<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XLI" id="CHAPTER_XLI">CHAPTER XLI.</SPAN><br/> <span class="chapterhead">THE WATER OF LIFE.</span></h2>
<p><span class="firstwords">He</span> went to listen at Lorenza's door, where she was sleeping
evenly and sweetly.</p>
<p>He opened a panel and looked in upon her, for some while
in affectionate reverie. Closing the wicket, he stole away to
his laboratory, where he put out the fire, by opening a register
plate which sent most of the heat up the chimney, and
ran in water from a tank without.</p>
<p>In a pocket-book, he carefully fastened up the receipt of
Cardinal Rohan, saying:</p>
<p>"The parole of a Rohan is all very well, but only for me,
and the brothers will want to know yonder how I employ
their money."</p>
<p>These words were dying on his lips when three sharp raps
on the ceiling made him lift his head.</p>
<p>"Althotas wants me, and in a hurry. That is a good
sign."</p>
<p>With a long iron rod he rapped in answer. He put away
the tools, and by means of an iron ring in a trap overhead,
which was the floor of a dumb-waiter, as then they called elevators,
he pulled this down to his feet. Placing himself in
the center of it, he was carried gently, by no spring but a
simple hydraulic machine, worked by the reservoir which had
extinguished the fire, up into the study reserved for the old
alchemist.</p>
<p>This new dwelling was eight feet by nine in height, and
sixteen in length; all the light came from a skylight, as the
four walls were without inlet. It was, relatively to the house
on wheels, a palace.</p>
<p>The old man was sitting in his easy-chair on casters, at the
middle of a horseshoe-shaped table in iron, with a marble top,
laden with a quantity of plants, books, tools, bottles, and
papers traced with cabalistic signs—a chaos.</p>
<p>He was so wrapt in thought that he was not disturbed by
the entrance.</p>
<p>A globe of crystal hung over his yellow and bald pate; in
this a sort of serpent, fine and coiled like a spring, seemed to
curl, and it sent forth a bright and unvarying light, without<SPAN name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></SPAN>
other apparent source of luminous supply than the chain supporting
the globe might contain to transmit.</p>
<p><SPAN name="tn_png_186"></SPAN><!--TN: Quote removed before "He" on Page 184-->He was "candling" a phial of ground glass in his fingers
as a good wife tries eggs.</p>
<p>"Well, anything new?" said Balsamo, after having silently
watched him for a while.</p>
<p>"Yes, yes; I am delighted, Acharat, for I have found what
I sought."</p>
<p>"Gold—diamonds?"</p>
<p>"Pooh! They are pretty discoveries for my soul to rejoice
over."</p>
<p>"I suppose you mean your elixir, in that case."</p>
<p>"Yes, my boy, my elixir—life everlasting."</p>
<p>"Oh, so you are still harping on that string," said the
younger sage sadly, for he thought his senior was following
an idle dream.</p>
<p>But without listening Althotas was lovingly peering into
his phial.</p>
<p>"The proportions are found at last," he mumbled. "Elixir
of Aristæus, twenty grams; balm of mercury, fifteen; precipitate
of gold, fifteen; essence of Lebanon cedar, twenty-five
grams."</p>
<p>"But it seems to me, bar the Aristæan elixir, this is about
what you last mixed up."</p>
<p>"That is so, but there was lacking the binding ingredient,
without which the rest are no good."</p>
<p>"Can one procure it?"</p>
<p>"Certainly; it is three drops of a child's arterial blood."</p>
<p>"And have you the child?" gasped Balsamo, horrified.</p>
<p>"No, I expect you to find one for me."</p>
<p>"Master, you are mad."</p>
<p>"In what respect?" asked the emotionless old man, licking
with his tongue the stopper of the phial, from which a little
of the nectar had oozed.</p>
<p>"The child would be killed."</p>
<p>"What of it—the finer the child, the better the heart's
blood."</p>
<p>"It cannot be; children are no longer butchered, but
brought up with care."</p>
<p>"Indeed! how fickle is the world. Three years ago, we
were offered more children than we knew what to do with,
for four charges of gunpowder or a pint of traders'
whiskey."</p>
<p>"That was on the Congo River, in Africa, master."</p>
<p>"I believe so: but it does not matter if the young is black.
I remember that what they offered were sprightly, woolly-headed,
jolly little urchins."</p>
<p>"Unfortunately we are no longer on the Congo. We are
in Paris."</p>
<SPAN name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></SPAN>
<p>"Well, we can embark from Marseilles and be in Africa in
six weeks."</p>
<p>"That can be done; but I must stay in France on serious
business."</p>
<p>"Business?" sneered the old man, sending forth a peal of
shrill laughter, most lugubrious. "True, I had forgotten
that you have political clubs to organize, conspiracies to foster,
and, in short, serious business!" And he laughed again
forced and false.</p>
<p>Balsamo held his peace, reserving his powers for the storm
impending.</p>
<p>"How far has your business advanced?" he inquired, painfully
turning in his chair and fixing his large gray eyes on
the pupil.</p>
<p>"I have thrown the first stone," he replied, feeling the
glance go through him. "The pool is stirred up. The mud
is in agitation—the philosophic sediment."</p>
<p>"Yes, you are going to bring into play your utopias, fogs
and hollow dreams. These idiots dispute about the existence
or non-existence of the Almighty, when they might become
little gods themselves. Let us hear who are the famous philosophers
whom you have enlisted!"</p>
<p>"I have already the leading poet and the greatest atheist of
the age, who will be coming into France presently, to be
made a Freemason, in the lodge I am getting up in the old
Jesuits' College, Potaufer street. His name is Voltaire."</p>
<p>"I do not know him. The next?"</p>
<p>"I am to be introduced to the greatest sower of ideas of the
century, the author of the Social Contract, Rousseau."</p>
<p>"He is not known to me either."</p>
<p>"I expect not, as you only know such old alchemists as
Alfonso the Wise, Raymond Lully, Peter of Toledo and Albert
the Great."</p>
<p>"Because they are the only men who have really loved a
life, sowed ideas that live, and labored at the grand question
of to be or not to <SPAN name="tn_png_187"></SPAN><!--TN: Quote added after "be." on Page 185-->be."</p>
<p>"There are two ways of living, master."</p>
<p>"I only know of one—existing. But to return to your
brace of philosophers. With their help you intend to——"</p>
<p>"Grasp the present and sap the future."</p>
<p>"How stupid they must be in this country to be lured away
by ideas."</p>
<p>"No, it is because they have too much brains that they are
led by ideas. And then, I have a more powerful help than
all the philosophers—the fact that monarchy has lasted sixteen
hundred years in France, and the French are tired of
it."</p>
<p>"Hence, they are going to overturn the throne, and you
are backing them with all your forces! You fool! What<SPAN name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></SPAN>
good is the upsetting of this monarchy going to do
you?"</p>
<p>"It will bring me nothing, at the best, but it will be happiness
for others."</p>
<p>"Come, come, I am in a good humor <SPAN name="tn_png_188"></SPAN><!--TN: "to day" changed to "to-day" on Page 186-->to-day, and can
listen to your nonsense. Explain to me how you will obtain
the general weal and what it consists of."</p>
<p>"A ministry is in power which is the last rampart defending
the monarchy; it is a cabinet, brave, industrious and intelligent,
which might sustain this wornout and staggering monarchy
for yet twenty years. My aids will overturn it."</p>
<p>"Your philosophers?"</p>
<p>"Oh, no, for they are in favor of the ministry, for its head
is a philosopher too."</p>
<p>"Then they are a selfish pack. What great imbeciles!"</p>
<p>"I do not care to discuss what they are, for I do not know,"
said Balsamo, who was losing his patience. "I only know
that they will all cry down the next ministry when this one
is <SPAN name="tn_png_188b"></SPAN><!--TN: Quote added after "destroyed" on Page 186-->destroyed."</p>
<p>"This new cabinet will have against it the philosophers and
then the <SPAN name="tn_png_188a"></SPAN><!--TN: "Parliment" changed to "Parliament" on Page 186-->Parliament. They will make such an uproar that the
cabinet will persecute the philosophers and block the Parliament.
Then in mind and matter will be organized a sullen
league, a tenacious, stubborn, restless opposition, which will
attack everything, undermining and shaking. Instead
of Parliament they will try to rule with judges appointed by
the king; they will do everything for their appointer. With
reason they will be accused of venality, corruption and injustice.
The people will rise, and at last royalty will have
arrayed against it philosophy, which is intelligence, Parliament,
which is the middle class, and the mob, which is the
people; in other words, the lever with which Archimedes can
raise the world."</p>
<p>"Well, when you have lifted it, you will have to let it fall
again."</p>
<p>"Yes, but when it falls it will smash the royalty."</p>
<p>"To use your figurative language, when this wormeaten
monarchy is broken, what will come out of the ruins?"</p>
<p>"Freedom."</p>
<p>"The French be free? Well, then, there will be thirty millions
of freemen in France?"</p>
<p>"Yes."</p>
<p>"Among them do you not think there will be one with a
bigger brain than another, who will rob them of freedom some
fine morning that he may have a larger share than his proper
one for himself? Do you not remember a dog we had at Medina
which used to eat as much as all the rest together?"</p>
<p>"Yes, and I remember that they all together pitched on him
one day and devoured him."</p>
<SPAN name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></SPAN>
<p>"Because they were dogs; men would have continued to
give in to the greediest."</p>
<p>"Do you set the instincts of animals above the intelligence
of man?"</p>
<p>"Forsooth, the examples abound by which to prove it. Among
the ancients was one Julius Cæsar, and among the moderns
one Oliver Cromwell, who ate up the Roman and the English
cake, without anybody snatching many crumbs away from
them."</p>
<p>"Well, supposing such an usurper comes, he must die some
day, being mortal, but before dying he must do good to even
those whom he oppressed; for he would have changed the
nature of the upper classes. Obliged to have some kind of support,
he will choose the popular as the strongest. To the
equality which abases, he will oppose the kind which elevates.
Equality has no fixed water mark, but takes the level of him
who makes it. In raising the lowest classes he will have hallowed
a principle unknown before his time. The Revolution
will have made the French free; the Protectorate of another
Cæsar or Cromwell will have made them equal."</p>
<p>"What a stupid fellow this is!" said Althotas, starting in
his chair. "To spend twenty years in bringing up a child so
that he shall came and tell you, who taught him all you
knew—'Men are equal.' Before the law, maybe; but before
death? how about that? One dies in three days—another lives a
hundred years! Men, equals before they have conquered
death? Oh, the brute, the triple brute!"</p>
<p>Althotas sat back to laugh more freely at Balsamo, who kept
his head lowered, gloomy and thoughtful. His instructor
took pity on him.</p>
<p>"Unhappy sophist that you are, bear in mind one thing,
that men will not be equals until they are immortal. Then
they will be gods, and these alone are undying."</p>
<p>"Immortal—what a dream!" sighed the mesmerist.</p>
<p>"Dream? so is the steam, the electric fluid, all that we are
hunting after and not yet caught—a dream. But we will seize
and they will be realities. Move with me the dust of ages,
and see that man in all times has been seeking what I
am engaged upon, under the different titles of the Bliss, the
Best, the Perfection. Had they found it, this decrepit world
would be fresh and rosy as the morning. Instead, see the dry
leaf, the corpse, the carrion heap! Is suffering desirable—the
corpse pleasant to look upon—the carrion sweet?"</p>
<p>"You yourself are saying that nobody has found this water
of life," observed Balsamo, as the old man was interrupted by
a dry cough. "I tell you that nobody will find it."</p>
<p>"By this rule there would be no discoveries. Do you think
discoveries are novelties which are invented? Not so—they
are forgotten things coming up anew. Why were the once-<SPAN name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></SPAN>found
things forgotten. Because the inventor's life was too
short for him to derive from it all its perfection. Twenty
times they have nearly consummated the water of life. Chiron
would have made Achilles completely immortal but for the lack
of the three drops of blood which you refuse me. In the flaw
death found a passage, and entered. I repeat that Chiron was
another Althotas prevented by an Acharat from completing
the work which would save all mankind by shielding it from
the divine malediction. Well, what have you to say to
that?"</p>
<p>"Merely," said Balsamo, visibly shaken, <SPAN name="tn_png_190"></SPAN><!--TN: Quote added before "that" on Page 188-->"that you have
your work and I mine. Let each accomplish his, at his risks
and perils. But I will not second yours by a crime."</p>
<p>"A crime? when I ask but three drops of blood—one child—and
you would deluge a country with billions of gallons!
Tell me now who is the cannibal of us two? Ha, ha! you do
not answer me."</p>
<p>"My answer is that three drops would be nothing if you
were sure of success."</p>
<p>"Are you sure, who would send millions to the scaffold
and battle-field? Can you stand up before the Creator and
say, 'O Master of Life, in return for four millions of slain
men, I will warrant the happiness of humanity.'"</p>
<p>"Master, ask for something else," said Balsamo, eluding the
point.</p>
<p>"Ha! you do not answer; you cannot answer," taunted Althotas
triumphantly.</p>
<p>"You must be mistaken on the efficacy of the means. It is
impossible."</p>
<p>"It looks as if you argued with me, disputed, deem me a
liar," said the old alchemist, rolling with cold anger his gray
eyes under his white brows.</p>
<p>"No, but I am in contact with men and things, and you
dwell in a nook, in the pure abstraction of a student; I see the
difficulties and have to point them out."</p>
<p>"You would soon overcome such difficulties if you liked,
or believed."</p>
<p>"I do not believe."</p>
<p>"But do you believe that death is an incontestable thing,
invincible and infinite? And when you see a dead body,
does not the perspiration come to your brow, and a regret is
born in your breast?"</p>
<p>"No regret comes in to my breast because I have familiarized
myself to all human miseries; and I esteem life as a little
thing: but I say in presence of the corpse: 'Dead! thou who
wert mighty as a god! O Death! it is thou who reign sovereignly,
and nothing can prevail against thee.'"</p>
<p>Althotas listened in silence, with no other token of impatience
than fidgeting with a scalpel in his hands. When his<SPAN name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></SPAN>
disciple had finished the solemn and doleful phrase, he smiled
while looking round. His eyes, so burning that no secrets
seemed to exist for him, stopped on a nook in the room, where
a little dog trembled on a handful of straw. It was the last
of three of a kind, which Balsamo had provided on request of
the elder for his experiments.</p>
<p>"Bring that dog to this table," said he to Balsamo, who
laid the creature on a marble slab.</p>
<p>Seeming to foresee its doom and having probably already
been handled by the dissector, the animal shuddered, wriggled
and yelped at contact of the cold stone.</p>
<p>"So you believe in life, since you do in death?" squeaked
Althotas. "This dog looks live enough, eh?"</p>
<p>"Certainly, as it moves and whines."</p>
<p>"How ugly black dogs are! I should like white ones another
time. Howl away, you cur," said the vivisectionist
with his lugubrious laugh; "howl, to convince Grand Seignior
Acharat that you live."</p>
<p>He pierced the animal at a certain muscle so that he whimpered
instead of barking.</p>
<p>"Good! push the bell of the air pump hither. But stay, I
must ask what kind of death you prefer for him—deem best?"</p>
<p>"I do not know what you mean; death is death, master."</p>
<p>"Very correct, what you say, and I agree with you. Since
one kind of death is the same as another, exhaust the air,
Acharat."</p>
<p>Balsamo worked the air pump, and the air in the bell of
glass hissed out at the bottom, so that the little puppy grew
uneasy at the first, looked around, began to sniff, put his paw
to the issue till the pain of the pressure made him take it away,
and then he fell suffocated, puffed up and asphyxiated.</p>
<p>"Behold the dog dead of apoplexy," pronounced the sage;
"this is a fine mode with no long suffering. But you do not
seem fully convinced. I suppose you know how well laden
I am with resources, and you think I have the method of restoring
the respiration."</p>
<p>"No, I am not supposing that. The dog is truly not
alive."</p>
<p>"Never mind, we will make assurance doubly sure by killing
the canine twice. Lift off the receiver, Acharat."</p>
<p>The glass bell was removed and there lay the victim, never
stirring, with eyes shut and heart without a <SPAN name="tn_png_191"></SPAN><!--TN: Quote removed after "beat." on Page 189-->beat.</p>
<p>"Take the scalpel and sever the spinal column without cutting
the larynx."</p>
<p>"I do so solely because you say it."</p>
<p>"And to finish the poor creature in case it be not dead,"
said the other, with the smile of obstinacy peculiar to the
aged.</p>
<p>With one incision Balsamo separated the vertebral column<SPAN name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></SPAN>
a couple of inches from the brain, and opened a yawning
gash. The body remained unmoving.</p>
<p>"He is an inert animal, icy cold, forever without movement,
eh? You say nothing prevails against death? No
power can restore even the appearance of life, far less life
itself, to this carcass?"</p>
<p>"Only the miracle of Heaven!"</p>
<p>"But Heaven does not do such things. Supreme wisdom
kills because there is reason or benefit in the act. An assassin
said so, and he was quite right. Nature has an interest in
the death. Now, what will you say if this dog opens his eyes
and looks at you?"</p>
<p>"It would much astonish me," said the pupil smiling.</p>
<p>"I am glad to hear that it would do as much as that."</p>
<p>As he drew the dog up to an apparatus which we know as a
voltaic pile, he rounded off his words with his false and grating
laugh. The pile was composed of a vessel containing
strips of metal separated by felt. All were bathed in acidulated
water; out of the cup came the two ends of wire—the
poles to speak technically.</p>
<p>"Which eye shall it open, Acharat?" inquired the experimentalist.</p>
<p>"The right."</p>
<p>The two extremities were brought together, but parted by a
little silk, on a neck muscle. In an instant the dog's right eye
opened and stared at Balsamo, who could not help recoiling.</p>
<p>"Look out," said the infernal jester, with his dry laugh;
"our dead dog is going to bite you!"</p>
<p>Indeed, the animal, in spite of its sundered spine, with gaping
jaws and tremulous eye, suddenly got upon its four legs,
and tottered on them. With his hair bristling, Balsamo receded
to the door, uncertain whether to flee or remain.</p>
<p>"But we must not frighten you to death in trying to teach
you," said Althotas, pushing back the cadaver and the machine;
the contact broken, the carcass fell back into immovability.</p>
<p>"You see that we may arrive at the point I spoke of, my
son, and prolong life since we can annul death?"</p>
<p>"Not so, for you have only obtained a semblance of life,"
objected Balsamo.</p>
<p>"In time, we shall make it real. The Roman poets—and
they were esteemed prophets—assert that Cassidæus revived
the dead."</p>
<p>"But one objection: supposing your elixir perfect and a
dog given some, it would live on—until it fell into the hands of
a dissector who would cut its throat."</p>
<p>"I thought you would take me there," chuckled the old
wizard, clapping his hands.</p>
<p>"Your elixir will not prevent a chimney falling on a man,<SPAN name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></SPAN>
a bullet going clear through him, or a horse kicking his skull
open?"</p>
<p>Althotas eyed the speaker like a fencer watching his antagonist
make a lunge which lays him open to defeat.</p>
<p>"No, no, no, and you are a true logician. No, my dear
Acharat, such accidents cannot be avoided; the wounds will
still be made, but I can stop the vital spirit issuing by the
hole. Look!"</p>
<p>Before the other could interfere he drove the lancet into his
arm. The old man had so little blood that it was some time
flowing to the cut; but when it came it was abundantly.</p>
<p>"Great God! you have hurt yourself!" cried the younger
man.</p>
<p>"We must convince you."</p>
<p>Taking up a phial of colorless fluid, he poured a few
drops on the wound; instantly the liquid congealed, or rather
threw out fibres <SPAN name="tn_png_193"></SPAN><!--TN: "materializng" changed to "materializing" on Page 191-->materializing, and, soon a plaster of a yellow hue
covered in the gash and stanched the flow. Balsamo had
never seen collodion, and he gazed in stupefaction at the old
sage.</p>
<p>"You are the wisest of men, father!"</p>
<p>"At least if I have not dealt Death a death-blow, I have
given him a thrust under which he will find it hard to rise.
You see, my son, that the human frame has brittle bones—I
will harden and yet supple them like steel. It has blood
which, in flowing out, carries life with it—I will stop the flow.
The skin and flesh are soft—I will tan them so that they will
turn the edge of steel and blunt the points of spears, while
bullets will flatten against it. Only let an Althotas live three
hundred years. Well, give me what I want, and I shall live
a thousand. Oh, my dear Acharat, all depends on you.
Bring me the child."</p>
<p>"I will think it over, and do you likewise reflect."</p>
<p>The sage darted a look of withering scorn on his adept.</p>
<p>"Go!" he snarled, "I will convince you later. Besides,
human blood is not so precious that I cannot use a substitute.
Go, and let me seek—and I shall find. I have no need of you.
Begone!"</p>
<p>Balsamo walked over to the elevator, and with a stamp of
the foot, caused it to carry him down to the other floor. Mute,
crushed by the genius of this wizard, he was forced to believe
in impossible things by his doing them.</p>
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