The chief thing now was to prime him with the drugged wine till he lost consciousness, and then carry him away to the land of the guillotine.

Dyck's tempestuous nature, the poetry and imagination of him, would quickly respond to French culture, to the new orders of the new day in France.

Meanwhile, he must be soaked in drugged drink.
Already the wine had played havoc with him; already stupefaction was coming over his senses.

With a good-natured, ribald laugh, Boyne poured out another glass of marsala and pushed it gently over to Dyck's fingers.
"My gin to your marsala," he said, and he raised his own glass of gin, looking playfully over the top to Dyck.
With a sudden loosening of all the fibres of his nature, Dyck raised the glass of marsala to his lips and drained it off almost at a gulp.
"You're a prodigious liar, Boyne," he said.

"I didn't think any one could lie so completely." "I'll teach you how, Calhoun.