"And years.

Was it a fiction, all a fiction?
About Ibn Jasher, and the Physician of Aleppo, and M.Laurens of Paris, and--and the rest ?" Basterga deliberately took a turn to the window, came back, and stood looking down at him.

"Mon Dieu!" he muttered.

"Is it possible ?" "Eh ?" "I can scarcely believe it!" The scholar spoke with a calmness half cynical, half compassionate.

"But I suppose you really think that of me, though it seems incredible! You are under the impression that the drug this jade stole was the _remedium_ of Ibn Jasher, the one incomparable and sovereign result of long years of study and research?
You believe that I kept this in a mere locked box, the key accessible by all who knew my habits, and the treasure at the mercy of the first thief! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! If I said it a thousand times I could not express my astonishment.