are not of my imposing; the secret
was imparted to me by spirits not of a benevolent order, and under
conditions with which I am constrained strictly to comply. Understand also
that I am not minded to employ this knowledge on my own behalf. My
fourscore years' acquaintance with life has rendered me more solicitous for
methods of abbreviating existence, than of prolonging it. It may be well
for you if your twenty years' experience has led you to the same
conclusion."

There was not one of the young men who would not readily have admitted, and
indeed energetically maintained, the emptiness, vanity, and general
unsatisfactoriness of life; for such had ever been the doctrine of their
venerated preceptor. Their present behaviour, however, would have convinced
him, had he needed conviction, of the magnitude of the gulf between theory
and practice, and the feebleness of intellectual persuasion in presence of
innate instinct. With one voice they protested their readiness to brave any
conceivable peril, and undergo any test which might be imposed as a
condition of participation in their master's marvellous secret.

"So be it," returned the sage, "and now hearken to the conditions.

"Each of you must select at hazard, and immediately quaff one of these
seven phials, in one of which only is contained the Elixir of Life. Far
different are the contents of the others; they are the six most deadly
poisons which the utmost subtlety of my skill has enabled me to prepare,
and science knows no antidote to any of them. The first scorches up the
entrails as with fire; the second slays by freezing every vein, and
benumbing every nerve; the third by frantic convulsions. Happy in
comparison he who drains the fourth, for he sinks dead upon the ground
immediately, smitten as it were with lightning. Nor do I overmuch
commiserate him to whose lot the fifth may fall, for slumber descends upon
him forthwith, and he passes away in painless oblivion. But wretched he who
chooses the sixth, whose hair falls from his head, whose skin peels from
his body, and who lingers long in excruciating agonies, a living death. The
seventh phial contains the object of your desire. Stretch forth your
hands, therefore, simultaneously to this table; let each unhesitatingly
grasp and intrepidly drain the potion which fate may allot him, and be the
quality of his fortune attested by the result."

The seven disciples contemplated each other with visages of sevenfold
b