In short, I recognised in the hands of the Dervish
the bright life-renewer, as I had borne it away
from the corpse of the Sage of Aleppo."

"Hold! Are you then, in truth, the
murderer of Haroun, and is your true name Louis
Grayle?"

"I am no murderer, and Louis Grayle did
not leave me his name. I again adjure you to
postpone for this night, at least, the questions
you wish to address to me.

"Seeing that this obstinate pauper possessed
that, for which the pale owners of millions, at the
first touch of palsy or gout, would consent to be
paupers, of course I coveted the possession of the
essence even more than the knowledge of the
substance from which it is extracted. I had no
coward fear of the experiment, which this timid
driveller had not the nerve to renew. But still
the experiment might fail. I must traverse land
and sea to find the fit place for it. While in
the rags of the Dervish, the unfailing result
of the experiment was at hand. The Dervish
suspected my design—he dreaded my power.
He fled on the very night in which I had meant
to seize what he refused to sell me. After all,
I should have done him no great wrong; for I
should have left him wealth enough to transport
himself to any soil in which the material for the
elixir may be most abundant, and the desire of
life would have given his shrinking nerves the
courage to replenish its ravished store. I had
Arabs in my pay, who obeyed me as hounds
their master. I chased the fugitive. I came on
his track, reached a house in a miserable village,
in which, I was told, he had entered but an hour
before. The day was declining: the light in
the room imperfect. I saw in a corner what
seemed to me the form of the Dervish—stooped
to seize it, and my hand closed on an asp. The
artful Dervish had so piled his rags that they
took the shape of the form they had clothed,
and he had left, as a substitute for the giver of
life, the venomous reptile of death.

"The strength of my system enabled me to
survive the effect of the poison; but during the
torpor that numbed me, my Arabs, alarmed, gave
no chase to my quarry. At last, though
enfeebled and languid, I was again on my horse;
—again the pursuit—again the track! I learned
—but this time by a knowledge surer than
man's that the Dervish had taken his refuge
in a hamlet that had sprung up over the site of
a city once famed through Assyria. The same
voice that informed me of his whereabout,
warned me not to pursue. I rejected the warning.
In my eager impatience I sprang on to the
chase; in my fearless resolve I felt sure of the
prey. I arrived at the hamlet, wearied out, for
my forces were no longer the same since the
bite of the asp. The Dervish eluded me still;
he had left the floors, on which I sank exhausted,
but a few minutes before my horse stopped at
the door. The carpet, on which he had rested,
still lay on the ground. I dismissed the youngest
and keenest of my troop in search of the
fugitive. Sure that this time he would not escape,
my eyes closed in sleep.

"How long I slept I know not—a long dream
of solitude, fever, and anguish. Was it the
curse of the Dervish's carpet? Was it a taint
in the walls of the house, or of the air, which
broods sickly and rank over places where cities
lie buried? I know not; but the Pest of the
East had seized me in slumber. When my
senses recovered I found myself alone, plundered
of my arms, despoiled of such gold as I had
carried about me. All had deserted and left me, as
the living leave the dead whom the Plague has
claimed for its own. As soon as I could stand I
crawled from the threshold. The moment my
voice was heard, my face seen, the whole squalid
populace rose as on a wild beast a—mad dog. I
was driven from the place with imprecations and
stones, as a miscreant whom the Plague had
overtaken, while plotting the death of a holy
man. Bruised and bleeding, but still defying,
I turned in wrath on that dastardly rabble; they
slunk away from my path. I knew the land for
miles around. I had been in that land years,
long years, ago. I came at last to the road
which the caravans take on their way to
Damascus. There I was found, speechless and
seemingly lifeless, by some European travellers.
Conveyed to Damascus, I languished for
weeks, between life and death. But for the
virtue 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, while 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 recal 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
languages, 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