BALSAMO BEING now alone, proceeded to listen at Lorenza's door. She was still sunk in a soft and gentle sleep. He half opened a wicket in the door, and contemplated her for some time in a sweet and tender reverie. Then, shutting the wicket, he crossed the apartment which we have described, and which separated Lorenza's apartment from the laboratory, and hastened to extinguish the fire in the furnace by throwing open an immense conduit, which allowed the heat to escape into the chimney, and at the same time gave passage to the water of a reservoir on the roof.
Then, carefully placing the cardinal's receipt in a black morocco case:
“The word of a Rohan is good, murmured he; “but for myself alone; and it is well that the brethren yonder should know how I employ their gold.”
As these words died away on his lips, three short, quick taps on the ceiling made him raise his head.
“Oh, oh!” said he, “there is Althotas calling me.”
Then, while he continued his task of giving air to the laboratory, and arranging everything in order, the taps were repeated louder than before.
“So, he is getting impatient; it is a good sign.”
And Balsamo took a long iron rod and knocked on the ceiling in answer. He then proceeded to move an iron ring fixed in the wall; and, by means of a spring which was disclosed to view, a trap-door was detached from the ceiling and descended to the floor of the laboratory. Balsamo placed himself in the center of this machine, which, by means of another spring, gently rose with its burden—with as much ease as in the opera the gods and goddesses are carried up to Elysium—and the pupil found himself in the presence of the master.
The new dwelling of the old alchemist might be about eight or nine feet high and sixteen in diameter; it was lighted from the top like a well, and hermetically closed on the four sides. This apartment, as the reader may observe, was a perfect palace when compared with his habitation in the vehicle.
The old man was seated in his armchair on wheels, in the center of a marble table formed like a horseshoe, and heaped up with a whole world, or rather a whole chaos, of plants, phials, tools, books, instruments, and papers covered with cabalistic characters.
He was so absorbed that he never raised his head when Balsamo appeared. The light of an astral lamp, suspended from the culminating point of the window in the roof, fell on his bald, shining head. He was turning to and fro in his fingers a small white bottle, the transparency of which he was trying before his eye, as a good housekeeper tries the eggs which she buys at market. Balsamo gazed on him at first in silence; then, after a moment's pause:
“Well,” said he, “have you any news?”
“Yes, yes; come hither, Acharat, you see me enchanted—transported with joy! I have found—I have found—
“Gold?” “Gold, indeed! I am surprised at you!”—“The diamond?”
“Gold? diamonds? The man raves! A fine discovery, forsooth, to be rejoiced at;”
“Then what you have found is your elixir?”
“Yes, my son, yes!—the elixir of life! Life?—what do I say?—the eternity of life!”
“Oh!” said Balsamo, in a dejected voice (for he looked on this pursuit as mere insanity), “so it is that dream which occupies you still?”
But Althotas, without listening, continued to gaze delightedly at his phial.
“At last,” said he, “the combination is complete; the elixir of Aristaeus, twenty grains; balm of Mercury, fifteen grains; precipitate of gold, fifteen grains; essence of the cedar of Lebanon, twenty-five grains.”
“But it seems to me, that, with the exception of the elixir of Aristaeus, this is precisely your last combination, master?”
“Yes; but I had not then discovered one more ingredient, without which all the rest are as nothing.”
“And have you discovered it now?”
“We must add to the several ingredients, already combined in this phial, the three last drops of the life-blood of an infant.”
“Well, but where will you procure this infant?” said Balsamo, horror-struck.
“Mad? And why?” asked the old man, perfectly unmoved at this charge, and licking with the utmost delight a drop of the fluid which had escaped from the cork of the phial and was trickling down the side.
“Why, for that purpose, you must kill the child.”
“Of course, we must kill him; and the handsomer he is, the better.”
“Impossible!” said Balsamo, shrugging his shoulders; “children are not taken in that way to be killed.”
“Bah!” cried the old man, with hideous coolness, “and what do they do with them, then?”
“Oh! Then the world is changed lately? It is only three years ago since we were offered as many infants as we chose for four charges of powder and half a bottle of eau-de-vie.”
“Yes, yes, in Congo! It is quite the same to me whether the child be black or white. Those who were offered to us. I remember, were sweet, playful, curly-headed little things.”
“Ah! Yes,” said Balsamo; “but unfortunately, my dear master, we are not in Congo.”
“Oh! we are not in Congo?” said Althotas. “And where are we, then?”
“In Paris? Well, if we were to embark from Marseilles, we could be in Congo in six weeks.”
“Yes, no doubt. But I am obliged to remain in France.”
“You are obliged to remain in France? And why so, may I ask!”
“Because I have business here.”
The old man burst into a prolonged and ghastly laugh.
“Business!” said he; “business in France! True, I forgot, you have your clubs to organize!”
“Conspiracies to set on foot?”
“And you call that business?” And the aged man again commenced to laugh, with an air of mockery and sarcasm. Balsamo remained silent, collecting his forces for the storm which was brewing, and which he felt approach.
“Well, and how is this business of yours getting on?” said the old man, turning with difficulty in his chair, and fixing his large gray eyes on his pupil.
Balsamo felt his glance pierce him like a ray of light.
“How far have I advanced?” asked he.
“I have thrown the first stone, and the waters are troubled.”
“Troubled? And what slime have you stirred up?—eh?”
“The best—the slime of philosophy.”
“Oh! so you are setting to work with your Utopias, your baseless visions, your fogs and mists! Fools! Ye discuss existence or non-existence of God, instead of trying like me to make gods of yourselves. And who are these famous philosophers with whom you are connected? Let me hear.”
“I have already gained over the greatest poet and the greatest atheist of the age. He is soon expected in France, whence he has been in a manner exiled, and he is to be made a freemason at the lodge which I have established in the old monastery of the Jesuits, in the Rue Pot-de-Fer.”
“I never heard of him. Well, who else have you?”
“I am very soon to have a conference with the man who has done more to overturn established ideas than any other in this age—the man who wrote 'Le Contrat Social.'”
“Very probably, as you read only Alphonso the Tenth, Raymond Sully, Peter of Toledo, and Albertus Magnus.”
“They are the only men who really lived, because all their lives they were occupied by that great question; to be, or not to be.”
“There are two methods of living, master.”
“I know only one, for my part, viz., to exist. But let us return to your philosophers. You called them, I think—?”
“Good. I shall remember those names. And you propose by means of these men—”
“To make myself master of the present, and to undermine the future.”
“Then, it appears the people in this country are very stupid, since they can be led by ideas!
“On the contrary, it is because they have too much mind that ideas have more power over them than facts. Besides, I have an auxiliary more powerful than all the philosophers on earth.”
“Love of change. It is now some sixteen hundred years since monarchy was established in France, and the people are wearied of it.”
“So that you think they will overthrow it?”
“And you would help them to begin the work?”
“What will you gain by the overthrow of this monarchy?”
“I? Nothing. But the people will gain happiness.”
“Come, as I am satisfied with what I have done to-day, I am willing to waste a little time on you. Explain then, first, how you are to attain to this happiness, and afterward what happiness is.”
“Yes, to this universal happiness of yours, or to the overthrow of the monarchy, which in your eyes seems to be the same thing.”
“Well, there exists at this moment a ministry which is the last rampart of the monarchy, intelligent, industrious, courageous, and which might perhaps maintain this tottering and worn-out machine for twenty j-ears longer; but they will assist me to overturn it.”
“No. The philosophers support it, on the contrary.”
“What! Your philosophers support a ministry which supports a monarchy to which they themselves are hostile? What fools these philosophers of yours are!”
“It is because the prime minister is himself a philosopher.”
“So! I understand—they mean to govern in the person of this minister. They are not fools, then; they are selfish.”
“I do not wish to discuss what they are,” exclaimed Balsamo, who began to get impatient. “All I know is, that this ministry overturned, every one will cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war on their successors. First, there will be against them the philosophers, then the parliament. The philosophers will blame, the parliament will blame; the ministry will persecute the philosophers, and will dissolve the parliament. Then both mind and matter will combine, and organize a silent league—an opposition, obstinate, tenacious, incessant, which will attack, undermine, shake all. Instead of parliaments, judges will be appointed; these judges, nominated by the king, will move heaven and earth in defense of royalty. They will be accused, and with truth, of venality, of connivance, of injustice. The nation will arise, and then 'the monarchy will have against it the philosophers—that is, mind; the parliaments—that is, the middle class; the people—that is, the lever, which Archimedes sought, and with which he could have raised the world.”
“Well, when you have raised the world, you can only let it fall back again into its old place.”
“Yes; but in falling back it will crush the monarchy to atoms.”
“And when the monarchy is crushed to atoms—to adopt your false metaphors and inflated language—what will arise on its ruins?”
“Ah! the French will then be free?”
“They cannot fail to be so soon.”
“There will then be in France thirty millions of free men?”
“And among those thirty millions of free men, has it never occurred to you that there might be one, with a little more brains than the rest, who, some fine morning, will seize on the liberty of the twenty-nine millions nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine, in order that he might have a little more liberty himself? You remember that dog we had at Medina, who ate up what was intended for all the other dogs?”
“Yes; but you may remember also, that one day the others combined together and strangled him.”
“Because they were dogs; in such a case men would have done nothing.”
“Then you place man's intelligence below that of a dog, master?”
“I think you may recall among the ancients a certain Caesar Augustus, and among the moderns a certain Oliver Cromwell, who bit rather deeply into the Roman cake and the English cake, without any great resistance having been offered by those from whom they snatched it.”
“Well; and supposing that the man of whom you speak should arise, he will be mortal, he will die; and before dying he will have done good even to those whom he may have oppressed; for he will have changed the nature of the aristocracy. Being obliged to lean for support on something, he will choose that which is strongest—the people. Instead of an equality which degrades, he will establish an equality which elevates; for equality has no fixed range; it adapts itself to the level of him who makes it. Now, in elevating the people in the social scale, he will have introduced a principle unknown until his time. A revolution will make the French free; a protectorate under another Caesar Augustus, or another Oliver Cromwell, will make them equal.”
Althotas wheeled round in his armchair.
“Oh, the stupidity of man!” he cried. “Busy yourself for twenty years in educating a child—teach him all that you know—that at thirty he may come and tell you—'Men will be equal!'”
“Certainly, men will be equal—equal before the law.”
“And before death, fool?—before death, that law of laws, will they be equal, when one shall die at three days old and another at one hundred years? Equal? Men equal as long as they are subject to death?—Oh, fool! Tin-ice sodden fool!”
And Althotas threw himself back in his chair to laugh at his ease, while Balsamo, grave and sad, sat with his head leaning on his hand.
The old man at length turned a look of pity on him.
“Am I,” said he, “the equal of the workman who munches his coarse bread? of the sucking babe? of the driveling old man sunk in second childhood? Wretched sophist that you are! Men can be equal only when they are immortal; for, when immortal, they will be gods, and gods alone are on an equality with one another.”
“Immortal!” murmured Balsamo. “Immortal!—'Tis a chimera.”
“A chimera? Yes; a chimera like steam—a chimera like the electric fluid—a chimera like everything which is sought —which is not yet discovered—but which will be discovered. Rake up the dust of by-gone worlds, lay bare one after another the superincumbent strata, each of which represents a social state now passed away; and in these human strata—in this detritus of kingdoms—in these slimy deposits of time, into which modern investigation has pierced like an iron plowshare—what do you read? Is it not that men have, in all ages, sought what I seek, under the various names of the highest good, human happiness, perfection? When did they not seek it? They sought it in the days of Homer, when men lived two hundred years—they sought it in the days of the patriarchs, when they lived eight centuries. They did not find that highest good—that well-being—that perfection; for, if they had, this decrepit world would now be fresh, youthful, roseate as the morning dawn. Instead of that we have suffering, death, decay. Is suffering good? Is death lovely? Is decay fair to look upon?”
Here the old man was interrupted by his short, dry cough, and Balsamo had a moment to reply.
“You acknowledge,” said he, “that no one has yet discovered that elixir of life which you seek. I tell you that no one will ever discover it. Submit to God.”
“Fool! No one has discovered it; therefore no one will discover it! By that mode of reasoning we should never have made any discoveries. But do you think that all discoveries are new things, inventions? Far from it; they are forgotten things found again. Why should things, once found, be forgotten? Because life is too short for the discoverer to draw from his discovery all the deductions which belong to it. Twenty times has man been on the point of grasping the elixir of life. Do you think that the Styx was merely a dream of Homer's? Do you think that Achilles, almost immortal, because vulnerable in his heel alone, was a fable? No; Achilles was the pupil of Chiron, as you are my pupil. That word Chiron means either best or worst. Chiron was a sage whom they have depicted as a Centaur, because by his learning he had endowed man with the strength and swiftness of the horse. Well, like me, he had almost found the elixir of immortality. Perhaps, like me, he wanted only three drops of blood. The want of those three drops of blood rendered Achilles vulnerable in his heel; death found a passage—it entered. Well, what have you to say to that?”
“I say,” replied Balsamo, visibly shaken, “that I have my task and you have yours; let each fulfill his own at his own personal risk and danger. I will not second yours by a crime.”
“Yes; and by such a crime-as would raise a whole people, with cries of indignation in pursuit of you—a crime which would cause you to hang on one of those infamous gibbets from which your science has not secured the best men any more than the worst.”
Althotas struck the marble table with his dry and fleshless hands. “Come!” said he, “be not a humane idiot—the worst race of idiots which exist in the world! Let us just converse a little on these laws of yours —these brutal and absurd laws, written by animals of your species who shudder at a drop of blood shed for a wise purpose, but gloat over torrents of the vital fluid shed on scaffolds, before the ramparts of cities, or on those plains which they call fields of battle! Your laws, ignorant and selfish, sacrificing the future generation to the present, and which have taken for their motto; 'Live to-day; for to-morrow we die!' Let us speak of them, I say.”
“Say what you have to say—I am listening,” said Balsamo, becoming more and more gloomy.
“Have you a pencil? I wish you to make a little calculation.”
“I can calculate without pen or pencil —proceed with what you have to say.”
“What was this that your project was? Oh! I remember. You are to overturn a ministry, dissolve the parliament, establish venal judges, cause a national bankruptcy, stir up rebellion, kindle a revolution, overturn the monarchy, raise up a protectorate, and hurl down the protector. The revolution is to bring freedom—the protectorship equality. Then, the French being free and equal, your task will be accomplished? Is not that it?”
“Yes; do you look on the thing as impossible?”
“I do not believe in impossibility. You see I play fairly with you.”
“In the first place, France is not England, where what you wish to do has already been done—plagiarist that you are! France is not an isolated land, where ministers may be dismissed, parliaments dissolved, iniquitous judges established, bankruptcy brought about, revolt fomented, revolution kindled, the monarchy overturned, a protectorship established, and the protector then overthrown, without other nations interfering a little in these movements. France is soldered to Europe as the liver to the frame of man. It has roots in all nations; its fibers extend through every people. Try to tear up the liver of this great machine which is called the European continent, and for twenty, thirty, forty years perhaps, the whole body will quiver. But I shall take the lowest number, I shall say twenty years. Is that too much, oh sage philosopher?”
“No, it is not too much.” said Balsamo; “it is not even enough.”
“However, I am satisfied with it. Twenty years of war, of a bloody, mortal, incessant strife—let me see—I put down that at two hundred thousand dead each year. That is not too high a calculation, considering that there will be fighting at the same time in Germany. Italy, Spain, and Heaven knows where else! Two hundred thousand men a year, in twenty years make four millions. Allowing each man seventeen pounds of blood, which is nearly the natural quantity, that will make—seventeen multiplied by four—let me see—that will make sixty-eight millions of pounds of blood, shed for the attainment of your object. I, for my part, ask but three drops! Say, now, which of us is mad?—which of us is the savage?—which of us the cannibal? Well, you do not answer?”
“Yes, master, I do answer, that three drops of blood would be nothing were you sure of success.”
“And you, who would shed sixty-eight millions of pounds, are you sure of success? Speak? If you be sure, lay your hand on your heart and say, 'Master, for these four millions of dead, I guarantee the happiness of the human race!'”
“Master,” said Balsamo, evading a direct reply, “in the name of Heaven seek for some other means than this!”
“Ah, you dare not answer me! You dare not answer me!” exclaimed Althotas, triumphantly.
“You are deceived, master, about the efficacy of the means—it is impossible.”
“Ay? So you give advice, so you contradict me, so you give me the lie, do you?” said Althotas, rolling his gray eyes from beneath his white and shaggy eyebrows with au expression of concentrated anger.
“No, master—but I cannot help reflecting on the difficulties in your way—I, who am brought every day into contact with the world, in opposition to men—who have to struggle against princes, and who do not live like you, secluded in a corner, indifferent to all that passes around you, and careless whether your actions are forbidden or authorized by the laws—a pure abstraction, in short, of the savant and the scholar. I, in short, who see the difficulties, warn you of them. That is all.”
“You could easily set-aside all those difficulties if you chose.”
“Say rather if I believed that you were in the right.”
“You do not believe so, then?”
“You are only tempting me!” cried Althotas.
“No, I merely express my doubts.”
“Well—come; do you believe in death?”
“I believe in what is. Now death is.”
Althotas shrugged his shoulders.
“Death is,” continued Balsamo; “that is one point which you will not contest.”
“No, it is incontestable. It is omnipresent, invincible, too—is it not?” added the old man with a smile which made his adept shudder.
“Oh, yes, master; omnipresent, and, above all, invincible!”
“And when you see a corpse, the cold sweat bedews your forehead, regret pierces your heart?”
“No—the cold sweat does not bedew my forehead, because I am familiar with every form of human misery; grief does not pierce my heart, because I attach little value to life. I only say in the presence of a corpse; 'Death! death! thou art as powerful as God. Thou reignest as a sovereign, O death, and none can prevail against thee! '
Althotas listened to Balsamo in silence, giving no other sign of impatience than that of turning a scalpel eagerly in his fingers; but when the pupil had ended his painful and solemn invocation, the master looked around him with a smile, and his piercing eyes, which seemed to penetrate nature's most hidden secrets, rested on a poor black dog, which lay trembling in a, corner of the room on a little heap of straw. It was the last of three animals of the same species which Althotas had demanded for his experiments, and which Balsamo had procured for him.
“Take that dog,” said Althotas, “and place it on the table.”
The creature, which seemed to have a presentiment of its fate, and which had, no doubt, already been in the hands of the experimenter, began to tremble, struggle, and howl, as soon as it felt the contact of the marble table.
“And so,” said Althotas, “you believe in life, do you not, since you believe in death?”
“There is a dog which appears to me quite alive. What do you think?”
“He is alive, assuredly, because he howls, struggles, is terrified.”
“How ugly black dogs are! By-the-by, remember the first opportunity to get me some white ones.”
“Well, you say this one is alive? Bark, my little fellow, bark!” said the old man with his frightful laugh, “we must convince my Lord Acharat that you are alive.” And he touched the dog on a certain muscle, which made him bark or rather howl immediately.
“Very well; now bring forward the air-pump, and put the dog under the receiver. But I forgot to ask you in which death you have the firmest belief.”
“I do not know what you mean, master; death is death.”
“Very just; that is my opinion also. Then, since death is death, make a vacuum, Acharat.”
Balsamo turned a handle, and the air which was inclosed with the dog in the receiver rushed out by means of a tube with a sharp whistling sound. The little dog seemed at first restless, then looked around, snuffed the air uneasily, raised its head, breathed noisily and hurriedly, and at last sunk down—suffocated, swollen, senseless.
“Now, the dog is dead of apoplexy, is he not?” said Althotas; “a very good kind of death, as it does not cause much suffering.”
“You do not seem quite convinced. Acharat.”
“Oh, you know my resources, do you not? You suppose that I have discovered the art of insufflation, do you not? —that other problem which consists in restoring life by making the vital air circulate in a body which has not been wounded, as in a bladder which has not been pierced?”
“No; I suppose nothing. I simply believe that the dog is dead.”
“However, for greater security, we shall kill him twice. Lift up the receiver, Acharat.”
Acharat raised the glass shade. The dog did not stir; his eyelids were closed, and his heart had ceased to beat.
“Take this scalpel, and without wounding the larynx, divide the vertebral column.”
“I do so only to satisfy you.”
“And also to put an end to the poor animal in case it should not be quite dead,” replied Althotas, smiling with that kind of obstinate pertinacity peculiar to the aged.
Balsamo made an incision with the keen blade, which divided the vertebral column about two inches below the brain, and laid bare a large bloody wound. The animal, or rather the dead body of the animal, remained motionless.
“Ha! by my faith, he was quite dead,” said Althotas. “See! not a fiber moves, not a muscle stirs, not one atom of his flesh recoils at this second attempt.”
“I shall acknowledge all that as often as you like,” said Balsamo, impatiently.
“Then you are certain that you behold an animal, inert, cold, forever incapable of motion. Nothing can prevail against death, you say. No power can restore life, or even the semblance of life to this poor creature?”
“No power, except that of God.”
“Yes, but God turns not aside from his established laws. When God kills, as He is supreme wisdom, He has a reason for doing so; some benefit is to result from it. An assassin, I forget his name, said that once, and it was well said. Nature has an interest in Death. Then you see before you a dog as dead as it is possible to be. Nature has taken possession of her rights over him.”
Althotas fixed his piercing eye on Balsamo, who, wearied by the old man's dotage, only bowed in reply.
“Well,” continued Althotas, “what would you say if this dog opened his eye and looked at you!”
“I should be very much surprised, master.”
“You would be surprised? Ha! I am delighted to hear it.” On uttering these words with his dreary hollow laugh, the old man drew near the dog a machine composed of plates of metal separated by dampers of cloths; the center of this apparatus was swimming in a mixture of acidulated water; the two extremities, or poles, as they are called, projected from the trough.
“Which eye do you wish him to open, Acharat?” asked the old man.
He placed the two poles of the machine in juxtaposition, separated, however, from each other by a small piece of silk, and fixed them on a muscle in the neck. Instantly the dog opened the right eye and looked steadily at Balsamo, who recoiled with horror.
“Shall we now pass to the jaw?” asked Althotas.
Balsamo made no reply; he was overpowered with astonishment.
Another muscle was touched; and the eye having closed, the jaws opened, showing the sharp white teeth, and below them the gums red and quivering apparently with life.
“This is, in truth, strange!” murmured Balsamo, unable to conceal his agitation.
“You see that death is not so powerful after all,” said Althotas, triumphing at the discomfiture of his pupil, “since a poor old man like me, who must soon be its prey, can turn it—the inexorable one—from its path.” Then, with a sharp ringing laugh, he suddenly added; “Take care. Acharat, the dog who just now seemed as if he would bite you, is going to give you chase. Take care!”
And, in fact, the dog, with its neck laid open, its gaping mouth, and quivering eye, rose suddenly on its four legs, and staggered for a moment, its head hanging down hideously. Balsamo felt his hair stand on end, and he recoiled to the wall of the apartment, uncertain whether to fly or remain.
“Come, come, I do not wish to kill you with fright in trying to instruct you,” said Althotas, pushing aside the dead body and the machine. “Enough of experiments like that.”
Immediately the body, ceasing to be in contact with the battery, fell down, stiff and motionless, as before.
“Could you have believed that of death, Acharat? Did you think it so kindly disposed?”
“It is strange, in truth—very strange!” replied Balsamo, drawing nearer.
“You see, my child, that we may arrive at what I seek, for the first step toward it is made. What is it to prolong life, when we have already succeeded in annihilating death?”
“But we must not assume that yet,” objected Balsamo; “for the life which you have just restored is only factitious.”
“With time we shall discover the real life. Have you not read in the Roman poets that Cassidaeus restored life to dead bodies?”
“Yes; in the works of the poets.”
“Do not forget, my friend, that the Romans called poets vates.”
“But I have still an objection to offer.”
“Let me hear it! Let me hear it!”
“If your elixir of life were made, and if you caused this dog to swallow some of it, he would live eternally?”
“But suppose he fell into the hands of an experimenter like you, who cut his throat—what then?”
“Good! good!” cried the old man, joyfully, and rubbing his hands together; “this is what I expected from you.”
“Well, if you expected it, reply to it.”
“Will your elixir prevent a chimney from falling on a man's head, a pistol-ball from going through his heart, a horse from giving him a kick that shall destroy him?”
Althotas looked at Balsamo with the eye of a bravo who feels that he has exposed himself to his adversary's blow.
“No, no, no!” said he; “you are a real logician, my dear Acharat. No, I cannot prevent the effects of the chimney, or of the ball, or of the horse, while there are houses, firearms, and horses.”
“However, you can bring the dead to life?”
“Why, yes—for a moment—not for an indefinite period. In order to do that I must first discover the spot where the soul is lodged, and that may be rather tedious—but I can prevent the soul from leaving the body by a wound.”
“By causing the wound to close up.”
“Even if an artery be divided.”
“Ah! I should like to see that done.”
“Very well, look!” And before Balsamo could prevent him, the old man opened a vein in his left arm with a lancet. There was so little blood in his body, and it circulated so slowly, that it was some time before it issued from the wound, but at last it did flow abundantly.
“Great Heaven!” exclaimed Balsamo.
“Well, what is the matter?” said Althotas.
“You have wounded yourself seriously.”
“That is because you are so skeptical; you must see and touch before you will believe.”
He then took a little phial which he had placed near him, and poured a few drops of its contents on the wound.
At the touch of this magic fluid the blood ceased to flow, the flesh contracted, closing up the vein, and the wound became merely like the prick of a pin, too small an opening for the vital stream to issue from.
This time Balsamo gazed at the old man in amazement.
“That is another of my discoveries, Achurat. What do you think of it?”
“Oh, master, you are the most learned of men.”
“Yes, acknowledge that if I have not conquered death, I have at least dealt it a blow from which it will not readily recover. The bones of the human body are easily broken; I shall render them, my son, as hard as steel. It has blood, which when it is shed carries life along with it. I shall prevent the blood from leaving the body. The flesh is soft and can be pierced without difficulty; I shall make it invulnerable as that of the paladins of the middle ages, which blunted the edge of swords and axes. But to do all that it requires an Althotas who shall live three hundred years. Well, give me then what I ask, and I shall live one thousand! Oh, my dear Acharat, all depends on you! Give me back my youth! give me back the vigor of my body; give me back the freshness of my ideas; and you shall see whether I fear the sword, the ball, the tottering wall, or the stupid beast which bites or kicks. In my fourth youth, Acharat, that is, before I have lived to the age of four men, I tell you I shall have renewed the face of the world—I shall have made for myself and for a regenerated race of men a new world, without falling chimneys, without swords, without musket-balls, without kicking horses; for men will then understand that it is better to live to help and love one another than to tear each other to pieces, and to destroy each other.”
“It is true, master; or, at least, it is, possible.”
“Well, bring me the child, then.”
“Give me time to reflect on the matter, and reflect on it yourself.”
Althotas darted on his adept a glance of sovereign scorn.
“Go,” said he, “go! I shall yet convince you that I am right. And, in truth, the blood of man is not so precious an ingredient that a substitute for it may not be found. Go! I shall seek—I shall find. Go! I need you not.”
Balsamo struck the trap-door with his foot, and descended into the lower apartment, mute, melancholy, and wholly subdued by the genius of this man, who compelled him to believe in impossibilities, by accomplishing them before his eyes.
