"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.'"