THE WATER OF LIFE.
He went to listen at Lorenza's door, where she was sleeping evenly and
sweetly.
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.
In a pocket-book, he carefully fastened up the receipt of Cardinal
Rohan, saying:
"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."
These words were dying on his lips when three sharp raps on the ceiling
made him lift his head.
"Althotas wants me, and in a hurry. That is a good sign."
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.
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.
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.
He was so wrapt in thought that he was not disturbed by the entrance.
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 other apparent source of
luminous supply than the chain supporting the globe might contain to
transmit.
He was "candling" a phial of ground glass in his fingers as a good wife
tries eggs.
"Well, anything new?" said Balsamo, after having silently watched him
for a while.
"Yes, yes; I am delighted, Acharat, for I have found what I sought."
"Gold--diamonds?"
"Pooh! They are pretty discoveries for my soul to rejoice over."
"I suppose you mean your elixir, in that case."
"Yes, my boy, my elixir--life everlasting."
"Oh, so you are still harping on that string," said the younger sage
sadly, for he thought his senior was following an idle dream.
But without listening Althotas was lovingly peering into his phial.
"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."
"But it seems to me, bar the Aristæan elixir, this is about what you
last mixed up."
"That is so, but there was lacking the binding ingredient, without
which the rest are no good."
"Can one procure it?"
"Certainly; it is three drops of a child's arterial blood."
"And have you the child?" gasped Balsamo, horrified.
"No, I expect you to find one for me."
"Master, you are mad."
"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.
"The child would be killed."
"What of it--the finer the child, the better the heart's blood."
"It cannot be; children are no longer butchered, but brought up with
care."
"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."
"That was on the Congo River, in Africa, master."
"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."
"Unfortunately we are no longer on the Congo. We are in Paris."
"Well, we can embark from Marseilles and be in Africa in six weeks."
"That can be done; but I must stay in France on serious business."
"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.
Balsamo held his peace, reserving his powers for the storm impending.
"How far has your business advanced?" he inquired, painfully turning in
his chair and fixing his large gray eyes on the pupil.
"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."
"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!"
"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."
"I do not know him. The next?"
"I am to be introduced to the greatest sower of ideas of the century,
the author of the Social Contract, Rousseau."
"He is not known to me either."
"I expect not, as you only know such old alchemists as Alfonso the
Wise, Raymond Lully, Peter of Toledo and Albert the Great."
"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
be."
"There are two ways of living, master."
"I only know of one--existing. But to return to your brace of
philosophers. With their help you intend to----"
"Grasp the present and sap the future."
"How stupid they must be in this country to be lured away by ideas."
"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."
"Hence, they are going to overturn the throne, and you are backing them
with all your forces! You fool! What good is the upsetting of this
monarchy going to do you?"
"It will bring me nothing, at the best, but it will be happiness for
others."
"Come, come, I am in a good humor to-day, and can listen to your
nonsense. Explain to me how you will obtain the general weal and what
it consists of."
"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."
"Your philosophers?"
"Oh, no, for they are in favor of the ministry, for its head is a
philosopher too."
"Then they are a selfish pack. What great imbeciles!"
"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 destroyed."
"This new cabinet will have against it the philosophers and then
the 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."
"Well, when you have lifted it, you will have to let it fall again."
"Yes, but when it falls it will smash the royalty."
"To use your figurative language, when this wormeaten monarchy is
broken, what will come out of the ruins?"
"Freedom."
"The French be free? Well, then, there will be thirty millions of
freemen in France?"
"Yes."
"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?"
"Yes, and I remember that they all together pitched on him one day and
devoured him."
"Because they were dogs; men would have continued to give in to the
greediest."
"Do you set the instincts of animals above the intelligence of man?"
"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."
"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."
"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!"
Althotas sat back to laugh more freely at Balsamo, who kept his head
lowered, gloomy and thoughtful. His instructor took pity on him.
"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."
"Immortal--what a dream!" sighed the mesmerist.
"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?"
"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."
"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-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?"
"Merely," said Balsamo, visibly shaken, "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."
"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."
"My answer is that three drops would be nothing if you were sure of
success."
"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.'"
"Master, ask for something else," said Balsamo, eluding the point.
"Ha! you do not answer; you cannot answer," taunted Althotas
triumphantly.
"You must be mistaken on the efficacy of the means. It is impossible."
"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.
"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."
"You would soon overcome such difficulties if you liked, or believed."
"I do not believe."
"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?"
"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.'"
Althotas listened in silence, with no other token of impatience than
fidgeting with a scalpel in his hands. When his 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.
"Bring that dog to this table," said he to Balsamo, who laid the
creature on a marble slab.
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.
"So you believe in life, since you do in death?" squeaked Althotas.
"This dog looks live enough, eh?"
"Certainly, as it moves and whines."
"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."
He pierced the animal at a certain muscle so that he whimpered instead
of barking.
"Good! push the bell of the air pump hither. But stay, I must ask what
kind of death you prefer for him--deem best?"
"I do not know what you mean; death is death, master."
"Very correct, what you say, and I agree with you. Since one kind of
death is the same as another, exhaust the air, Acharat."
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.
"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."
"No, I am not supposing that. The dog is truly not alive."
"Never mind, we will make assurance doubly sure by killing the canine
twice. Lift off the receiver, Acharat."
The glass bell was removed and there lay the victim, never stirring,
with eyes shut and heart without a beat.
"Take the scalpel and sever the spinal column without cutting the
larynx."
"I do so solely because you say it."
"And to finish the poor creature in case it be not dead," said the
other, with the smile of obstinacy peculiar to the aged.
With one incision Balsamo separated the vertebral column a couple of
inches from the brain, and opened a yawning gash. The body remained
unmoving.
"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?"
"Only the miracle of Heaven!"
"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?"
"It would much astonish me," said the pupil smiling.
"I am glad to hear that it would do as much as that."
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.
"Which eye shall it open, Acharat?" inquired the experimentalist.
"The right."
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.
"Look out," said the infernal jester, with his dry laugh; "our dead dog
is going to bite you!"
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.
"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.
"You see that we may arrive at the point I spoke of, my son, and
prolong life since we can annul death?"
"Not so, for you have only obtained a semblance of life," objected
Balsamo.
"In time, we shall make it real. The Roman poets--and they were
esteemed prophets--assert that Cassidæus revived the dead."
"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."
"I thought you would take me there," chuckled the old wizard, clapping
his hands.
"Your elixir will not prevent a chimney falling on a man, a bullet
going clear through him, or a horse kicking his skull open?"
Althotas eyed the speaker like a fencer watching his antagonist make a
lunge which lays him open to defeat.
"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!"
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.
"Great God! you have hurt yourself!" cried the younger man.
"We must convince you."
Taking up a phial of colorless fluid, he poured a few drops on the
wound; instantly the liquid congealed, or rather threw out fibres
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.
"You are the wisest of men, father!"
"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."
"I will think it over, and do you likewise reflect."
The sage darted a look of withering scorn on his adept.
"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!"
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.