CHAPTER XLI.
THE WATER OF LIFE.
He went to listen at Lorenza's door, where she was sleeping evenly andsweetly.
He opened a panel and looked in upon her, for some while inaffectionate reverie. Closing the wicket, he stole away to hislaboratory, where he put out the fire, by opening a register platewhich sent most of the heat up the chimney, and ran in water from atank without.
In a pocket-book, he carefully fastened up the receipt of CardinalRohan, saying:
"The parole of a Rohan is all very well, but only for me, and thebrothers will want to know yonder how I employ their money."
These words were dying on his lips when three sharp raps on the ceilingmade 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, andby means of an iron ring in a trap overhead, which was the floor ofa dumb-waiter, as then they called elevators, he pulled this down tohis feet. Placing himself in the center of it, he was carried gently,by no spring but a simple hydraulic machine, worked by the reservoirwhich had extinguished the fire, up into the study reserved for the oldalchemist.
This new dwelling was eight feet by nine in height, and sixteen inlength; all the light came from a skylight, as the four walls werewithout inlet. It was, relatively to the house on wheels, a palace.
The old man was sitting in his easy-chair on casters, at the middleof a horseshoe-shaped table in iron, with a marble top, laden witha quantity of plants, books, tools, bottles, and papers traced withcabalistic 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 sortof serpent, fine and coiled like a spring, seemed to curl, and it sentforth a bright and unvarying light, without other apparent source ofluminous supply than the chain supporting the globe might contain totransmit.
He was "candling" a phial of ground glass in his fingers as a good wifetries eggs.
"Well, anything new?" said Balsamo, after having silently watched himfor 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 sagesadly, 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 Aristaeus,twenty grams; balm of mercury, fifteen; precipitate of gold, fifteen;essence of Lebanon cedar, twenty-five grams."
"But it seems to me, bar the Aristaean elixir, this is about what youlast mixed up."
"That is so, but there was lacking the binding ingredient, withoutwhich 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 histongue the stopper of the phial, from which a little of the nectar hadoozed.
"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 withcare."
"Indeed! how fickle is the world. Three years ago, we were offered morechildren than we knew what to do with, for four charges of gunpowder ora 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 rememberthat what they offered were sprightly, woolly-headed, jolly littleurchins."
"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 shrilllaughter, most lugubrious. "True, I had forgotten that you havepolitical 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 inhis chair and fixing his large gray eyes on the pupil.
"I have thrown the first stone," he replied, feeling the glance gothrough him. "The pool is stirred up. The mud is in agitation--thephilosophic sediment."
"Yes, you are going to bring into play your utopias, fogs and hollowdreams. These idiots dispute about the existence or non-existence ofthe Almighty, when they might become little gods themselves. Let ushear 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, inthe 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 theWise, Raymond Lully, Peter of Toledo and Albert the Great."
"Because they are the only men who have really loved a life, sowedideas that live, and labored at the grand question of to be or not tobe."
"There are two ways of living, master."
"I only know of one--existing. But to return to your brace ofphilosophers. 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 ledby ideas. And then, I have a more powerful help than all thephilosophers--the fact that monarchy has lasted sixteen hundred yearsin France, and the French are tired of it."
"Hence, they are going to overturn the throne, and you are backing themwith all your forces! You fool! What good is the upsetting of thismonarchy going to do you?"
"It will bring me nothing, at the best, but it will be happiness forothers."
"Come, come, I am in a good humor to-day, and can listen to yournonsense. Explain to me how you will obtain the general weal and whatit consists of."
"A ministry is in power which is the last rampart defending themonarchy; it is a cabinet, brave, industrious and intelligent, whichmight sustain this wornout and staggering monarchy for yet twentyyears. My aids will overturn it."
"Your philosophers?"
"Oh, no, for they are in favor of the ministry, for its head is aphilosopher too."
"Then they are a selfish pack. What great imbeciles!"
"I do not care to discuss what they are, for I do not know," saidBalsamo, who was losing his patience. "I only know that they will allcry down the next ministry when this one is destroyed."
"This new cabinet will have against it the philosophers and thenthe Parliament. They will make such an uproar that the cabinet willpersecute the philosophers and block the Parliament. Then in mindand matter will be organized a sullen league, a tenacious, stubborn,restless opposition, which will attack everything, undermining andshaking. Instead of Parliament they will try to rule with judgesappointed 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 againstit philosophy, which is intelligence, Parliament, which is the middleclass, and the mob, which is the people; in other words, the lever withwhich Archimedes can raise t
he 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 isbroken, what will come out of the ruins?"
"Freedom."
"The French be free? Well, then, there will be thirty millions offreemen in France?"
"Yes."
"Among them do you not think there will be one with a bigger brainthan another, who will rob them of freedom some fine morning that hemay have a larger share than his proper one for himself? Do you notremember a dog we had at Medina which used to eat as much as all therest together?"
"Yes, and I remember that they all together pitched on him one day anddevoured him."
"Because they were dogs; men would have continued to give in to thegreediest."
"Do you set the instincts of animals above the intelligence of man?"
"Forsooth, the examples abound by which to prove it. Among the ancientswas one Julius Caesar, and among the moderns one Oliver Cromwell, whoate up the Roman and the English cake, without anybody snatching manycrumbs away from them."
"Well, supposing such an usurper comes, he must die some day, beingmortal, but before dying he must do good to even those whom heoppressed; for he would have changed the nature of the upper classes.Obliged to have some kind of support, he will choose the popular as thestrongest. To the equality which abases, he will oppose the kind whichelevates. Equality has no fixed water mark, but takes the level of himwho makes it. In raising the lowest classes he will have hallowed aprinciple unknown before his time. The Revolution will have made theFrench free; the Protectorate of another Caesar or Cromwell will havemade 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 cameand tell you, who taught him all you knew--'Men are equal.' Beforethe law, maybe; but before death? how about that? One dies in threedays--another lives a hundred years! Men, equals before they haveconquered death? Oh, the brute, the triple brute!"
Althotas sat back to laugh more freely at Balsamo, who kept his headlowered, gloomy and thoughtful. His instructor took pity on him.
"Unhappy sophist that you are, bear in mind one thing, that men willnot be equals until they are immortal. Then they will be gods, andthese alone are undying."
"Immortal--what a dream!" sighed the mesmerist.
"Dream? so is the steam, the electric fluid, all that we are huntingafter and not yet caught--a dream. But we will seize and they will berealities. Move with me the dust of ages, and see that man in all timeshas been seeking what I am engaged upon, under the different titles ofthe Bliss, the Best, the Perfection. Had they found it, this decrepitworld would be fresh and rosy as the morning. Instead, see the dryleaf, the corpse, the carrion heap! Is suffering desirable--the corpsepleasant 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. "Itell you that nobody will find it."
"By this rule there would be no discoveries. Do you think discoveriesare novelties which are invented? Not so--they are forgotten thingscoming up anew. Why were the once-found things forgotten. Becausethe inventor's life was too short for him to derive from it all itsperfection. Twenty times they have nearly consummated the water oflife. Chiron would have made Achilles completely immortal but for thelack of the three drops of blood which you refuse me. In the flaw deathfound a passage, and entered. I repeat that Chiron was another Althotasprevented by an Acharat from completing the work which would save allmankind by shielding it from the divine malediction. Well, what haveyou to say to that?"
"Merely," said Balsamo, visibly shaken, "that you have your work and Imine. Let each accomplish his, at his risks and perils. But I will notsecond yours by a crime."
"A crime? when I ask but three drops of blood--one child--and you woulddeluge a country with billions of gallons! Tell me now who is thecannibal of us two? Ha, ha! you do not answer me."
"My answer is that three drops would be nothing if you were sure ofsuccess."
"Are you sure, who would send millions to the scaffold andbattle-field? Can you stand up before the Creator and say, 'O Masterof Life, in return for four millions of slain men, I will warrant thehappiness of humanity.'"
"Master, ask for something else," said Balsamo, eluding the point.
"Ha! you do not answer; you cannot answer," taunted Althotastriumphantly.
"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 theold alchemist, rolling with cold anger his gray eyes under his whitebrows.
"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 haveto 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, invincibleand infinite? And when you see a dead body, does not the perspirationcome to your brow, and a regret is born in your breast?"
"No regret comes in to my breast because I have familiarized myself toall human miseries; and I esteem life as a little thing: but I say inpresence of the corpse: 'Dead! thou who wert mighty as a god! O Death!it is thou who reign sovereignly, and nothing can prevail againstthee.'"
Althotas listened in silence, with no other token of impatience thanfidgeting with a scalpel in his hands. When his disciple had finishedthe solemn and doleful phrase, he smiled while looking round. His eyes,so burning that no secrets seemed to exist for him, stopped on a nookin the room, where a little dog trembled on a handful of straw. It wasthe last of three of a kind, which Balsamo had provided on request ofthe elder for his experiments.
"Bring that dog to this table," said he to Balsamo, who laid thecreature on a marble slab.
Seeming to foresee its doom and having probably already been handled bythe dissector, the animal shuddered, wriggled and yelped at contact ofthe 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. Howlaway, 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 insteadof barking.
"Good! push the bell of the air pump hither. But stay, I must ask whatkind 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 ofdeath is the same as another, exhaust the air, Acharat."
Balsamo worked the air pump, and the air in the bell of glass hissedout 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 painof 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 finemode with no long suffering. But you do not seem fully convinced. Isuppose you know how well laden I am with resources, and you think Ihave 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 caninetwice. 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 thelarynx."
"I do so solely because you say it."
"And to finish the poor creature in case it be not dead," said theother, with the smile of obstinacy peculiar to the aged.
With one incision Balsamo separated the vertebral column a couple ofinches from the brain, and opened a yawning gash. The body remainedunmoving.
"He is an inert animal, icy cold, forever without movement, eh? Yousay nothing prevails against death? No power can restore even theappearance 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 thereis reason or benefit in the act. An assassin said so, and he was quiteright. Nature has an interest in the death. Now, what will you say ifthis 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 wascomposed of a vessel containing strips of metal separated by felt. Allwere bathed in acidulated water; out of the cup came the two ends ofwire--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 staredat Balsamo, who could not help recoiling.
"Look out," said the infernal jester, with his dry laugh; "our dead dogis going to bite you!"
Indeed, the animal, in spite of its sundered spine, with gaping jawsand tremulous eye, suddenly got upon its four legs, and tottered onthem. With his hair bristling, Balsamo receded to the door, uncertainwhether to flee or remain.
"But we must not frighten you to death in trying to teach you," saidAlthotas, 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, andprolong life since we can annul death?"
"Not so, for you have only obtained a semblance of life," objectedBalsamo.
"In time, we shall make it real. The Roman poets--and they wereesteemed prophets--assert that Cassidaeus 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 wouldcut its throat."
"I thought you would take me there," chuckled the old wizard, clappinghis hands.
"Your elixir will not prevent a chimney falling on a man, a bulletgoing clear through him, or a horse kicking his skull open?"
Althotas eyed the speaker like a fencer watching his antagonist make alunge which lays him open to defeat.
"No, no, no, and you are a true logician. No, my dear Acharat, suchaccidents cannot be avoided; the wounds will still be made, but I canstop the vital spirit issuing by the hole. Look!"
Before the other could interfere he drove the lancet into his arm. Theold 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 thewound; instantly the liquid congealed, or rather threw out fibresmaterializing, and, soon a plaster of a yellow hue covered in the gashand stanched the flow. Balsamo had never seen collodion, and he gazedin 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 athrust under which he will find it hard to rise. You see, my son, thatthe human frame has brittle bones--I will harden and yet supple themlike steel. It has blood which, in flowing out, carries life with it--Iwill stop the flow. The skin and flesh are soft--I will tan them sothat they will turn the edge of steel and blunt the points of spears,while bullets will flatten against it. Only let an Althotas live threehundred 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 bloodis not so precious that I cannot use a substitute. Go, and let meseek--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 thegenius of this wizard, he was forced to believe in impossible things byhis doing them.