Who has told you this cock-and-bull story ?" "It is the truth." "She has taken it ?" "To give to her mother--yes." "And she ?" "Has taken it?
Yes." The scholar, ordinarily so cool and self-contained, could not withhold an execration.

His small eyes glittered, his face swelled with rage; for a moment he was within a little of an explosion.

Of what mad, what insensate folly, unworthy of a schoolboy, worthy only of a sot, an imbecile, a Grio, had he been guilty! To leave the potion, that if it had not the virtues which he ascribed to it, had virtue--or it had not served his purpose of deceiving the Syndic during some days or hours--to leave the potion unprotected, at the mercy of a chance hand, of a treacherous girl! Safeguarded, in appearance only, and to blind his dupe! It seemed incredible that he could have been so careless! True, he might replace the stuff at some expense; but not in a day or an hour.

And how--with one dose in all the world!--keep up the farce?
The dose consumed, the play was at an end.

An end--or, no, was he losing his wits, his courage?
On the instant, in the twinkling of an eye, he shaped a fresh course.
He cursed the girl anew, and apparently with the same fervour.