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178 strength might at any time be fatal. If you want to make sure, contrive to meet a sudden shock."

"So even the six months are strictly conditional? How would you spend them in my place, Spina?"

There was no hesitation about the answer.

"I should devote it to completing my treatise proving that the fish out of whose mouth St. Peter took the tribute-money was a gurnet and not a dory, as that mountain of pedantic ignorance, Gomez, and his trivial school contend."

Hautepierre was unable to suppress an indication of languid amusement.

"A worthy ambition," he murmured. "Yet might it not perhaps have been a gudgeon?"

De la Spina, who, as physician and confidant extraordinary to His Majesty the King, stood upon what ground he pleased, be it understood, frowned slightly.

"Do not jest with holy subjects, monsieur," he said reprovingly—"you, of all men, who are touched most closely. How, for that matter, will you prepare yourself? If by the accomplishment of no great work, in prayer at least?"

"Or the next place to it—in bed, doubtless," yawned the Marquis. "Must to Flambernard, then, that he finds another Keeper of the Routes. Within—six months or six weeks was it, did we say?"

Now at this point, illogically enough, the physician hesitated for a moment to confirm the death-sentence. Hautepierre, as both his friends and enemies well knew, was a gallant gentleman at heart, his airs and languors nothing but the mint-marks of his class in a time when all men took a pose. There were less amiable poses—de la Spina's, el Santo's, and that of his most benevolent Majesty, to exemplify—than that of disclaiming a virtue which one did possess.