was in a hurry to close an interview which tried him more
severely than appeared, his sleeve caught the little phial of green
water that stood beside the soup on the table. It reeled an instant on
its edge, toppled on its side, and rolling, in one-tenth of the time it
takes to tell the tale, to the verge of the table--fell over.

Messer Blondel made a strange noise in his throat.

But the Captain had seen what was happening. Dexterously he caught the
bottle in his huge palm, and with an air of modest achievement was going
to set it on the table, when he saw that the Syndic had fallen back in
his chair, his face ghastly. Blandano was more used to death in the
field than in the house; and in a panic he took two steps towards the
door to call for help. Before he could take a third, Blondel gasped, and
made an uncertain movement with his hand, as if he would reassure him.

Blandano returned and leant over him. "You are ill, Messer Syndic," he
said anxiously. "Let me call some one."

The Syndic could not speak, but he pointed to the table. And when
Blandano, unable to make out what he wanted, and suspecting a stroke of
a mortal disease, turned again to the door, persisting in his intention
of getting aid, the Syndic found strength to seize his sleeve, and
almost instantly regained his speech. "There!" he gasped, "there! The
phial! Put it down!"

Captain Blandano placed it on the table, wondering much. "I was afraid
you were ill, Messer Blondel," he said.

"I was ill," the Syndic answered; and he pushed his chair back so that
no part of him was in contact with the table. He looked at the little
bottle with fascinated eyes, and slowly, as he looked, the colour
returned to his face. "I--was ill," he repeated, with a sigh that seemed
to relieve his breast. "I had a fright!"

"You thought it was broken?" Blandano said, wondering much, and looking
in his turn at the phial.

"Yes, I thought that it was broken. I am much obliged to you. Much, very
much obliged to you," the Syndic repeated, with a deep sigh, his hands
still moving nervously about his dress. Then, after a moment's pause,
"Will you ring the bell?" he said.

The Captain, marvelling much, rang the hand-bell which lay on a
neighbouring table. He marvelled still more when he heard Messer
Blondel order the servant to place six bottles of his best wine in a
basket and take them to the Captain's lodging.

Blandano stared. He knew the wine to be choice and valuable; and he eyed
the tiny phial respectfully. "It is something rare, I expect?" he said.

The Syndic nodded.

"And costly too, I doubt not?" with an admiring glance.

"Costly?" Messer Blondel repeated the word, and when he had done so
turned on the other a look that led the Captain to think that he was
going to be ill again. Then, "It cost me--it will cost me"--again a
spasm contorted the Syndic's face--"I don't know what it will not have
cost me before it is paid for, Messer Blandano!"

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