The Elixir of Life.
BALSAMO HAD just entered Lorenza’s apartment, and was preparing to awake her and overwhelm her with all the reproaches which his gloomy anger prompted, fully determined to punish her according to the dictates of that anger, when a triple knock upon the ceiling announced that Althotas had watched for his return and wished to speak to him.
Nevertheless Balsamo waited; he was hoping either that he had been mistaken or that the signal had been accidental, when the impatient old man repeated his blows. Balsamo, therefore — fearing, no doubt, to see him descend, as he had already done before, or that Lorenza, awakened by an influence opposed to his own, might acquire the knowledge of some other particulars no less dangerous for him than his political secrets — Balsamo therefore, after having, if we may so express it, charged Lorenza with a fresh stratum of the electric fluid, left the room to rejoin Althotas.
It was high time; the trap-door was already half way from the ceiling. Althotas had left his wheeled armchair and was seen squatting down upon the movable part of the ceiling which rose and fell. He saw Balsamo leave Lorenza’s room.
Squatting down thus, the old man was at once hideous and terrible to behold.
His white face, in those parts which still seemed as if they belonged to a living being, was purple with the violence of his rage. His meager and bony hands, like those of a human skeleton, trembled and shook; his hollow eyes seemed to vacillate in their deep caverns; and, in a language unknown even to his disciple, he was loading him with the most violent invectives.
Having left his armchair to touch the spring, he seemed to live and move only by the aid of his long arms, lean and angular as those of a spider; and issuing, as we have said, from his chamber, inaccessible to all but Balsamo, he was about to descend to the lower apartment. To induce this feeble old man, indolent as he was, to leave his armchair (that cleverly constructed machine which spared him all fatigue), and consent to perform one of the actions of common life — to induce him to undergo the care and fatigue of such a change in his usual habits, it must have required no ordinary excitement thus to withdraw him from the ideal life in which he existed, and plunge him into the everyday world.
Balsamo, taken as it were in the fact, seemed at first astonished, then uneasy.
“Ah!” exclaimed Althotas, “there you are, you good-for-nothing — you ingrate! There you are, coward, who desert your master!”
Balsamo called all his patience to his aid, as he invariably did when he spoke to the old man.
“But,” replied he quietly, “I think, my friend, you have only just called me.”
“Your friend?” exclaimed Althotas; “your friend? you vile human creature! You dare to speak the language of your equals to me! I have been a friend to you — more than a friend — a father — a father who has educated, instructed, and enriched you. But you my friend? Oh, no! for you abandon me — you assassinate me!”
“Come, master, you disturb your bile; you irritate your blood; you will make yourself ill.”
“Ill? — absurdity! Have I ever been ill, except when you made me a sharer, in spite of myself, in some of the miseries of your impure human-kind? Ill! have you forgotten that it is I who heal others?”
“Well, master,” replied Balsamo, coldly. “I am here. Let us not lose time in vain.”
“Yes, I advise you to remind me of that. Time! time! which you oblige me to economize — me, for whom this element, circumscribed to all the world, should be endless, unlimited! Yes, my time flies — yes, my time is lost — my time, like the time of other people, falls minute by minute into the gulf of eternity, when, for me it ought to be eternity itself!”
“Come, master,” said Balsamo, with unalterable patience, lowering the trap to the ground as he spoke, placing himself upon it, and causing it to rise again to its place in the room; “come, what is it you want? You say I starve you, but are you not in your forty days of regimen?”
“Yes, yes, doubtless; the work of regeneration commenced thirty-two days ago.”
“Then tell me, of what do you complain? I see two or three bottles of rainwater, the only kind you drink, still remaining.”
“Of course; but do you imagine I am a silkworm, that I can complete the grand work of renovation of youth and of transformation alone? Do you imagine that, powerless as I am, I can compose alone the elixir of life? Or think you that, reclined on my side, and enervated by cooling drinks, my sole nourishment, I could have presence of mind enough, when left to my own resources and without your assistance, to complete the minute work of my regeneration, in which, as you, ungrateful wretch, well know. I must be aided and supported by a friend?”
“I am here, master — I am here. Answer me now,” said Balsamo, replacing the old man in his chair almost in spite of himself, as he would have done a hideous infant; “answer me — you have not been in want of distilled water, for, as I said before, there are three bottles still remaining. This water, as you know, was all collected in the month of May; there are your biscuits of barley and of sesamum, and I myself administered to you the white drops you prescribed.”
“Yes, but the elixir! The elixir is not made! You do not remember it, for you were not there — it was your father, your father, who was far more faithful than you are — but at the last fiftieth I had the elixir ready a month beforehand. I had my retreat on Mount Ararat. A Jew provided me with a Christian child, still at its mother’s breast, for its weight in gold; I bled it according to the rule; I took the last three drops of its arterial blood, and in an hour my elixir, which only wanted this ingredient was composed. Therefore, my first regeneration succeeded wonderfully well. My hair and teeth fell out during the convulsions which succeeded the absorption of that wondrous elixir, but they grew again — the latter badly enough, I know, because I neglected the precaution of letting the elixir flow into my throat through a golden conduit. But my hair and my nails grew again in this second youth, and I began again to live as if I were only fifteen. Now I am old again — I am bordering on the extreme limit — and, if the elixir is not ready, if it is not safely inclosed in this bottle, if I do not bestow all possible care upon this work, the science of a century will be annihilated with me, and the admirable, the sublime secret I possess will be lost for man, who, in me and through me, approaches the divinity! Oh! if I fail — if I am mistaken, if I miss it, Acharat — it will be your fault; and take care, for my anger will be terrible — terrible!”
And as he uttered these last words, a livid glare shot from bib dying eyeball, and the old man fell into a brief convulsion, which ended in a violent fit of coughing.
Balsamo instantly lavished the most eager attentions on him, and the old man recovered. His complexion had become death-like instead of pale. This feeble attack had weakened his strength so much that one would have thought he was dying.
“Come, master,” said Balsamo, “tell me plainly what you want.”
“What I want!” said he, looking fixedly at Balsamo.
“Yes.”
“What I want is this—”
“Speak; I hear you, and I will obey, if what you ask is possible.”
“Possible! possible!” muttered the old man contemptuously. “You know that everything is possible.”
“Yes, with time and science.”
“Science I have, and I am on the point of conquering time. My dose has succeeded. My strength has almost entirely left me. The white drops have caused the expulsion of all the remaining portion of my former nature. Youth, like the sap of the trees in May, rises under the old bark, and buds, so to speak, under the old wood. You may remark, Acharat, that the symptoms are excellent; my voice is weak, my sight is three-quarters gone; sometimes I feel my mind wander; I have become insensible to the transition from heat to cold. I must therefore hasten to finish my elixir, in order that, on the appointed term of my second fifty years, I may at once pass from a hundred to twenty. The ingredients for the elixir are all made, the conduit is ready; I want nothing but the three drops of blood I told you of.”
Balsamo made a gesture of repugnance.
“Very well,” said Althotas, “let us abandon the child, since it is so difficult, and since you prefer to shut yourself up the whole day with your mistress, to seeking it for me.”
“You know, master, that Lorenza is not my mistress,” replied Balsamo.
“Oh! oh! oh!” exclaimed Althotas; “you say that! You think to impose on me as on the mass; you would make me believe in an immaculate creature, and yet you are a man!”
“I swear to you, master, that Lorenza is as pure as an angel; I swear to you, that love, earthly felicity, domestic happiness — I have sacrificed all to my project. For I also have my regenerating; work; only, instead of applying it to myself alone, I shall apply it to all the world.”
“Fool! poor fool!” cried Althotas; “I verily believe he is going to speak to me of his cataclysm of fleshworms, his revolution of ant-hills, when I speak to him of life and eternal youth!”
“Which can only be acquired at the price of a fearful crime — and besides—”
“You doubt, I see you doubt — miserable wretch!”
“No, master; but since you give up the child, tell me what do you want?”
“I must have the first unmarried woman you meet. A woman is the best — I have discovered that, on account of the affinity of the sexes. Find me that, and quickly, for I have only eight days longer.”—”Very well, master, I will see — I will search.”
Another lightning flash, more terrible than the first, sparkled in the old man’s eyes.
“You will see! you will search!” he cried. “Oh, is that your reply? I expected it, and I don’t know why I am surprised. And since when, thou worm of the earth! was the creature entitled to speak thus to its master? Ah! you see me powerless, disabled, supplicating, and you are fool enough to think me at your mercy! Yes, or no, Acharat? And answer me without embarrassment or falsehood, for I can see and read your heart; for I can judge you, and shall punish you.”
“Master,” replied Balsamo, “take care; your anger will do you an injury.”
“Answer me — answer!”
“I can only say the truth to my master; I will see if I can procure what you desire without injuring ourselves. I will endeavor to find a man who will sell you what you want; but I will not take the crime upon myself. That is all I can say.”
“You are very fastidious!” said Althotas, with a bitter smile.
“It is so, master,” said Balsamo.
Althotas made so violent an effort, that with the help of his two arms resting on the arms of the chair he raised himself to his feet.
“Yes, or no?” said he.
“Master, yes, if I find it; no, if I do not.”
“Then you will expose me to death, wretch! you will economize three drops of the blood of an insignificant, worthless creature such as I require, and let a perfect creature such as I am fall into the eternal gulf! Listen, Acharat!” said the old man, with a smile fearful to behold,. “I no longer ask you for anything; I ask absolutely nothing. I shall wait, but if you do not obey, I must serve myself; if you desert me, I must help myself! You have heard me — have you not? Now go!”
Balsamo, without replying to this threat, prepared everything the old man might want. He placed the drinks and the food within his reach, and performed all the services a watchful servant would perform for his master, a devoted son for his father; then, absorbed lay a thought very different from that which tormented Althotas, he lowered the trap to descend, without remarking that the old man followed him with a sardonic and ominous grin.
Althotas was still grinning like an evil genius when Balsamo stood before the still sleeping Lorenza.