tue of that essence, which lingered yet in my veins, I could not
have survived--even thus feeble and shattered. I need not say that I
now abandoned all thought of discovering the Dervish. I had at least his
secret, if I had failed of the paltry supply he had drawn from its uses.
Such appliances as he had told me were needful are procured in the East
with more ease than in Europe. To sum up, I am here, instructed in
all the knowledge, and supplied with all the aids, which warrant me in
saying, 'Do you care for new life in its richest enjoyments, if not for
yourself, for one whom you love and would reprieve from the grave? Then,
share with me in a task that a single night will accomplish, and ravish
a prize by which the life that you value the most will be saved from
the dust and the worm, to live on, ever young, ever blooming, when each
infant, new-born while I speak, shall have passed to the grave. Nay,
where is the limit to life, while the earth hides the substance by which
life is renewed?"

I give as faithfully as I can recall them the words in which Margrave
addressed me. But who can guess by cold words transcribed, even were
they artfully ranged by a master of language, the effect words produce
when warm from the breath of the speaker? Ask one of an audience which
some orator held enthralled, why his words do not quicken a beat in the
reader's pulse, and the answer of one who had listened will be, "The
words took their charm from the voice and the eye, the aspect, the
manner, the man!" So it was with the incomprehensible being before me.
Though his youth was faded, though his beauty was dimmed, though my
fancies clothed him with memories of abhorrent dread, though my reason
opposed his audacious beliefs and assumptions, still he charmed and
spell-bound me; still he was the mystical fascinator; still, if
the legends of magic had truth for their basis, he was the born
magician,--as genius, in what calling soever, is born with the gift to
enchant and subdue us.

Constraining myself to answer calmly, I said, "You have told me your
story; you have defined the object of the experiment in which you ask me
to aid. You do right to bid me postpone my replies or my questions. Seek
to recruit by sleep the strength you have so sorely tasked. To-morrow--"

"To-morrow, ere night, you will decide whether the man whom out of
all earth I have selected to aid me shall be the foe to condemn me to
perish! I tell you plainly I need yo