"My good friend," Emile said solemnly, "I shall be quite satisfied
with an income of two hundred thousand livres. Please to set about it
at once."
"Do you not know the cost, Emile?" asked Raphael.
"A nice excuse!" the poet cried; "ought we not to sacrifice ourselves
for our friends?"
"I have almost a mind to wish that you all were dead," Valentin made
answer, with a dark, inscrutable look at his boon companions.
"Dying people are frightfully cruel," said Emile, laughing. "You are
rich now," he went on gravely; "very well, I will give you two months
at most before you grow vilely selfish. You are so dense already that
you cannot understand a joke. You have only to go a little further to
believe in your Magic Skin."
Raphael kept silent, fearing the banter of the company; but he drank
immoderately, trying to drown in intoxication the recollection of his
fatal power.
III
THE AGONY
In the early days of December an old man of some seventy years of age
pursued his way along the Rue de Varenne, in spite of the falling
rain. He peered up at the door of each house, trying to discover the
address of the Marquis Raphael de Valentin, in a simple, childlike
fashion, and with the abstracted look peculiar to philosophers.
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