about that? One dies in three days—another lives a hundred years! Men, equals before they have conquered death? Oh, the brute, the triple brute!"
Althotas sat back to laugh more freely at Balsamo, who kept his head lowered, gloomy and thoughtful. His instructor took pity on him.
"Unhappy sophist that you are, bear in mind one thing, that men will not be equals until they are immortal. Then they will be gods, and these alone are undying."
"Immortal—what a dream!" sighed the mesmerist.
"Dream? so is the steam, the electric fluid, all that we are hunting after and not yet caught—a dream. But we will seize and they will be realities. Move with me the dust of ages, and see that man in all times has been seeking what I am engaged upon, under the different titles of the Bliss, the Best, the Perfection. Had they found it, this decrepit world would be fresh and rosy as the morning. Instead, see the dry leaf, the corpse, the carrion heap! Is suffering desirable—the corpse pleasant to look upon—the carrion sweet?"
"You yourself are saying that nobody has found this water of life," observed Balsamo, as the old man was interrupted by a dry cough. "I tell you that nobody will find it."
"By this rule there would be no discoveries. Do you think discoveries are novelties which are invented? Not so—they are forgotten things coming up anew. Why were the once-found things forgotten. Because the inventor's life was too short for him to derive from it all its perfection. Twenty times they have nearly consummated the water of life. Chiron would have made Achilles completely immortal but for the lack of the three drops of blood which you refuse me. In the flaw death found a passage, and entered. I repeat that Chiron was another Althotas prevented by an Acharat from completing the work which would save all mankind by shielding it from the divine malediction. Well, what have you to say to that?"
"Merely," said Balsamo, visibly shaken, "that you have your work and I mine. Let each accomplish his, at his risks and perils. But I will not second yours by a crime."
"A crime? when I ask but three drops of blood—one child—and you would deluge a country with billions of gallons! Tell me now who is the cannibal of us two? Ha, ha! you do not answer me."
"My answer is that three drops would be nothing if you were sure of success."
"Are you sure, who would send millions to the scaffold and battle-field? Can you stand up before the Creator and say, 'O Master of Life, in return for four millions of slain men, I will warrant the happiness of humanity.'"
"Master, ask for something else," said Balsamo, eluding the point.
"Ha! you do not answer; you cannot answer," taunted Althotas triumphantly.
"You must be mistaken on the efficacy of the means. It is impossible."
"It looks as if you argued with me, disputed, deem me a liar," said the old alchemist, rolling with cold anger his gray eyes under his white brows.
"No, but I am in contact with men and things, and you dwell in a nook, in the pure abstraction of a student; I see the difficulties and have to point them out."
"You would soon overcome such difficulties if you liked, or believed."
"I do not believe."
"But do you believe that death is an incontestable thing, invincible and infinite? And when you see a dead body, does not the perspiration come to your brow, and a regret is born in your breast?"
"No regret comes in to my breast because I have familiarized myself to all human miseries; and I esteem life as a little thing: but I say in presence of the corpse: 'Dead! thou who wert mighty as a god! O Death! it is thou who reign sovereignly, and nothing can prevail against thee.'"
Althotas listened in silence, with no other token of impatience than fidgeting with a scalpel in his hands. When his disciple had finished the solemn and doleful phrase, he smiled while looking round. His eyes, so burning that no secrets seemed to exist for him, stopped on a nook in the room, where a little dog trembled on a handful of straw. It was the last of three of a kind, which Balsamo had provided on request of the elder for his experiments.
"Bring that dog to this table," said he to Balsamo, who laid the creature on a marble slab.
Seeming to foresee its doom and having probably already been handled by the dissector, the animal shuddered, wriggled and yelped at contact of the cold stone.
"So you believe in life, since you do in death?" squeaked Althotas. "This dog looks live enough, eh?"
"Certainly, as it moves and whines."
"How ugly black dogs are! I should like white ones another time. Howl away, you cur," said the vivisectionist with his lugubrious laugh; "howl, to convince Grand Seignior Acharat that you live."
He pierced the animal at a certain muscle so that he whimpered instead of barking.
"Good! push the bell of the air pump hither. But stay, I must ask what kind of death you prefer for him—deem best?"
"I do not know what you mean; death is death, master."
"Very correct, what you say, and I agree with you. Since one kind of death is the same as another, exhaust the air, Acharat."
Balsamo worked the air pump, and the air in the bell of glass hissed out at the bottom, so that the little puppy grew uneasy at the first, looked around, began to sniff, put his paw to the issue till the pain of the pressure made him take it away, and then he fell suffocated, puffed up and asphyxiated.
"Behold the dog dead of apoplexy," pronounced the sage; "this is a fine mode with no long suffering. But you do not seem fully convinced. I suppose you know how well laden I am with resources, and you think I have the method of restoring the respiration."
"No, I am not supposing that. The dog is truly not alive."
"Never mind, we will make assurance doubly sure by killing the canine twice. Lift off the receiver, Acharat."
The glass bell was removed and there lay the victim, never stirring, with eyes shut and heart without a beat.
"Take the scalpel and sever the spinal column without cutting the larynx."
"I do so solely because you say it."
"And to finish the poor creature in case it be not dead," said the other, with the smile of obstinacy peculiar to the aged.
With one incision Balsamo separated the vertebral column a couple of inches from the brain, and opened a yawning gash. The body remained unmoving.
"He is an inert animal, icy cold, forever without movement, eh? You say nothing prevails against death? No power can restore even the appearance of life, far less life itself, to this carcass?"
"Only the miracle of Heaven!"
"But Heaven does not do such things. Supreme wisdom kills because there is reason or benefit in the act. An assassin said so, and he was quite right. Nature has an interest in the death. Now, what will you say if this dog opens his eyes and looks at you?"
"It would much astonish me," said the pupil smiling.
"I am glad to hear that it would do as much as that."
As
