"It is health of body, though you be dying, as I am! And health of mind though you be possessed of devils! It is a cure for all ills, for all weaknesses, all diseases, even," with a queer grimace, "for the Scholar's evil! Think you, if it were not rare, if it were not something above the common, if it were not what leeches seek in vain, I should be here! I should have more than enough to buy it, I, Messer Blondel of Geneva!" He ceased, lacking breath.
"But," she said timidly, "will not Messer Basterga give it to you?
Or sell it to you ?" "Give it to me?
Sell it to me?
He ?" Blondel's hands flew out and clawed the air as if he had the Paduan before him, and would tear it from him.
"He give it me?
No, he will not.

Nor sell it! He is keeping it for the Grand Duke! The Grand Duke?
Curse him; why should he escape more than another ?" Anne stared.

Was she dreaming or had her brain given way?
Or was this really Messer Blondel the austere Syndic, this man standing before her, shaking in his limbs as he poured forth this strange farrago of _remedia_ and scholars and princes and the rest?
Or if she were not mad was he mad?
Or could there be truth, any truth, any fact in the medley?
His clammy face, his trembling hands, answered for his belief in it.

But could there be such a thing in nature as this of which he spoke?
She had heard of panaceas, things which cured all ills alike; but hitherto they had found no place in her simple creed.

Yet that he believed she could not doubt; and how much more he knew than she did! Such things might be; in the cabinets of princes, perhaps, purchasable by a huge fortune and by the labour, the engrossment, the devotion of a life.