Instantly he did so a great humming sound filled the whole castle, so sweet and musical that it made him tremble to listen.
Then suddenly the figure opened its eyes and looked straight at him.
"At last!" she said; "have you come at last?"
"Yes," said Gebhart, "I have come."
Then the beautiful woman arose and stepped down from the table to the floor; and if Gebhart thought her beautiful before, he thought her a thousand times more beautiful now that her eyes looked into his.
"Listen," said she. "I have been asleep for hundreds upon hundreds of years, for so it was fated to be until he should come who was to bring me back to life again. You are he, and now you shall live with me forever. In this castle is the wealth gathered by the king of the genii, and it is greater than all the riches of the world. It and the castle likewise shall be yours. I can transport everything into any part of the world you choose, and can by my arts make you prince or king or emperor. Come."
"Stop," said Gebhart. "I must first do as my master bade me."
He led the way into the other room, the lady following him, and so they both stood together by the couch where the wise man lay.
When the lady saw his face she cried out in a loud voice: "It is the great master! What are you going to do?"
"I am going to sprinkle his face with this water," said Gebhart.
"Stop!" said she. "Listen to what I have to say. In your hand you hold the water of life and the dagger of death. The master is not dead, but sleeping; if you sprinkle that water upon him he will awaken, young, handsome and more powerful than the greatest magician that ever lived. I myself, this castle, and everything that is in it will be his, and, instead of your becoming a prince or a king or an emperor, he will be so in your place. That, I say, will happen if he wakens. Now the dagger of death is the only thing in the world that has power to kill him. You have it in your hand. You have but to give him one stroke with it while he sleeps, and he will never waken again, and then all will be yours--your very own."
Gebhart neither spoke nor moved, but stood looking down upon his master. Then he set down the goblet very softly on the floor, and, shutting his eyes that he might not see the blow, raised the dagger to strike.
"That is all your promises amount to," said Nicholas Flamel the wise man. "After all, Babette, you need not bring the bread and cheese, for he shall be no pupil of mine."
Then Gebhart opened his eyes.
There sat the wise man in the midst of his books and bottles and diagrams and dust and chemicals and cobwebs, making strange figures upon the table with jackstraws and a piece of chalk.
And Babette, who had just opened the cupboard door for the loaf of bread and the cheese, shut it again with a bang, and went back to her spinning.
So Gebhart had to go back again to his Greek and Latin and algebra and geometry; for, after all, one cannot pour a gallon of beer into a quart pot, or the wisdom of a Nicholas Flamel into such an one as Gebhart.
As for the name of this story, why, if some promises are not bottles full of nothing but wind, there is little need to have a name for anything.
"Since we are in the way of talking of fools," said the Fisherman who drew the Genie out of the sea--"since we are in the way of talking of fools, I can tell you a story of the fool of all fools, and how, one after the other, he wasted as good gifts as a man's ears ever heard tell of."
"What was his name?" said the Lad who fiddled for the Jew in the bramble-bush.
"That," said the Fisherman, "I do not know."
"And what is this story about?" asked St. George.
" Tis," said the Fisherman, "about a hole in the ground."
"And is that all?" said the Soldier who cheated the Devil.
"Nay," said the Fisherman, blowing a whiff from his pipe; "there were some things in the hole--a bowl of treasure, an earthen-ware jar, and a pair of candlesticks."
"And what do you call your story," said St. George.
"Why," said the Fisherman, "for lack of a better name I will call it--