CH THY JOURNEY IS EXPOSED.
I cannot direct thee to paths free from the wanderings of the deadliest
foes. Thou must alone, and of thyself, face and hazard all. But if thou
art so enamoured of life as to care only to live on, no matter for what
ends, recruiting the nerves and veins with the alchemist's vivifying
elixir, why seek these dangers from the intermediate tribes? Because the
very elixir that pours a more glorious life into the frame, so sharpens
the senses that those larvae of the air become to thee audible and
apparent; so that, unless trained by degrees to endure the phantoms and
subdue their malice, a life thus gifted would be the most awful doom
man could bring upon himself. Hence it is, that though the elixir be
compounded of the simplest herbs, his frame only is prepared to receive
it who has gone through the subtlest trials. Nay, some, scared and
daunted into the most intolerable horror by the sights that burst upon
their eyes at the first draft, have found the potion less powerful to
save than the agony and travail of Nature to destroy. To the unprepared
the elixir is thus but the deadliest poison. Amidst the dwellers of
the threshold is ONE, too, surpassing in malignity and hatred all her
tribe,--one whose eyes have paralyzed the bravest, and whose power
increases over the spirit precisely in proportion to its fear. Does thy
courage falter?"

"Nay; thy words but kindle it."

"Follow me, then, and submit to the initiatory labours."

With that, Mejnour led him into the interior chamber, and proceeded
to explain to him certain chemical operations which, though extremely
simple in themselves, Glyndon soon perceived were capable of very
extraordinary results.

"In the remoter times," said Mejnour, smiling, "our brotherhood were
often compelled to recur to delusions to protect realities; and, as
dexterous mechanicians or expert chemists, they obtained the name
of sorcerers. Observe how easy to construct is the Spectre Lion that
attended the renowned Leonardo da Vinci!"

And Glyndon beheld with delighted surprise the simple means by which the
wildest cheats of the imagination can be formed. The magical landscapes
in which Baptista Porta rejoiced; the apparent change of the seasons
with which Albertus Magnus startled the Earl of Holland; nay, even those
more dread delusions of the Ghost and Image with which the necromancers
of Heraclea woke the conscience of the conqueror of Plataea
(Pausanias,--see Plutar