philosophy may increase that
power. He loves life, he dreads death; he _wills to live on_. He cannot
restore himself to youth, he cannot entirely stay the progress of death,
he cannot make himself immortal in the flesh and blood; but he may
arrest for a time so prolonged as to appear incredible, if I said
it--that hardening of the parts which constitutes old age. A year may
age him no more than an hour ages another. His intense will,
scientifically trained into system, operates, in short, over the wear
and tear of his own frame. He lives on. That he may not seem a portent
and a miracle, he _dies_ from time to time, seemingly, to certain
persons. Having schemed the transfer of a wealth that suffices to his
wants, he disappears from one corner of the world, and contrives that
his obsequies shall be celebrated. He reappears at another corner of the
world, where he resides undetected, and does not revisit the scenes of
his former career till all who could remember his features are no more.
He would be profoundly miserable if he had affections--he has none but
for himself. No good man would accept his longevity, and to no men, good
or bad, would he or could he communicate its true secret. Such a man
might exist; such a man as I have described I see now before me!--Duke
of ----, in the court of ----, dividing time between lust and brawl,
alchemists and wizards;--again, in the last century, charlatan and
criminal, with name less noble, domiciled in the house at which you
gazed to-day, and flying from the law you had outraged, none knew
whither; traveller once more revisiting London, with the same earthly
passions which filled your heart when races now no more walked through
yonder streets; outlaw from the school of all the nobler and diviner
mystics; execrable Image of Life in Death and Death in Life, I warn you
back from the cities and homes of healthful men; back to the ruins of
departed empires; back to the deserts of nature unredeemed!"

There answered me a whisper so musical, so potently musical, that it
seemed to enter into my whole being, and subdue me despite myself. Thus
it said:

"I have sought one like you for the last hundred years. Now I have found
you, we part not till I know what I desire. The vision that sees through
the Past, and cleaves through the veil of the Future, is in you at this
hour; never before, never to come again. The vision of no puling
fantastic girl, of no sick-bed somnambule, but of a strong