Auriol | Page 5

the fixing
of the volatile; this elixir shall renew my youth, like that of the eagle,
and give me length of days greater than any patriarch ever enjoyed."
While thus speaking, he held up the sparkling liquid, and gazed at it
like a Persian worshipping the sun.
"To live for ever!" he cried, after a pause -- "to escape the jaws of death
just when they are opening to devour me! -- to be free from all
accidents! -- 'tis a glorious thought! Ha! I bethink me, the rabbi said

there was one peril against which the elixir could not guard me -- one
vulnerable point; by which, like the heel of Achilles, death might reach
me! What is it? -- where can it lie?"
And he relapsed into deep thought.
"This uncertainty will poison all my happiness," he continued; "I shall
live in constant dread, as of an invisible enemy. But no matter!
Perpetual life! -- perpetual youth! -- what more need be desired?"
"What more, indeed!" cried Auriol.
"Ha!" exclaimed the doctor, suddenly recollecting the wounded man,
and concealing the phial beneath his gown.
"Your caution is vain, doctor," said Auriol. "I have heard what you
have uttered. You fancy. you have discovered the elixir vitae."
"Fancy, I have discovered it!" cried Doctor Lamb. "The matter is past
all doubt. I am the possessor of the wondrous secret, which the greatest
philosophers of all ages have sought to discover -- the miraculous
preservative of the body against decay."
"The man who brought me hither told me you were my kinsman," said
Auriol. "Is it so?"
"It is," replied the doctor, "and you shall now learn the connect ion that
subsists between us. Look at that ghastly relic," he added, pointing to
the head protruding from the bag, "that was once my son Simon. His
son's head is within the sack -- your father's head -- so that four
generations are brought together,"
"Gracious Heaven!" exclaimed the young man, raising himself on his
elbow. "You, then, are my great-grandsire. My father supposed you had
died in his infancy. An old tale runs in the family that you were
charged with sorcery, and fled to avoid the stake."
"It is true that I fled, and took the name I bear at present," replied the

old man, "but I need scarcely say that the charge brought against me
was false. I have devoted myself to abstrusest science; have held
commune with the stars; and have wrested the most hidden secrets
from Nature -- but that is all. Two crimes alone have stained my soul,
but both, I trust, have been expiated by repentance."
"Were they deeds of blood?" asked Auriol.
"One was so," replied Darcy, with a shudder. "It was a cowardly and
treacherous deed, aggravated by the basest ingratitude. Listen, and you
shall hear how it chanced. A Roman rabbi, named Ben Lucca, skilled in
Hermetic science, came to this city. His fame reached me, and I sought
him out, offering myself as his disciple. For months, I remained with
him in his laboratory working at the furnace, and poring over mystic
lore. One night, he showed me that volume, and, pointing to a page
within it, said: 'Those characters contain the secret of confecting the
elixir of life. I now explain them to you; and afterwards we will
proceed to the operation.' With this, he unfolded the mystery; but he
bade me observe, that the menstruum was defective on one point.
Wherefore, he said, 'there will still be peril from some hidden cause.'
Oh, with what greediness I drank in his words! How I gazed at the
mystic characters, as he explained their import! What visions floated
before me of perpetual youth and enjoyment. At that moment a demon
whispered in my ear, -- "This secret must be thine own. No one else
must possess it'."
"Ha!" exclaimed Auriol, starting.
"The evil thought was no sooner conceived than acted upon," pursued
Darcy. "Instantly drawing my poniard, I plunged it to the rabbi's heart.
But mark what followed. His blood fell upon the book, and obliterated
the characters; nor could I by any effort of memory recall the
composition of the elixir."
"When did you regain the secret?" asked Auriol, curiously.
"Tonight," replied Darcy -- "within this hour. For nigh fifty years after
that fatal night I have been making fruitless experiments. A film of

blood has obscured my mental sight. I have proceeded by calcitration,
solution, putrefaction -- have produced the oils which will fix crude
mercury, and convert all bodies into sol and luna; but I have ever failed
in fermenting the stone into the true elixir. Tonight, it came into my
head to wash the blood-stained page containing the secret with a subtle
liquid. I did so; and doubting the