One bad man within the gates----" "May be hung!" Blondel cried gaily.
"Ay, may be! But unhung is a graver foe than five hundred men without! It is that I would have you bear in mind." "I will bear it in mind," the Fourth Syndic answered.

"And when I can hang him," with a vindictive look, "be sure I will--and high as Haman!" He attended them with solicitude to the door, being set by what had happened a little more upon his behaviour.

That done and the outer door closed upon them, he returned to the parlour, but did not at once seek the young man, upon whom he had taken the precaution of turning the key.
Instead he stood a while, pondering with a pale face; a haggard, paler replica he seemed of the stiff, hard portrait on the panel over the mantel.

He was wondering why he had let himself go so foolishly; he was recognising with a sinking heart that it was to his illness he owed it that he had so frequently of late lost control of himself.
For a man to discover that the power of self-mastery is passing from him is only a degree less appalling than the consciousness of insanity itself; and Blondel cowered, trembling under the thought.

If aught could strengthen his purpose it was the suspicion that the insidious disease from which he suffered was already sapping the outworks of that mind on whose clever combinations he depended for his one chance of cure.
Yet while the thought strengthened, it terrified him.