are
better than mine. I have been looking at this flask, and I should like
to have you look at it.

It was a small matrass, as one of the elder chemists would have called
it, containing a fluid, and hermetically sealed. He held it up at the
window; perhaps you remember the physician holding a flask to the light
in Gerard Douw's "Femme hydropique"; I thought of that fine figure as I
looked at him. Look!--said he,--is it clear or cloudy?

--You need not ask me that,--I answered. It is very plainly turbid. I
should think that some sediment had been shaken up in it. What is it,
Elixir Vitae or Aurum potabile?

--Something that means more than alchemy ever did! Boiled just three
hours, and as clear as a bell until within the last few days; since then
has been clouding up.

--I began to form a pretty shrewd guess at the meaning of all this,
and to think I knew very nearly what was coming next. I was right in
my conjecture. The Master broke off the sealed end of his little flask,
took out a small portion of the fluid on a glass rod, and placed it on a
slip of glass in the usual way for a microscopic examination.

--One thousand diameters,--he said, as he placed it on the stage of the
microscope.--We shall find signs of life, of course.--He bent over the
instrument and looked but an instant.

--There they are!--he exclaimed,--look in.

I looked in and saw some objects:

The straight linear bodies were darting backward and forward in every
direction. The wavy ones were wriggling about like eels or water-snakes.
The round ones were spinning on their axes and rolling in every
direction. All of them were in a state of incessant activity, as if
perpetually seeking something and never finding it.

They are tough, the germs of these little bodies, said the Master.
--Three hours' boiling has n't killed 'em. Now, then, let us see what
has been the effect of six hours' boiling.

He took up another flask just like the first, containing fluid and
hermetically sealed in the same way.

--Boiled just three hours longer than the other, he said,--six hours in
all. This is the experimentum crucis. Do you see any cloudiness in it?

--Not a sign of it; it is as clear as crystal, except that there may be
a little sediment at the bottom.

--That is nothing. The liquid is clear. We shall find no signs of
life.--He put a minute drop of the liquid under the microscope as
before. Nothing stirred. Nothing to be seen but a clear circle of