rs with gold."

"Gold will not tempt Haroun."

"What will?"

"Ask him yourself; you speak his language."

"I have asked him; he vouchsafes me no answer."

Haroun here suddenly roused himself as from a revery. He drew from under
his robe a small phial, from which he let fall a single drop into a
cup of water, and said, "Drink this; send to me tomorrow for such
medicaments as I may prescribe. Return hither yourself in three days;
not before!"

When Grayle was gone, Sir Philip, moved to pity, asked Haroun if,
indeed, it were within the compass of his art to preserve life in a
frame that appeared so thoroughly exhausted. Haroun answered, "A
fever may so waste the lamp of life that one ruder gust of air could
extinguish the flame, yet the sick man recovers. This sick man's
existence has been one long fever; this sick man can recover."

"You will aid him to do so?"

"Three days hence I will tell you."

On the third day Grayle revisited Haroun, and, at Haroun's request,
Sir Philip came also. Grayle declared that he had already derived
unspeakable relief from the remedies administered; he was lavish in
expressions of gratitude; pressed large gifts on Haroun, and seemed
pained when they were refused. This time Haroun conversed freely,
drawing forth Grayle's own irregular, perverted, stormy, but powerful
intellect.

I can best convey the general nature of Grayle's share in the dialogue
between himself, Haroun, and Derval--recorded in the narrative in words
which I cannot trust my memory to repeat in detail--by stating the
effect it produced on my own mind. It seemed, while I read, as if
there passed before me some convulsion of Nature,--a storm, an
earthquake,--outcries of rage, of scorn, of despair, a despot's
vehemence of will, a rebel's scoff at authority; yet, ever and anon,
some swell of lofty thought, some burst of passionate genius,--abrupt
variations from the vaunt of superb defiance to the wail of intense
remorse.

The whole had in it, I know not what of uncouth but colossal,--like the
chant, in the old lyrical tragedy, of one of those mythical giants, who,
proud of descent from Night and Chaos, had held sway over the elements,
while still crude and conflicting, to be crushed under the rocks,
upheaved in their struggle, as Order and Harmony subjected a brightening
Creation to the milder influences throned in Olympus. But it was not
till the later passages of the dialogue in which my interest was now
absor