“Tread lightly and with a softened footstep, Ibrahim, for the place in which you stand has been the home of the deathless Thought for twenty-one long years! Look—how the azure flame ascends in tongues of flame around the sides of the hanging alembic—it is the last night of its existence! On and on, through calm and cloud, through sunshine and shadow, for twenty-one long years has it silently burned—a little while, and the sands in yon glass will be spent—the Thought springs into birth, and the azure flame will be quenched forever.”
With his slender form elevated to its full height, his arm extended, and his robe thrown back from his shoulder, Aldarin the Scholar glanced around the room, while his gray eye flashed and brightened as though his very soul looked forth in its glance.
His brow was calm, clear and unclouded; his compressed lip wore an expression of fixed determination; and a slight flush pervaded his pale countenance.
The light of the pendant lamp fell over the form of the venerable stranger, his dark-hued face, with the thick eyebrows, the waving hair, and the flowing beard, all snow white in hue, standing out boldly in the ruddy beams, while his dress of sable, relieved by the border of glittering gold, gave solemnity and dignity to his appearance.
He stood calm and erect, gazing with his eyes of midnight darkness, upon the strange altar, with its ever-burning flame of azure, or fixing his glance upon the wild and speaking features of Aldarin the Scholar.
“Advance, Ibrahim—advance to the altar of marble”—exclaimed the Scholar, with all the proud consciousness of the possession of a POWER beyond the reach of the mass of mankind—“Gaze within the alembic—what see’st thou?”
“I see a liquid clear as crystal, calm, motionless, and unruffled. The most gorgeous mirror might fail to rival its shadowless brightness. The alembic is heated to a white heat, yet the liquid bubbles not, nor seethes, nor wears any appearance of the effect of heat. It is beautiful—most beautiful.”
“Every drop is worth a life. Within the recesses of this altar another flame, fanned by a subterranean current, burns beneath the Crucible, which at last will give forth the Secret of Gold.—Gaze upon yon hour glass, Ibrahim—the glass standing upon the corner of the altar—”
“The sands have fallen to within an half-hour of midnight—”
“When the last grain of sand falls in the glass, then will be complete the mystic age of toil. The waters of life will then be pure, the secret of gold will then be perfect. Twenty-one years will then have past since first, I set me down to watch yon never-ceasing flame. Twenty-one years—earth never beheld such years—each day an age, each year an eternity!”