boasted, he would re-enter the world as its
benefactor."

"So ever the wicked man lies to himself when
appalled by the shadow of death," answered
Haroun. "But know, by the remorse which
preys on thy soul, that it is not thy soul that
addresses this prayer to me. Couldst thou hear,
through the storms of the Mind, the Soul's
melancholy whisper, it would dissuade thee
from a wish to live on. While I speak I behold it,
that SOUL! Sad for the stains on its essence,
awed by the account it must render, but dreading,
as the direst calamity, a renewal of years below,—
darker stains and yet heavier accounts! Whatever
ever the sentence it may now undergo, it has a
hope for mercy in the remorse which the mind
vainly struggles to quell. But darker its doom
if longer retained to earth, yoked to the mind
that corrupts it, and enslaved to the senses
which thou bidst me restore to their tyrannous
forces."

And Grayle bowed his head and covered
his face with his hands in silence and in
trembling.

Then Sir Philip, seized with compassion,
pleaded for him. "At least could not the soul
have longer time on earth for repentance?"
And while Sir Philip was so pleading, Grayle fell
prostrate in a swoon like that of death. When
he recovered, his head was leaning on Haroun's
knee, and liis opening eyes fixed on the glittering
phial which Haroun held, and from which his lips
had been moistened.

"Wondrous!" he murmured; "how I feel life
flowing back to me. And that, then, is the
elixir! it is no fable!"

His hands stretched greedily as to seize the
phial, and he cried, imploringly, "More, more!"
Haroun replaced the vessel in the folds of his
robe, and answered:

"I will not renew thy youth, but I will
release thee from bodily suffering; I will leave
the mind and the soul free from the pangs of the
flesh, to reconcile, if yet possible, their long war.
My skill may afford thee months yet for repentance;
seek, in that interval, to atone for the evil
of sixty years; apply thy wealth where it may
most compensate for injury done, most relieve
the indigent, and most aid the virtuous. Listen
to thy remorse. Humble thyself in prayer."

Grayle departed, sighing heavily, and
muttering to himself.

The next day Haroun summoned Sir Philip
Derval, and said to him:

"Depart to Damascus. In that city the
Pestilence has appeared. Go thither thou, to heal
and to save. In this casket are stored the
surest antidotes to the poison of the plague.
Of that essence, undiluted and pure, which
tempts to the undue prolongation of soul in the
prison of flesh, this casket contains not a drop.
I curse not my friend with so mournful a boon.
Thou hast learned enough of my art to know by
what simples the health of the temperate is
easily restored to its balance, and their path to
the grave smoothed from pain. Not more should
Man covet from Nature for the solace and weal
of the body. Nobler gifts far than aught for the
body this casket contains. Herein are the
essences which quicken the life of those duplicate
senses that lie dormant and coiled in their
chrysalis web, awaiting the wings of a future development
—the senses by which we can see, though
not with the eye, and hear, but not by the ear.
Herein are the links between Man's mind and
Nature's; herein are secrets more precious even
than these those extracts of light which enable
the Soul to distinguish itself from the Mind, and
discriminate the spiritual life, not more from life
carnal than life intellectual. Where thou seest
some noble intellect, studious of Nature, intent
upon Truth, yet ignoring the fact that all animal
life has a mind, and Man alone on the earth ever
asked, and has asked, from the hour his step
trod the Earth and his eye sought the Heaven,
'Have I not a soul—can it perish?'—there,
such aids to the soul, in the innermost vision
vouchsafed to the mind, thou mayst lawfully use.
But the treasures contained in this casket are
like all which a mortal can win from, the mines
he explores;—good or ill in their uses as they
pass to the hands of the good or the evil. Thou
wilt never confide them but to those who will not
abuse; and even then, thou art an adept too versed
in the mysteries of Nature not to discriminate
between the powers that may serve the good to
good ends, and the powers that may tempt the
good—where less wise than experience has made
thee and me—to the ends that are evil; and not
even to thy friend, the most virtuous— if less
proof against passion, than thou and I have
become—wilt thou confide such contents of the
casket as may work on the fancy, to deafen the
conscience, and imperil the soul."

Sir Philip took the casket, and with it directions
for use, which he did not detail. He then
spoke to Haroun about Louis Grayle, who
had inspired him with a mingled sentiment of
admiration and abhorrence; of pity and terror.
And Haroun answered. Repeating, thus, the
words ascribed to him, so far as I can trust, in
regard to them—as to all else in this marvellous
narrative—to a memory habitually tenacious even
in ordinary matters, and strained to the
utmost extent of its power, by the strangeness of
the ideas presented to it, and the intensity of
my personal interest in whatever admitted
a ray into that cloud which, gathering fast
over my reason, now threatened storm to my
affections:

"When the. mortal deliberately allies himself
to the spirits of evil, he surrenders the citadel of
his being to the guard of its enemies; and those
who look from without can only dimly guess
what passes within the precincts abandoned to
Powers whose very nature we shrink to contemplate,
lest our mere gaze should invite them.
This man, whom thou pitiest, is not yet everlastingly
consigned to the fiends; because his soul still
struggles against them. His life has been one