“Killed her? Great God, what dark confession is this!”
“Yes—yes—I killed her, killed her as she slept in my arms and smiled in my face. I drove the steel to her heart—I dabbled her long dark locks in the warm blood that gushed from her bosom! Nay, start not man, nor turn aside with such sudden horror—hast not perused yon volume—know’st thou not the mystic words—“The pure blood, warm from the heart of her thou lovest, more than aught in earth or heaven, poured into the liquid floating within the mystic vessel, will do the work of years in a single hour—”
“And she—she was thy”—
“My wife, my wife! My own, my dark-eyed Ilmeriner. Her blood, the pure current of her very heart, purpled the White Waters of the Alembic—and—and, fool that I was, I would not even wait the hour of trial, I drank the liquid, greedily, and with loud exclamations of joy I drank, and paid the price of my rashness. I neglected to use the microscopic glass; the black speck had not vanished from the surface of the liquid. I lay for days insensible; when I awoke to reason I found this frame grown prematurely old. Had I but waited the little hour, the draught would have infused immortal life into my veins. I was rash—hasty—wild with the madness of my joy, and the draught proved poison.”
“All thy efforts then were foiled.”
“I was foiled, but I did not despair. Again I built the fire on the altar, again I added ingredient to ingredient; the corses of the dead I searched for the last and most powerful Charm; years passed, and the consummation of the Idea of my life approached, when—Fiend of Hell—I discovered that the price of my rashness was not yet paid! As I pored over the leaves of the mystic volume, a fearful thought, expressed in dim and shadowy words, sunk in my very soul”—
“Methinks I see some new horror, lowering over the cloud of guilt and blood that darkens the sky of thy life.”
“Blood, there was, yes, yes, but no guilt. By the Awful Influence that has ruled my life, there was none! The Martyr of the Christian, strides to the stake, that is to cut short the brief thread of his puny life, with a few moments of pain, suffers, dies and is glorified. Is there no glory for Aldarin! Have I not also been a martyr? There there, ever before me, was the One Great Idea, leading me on, and on, filling me with high hopes and grand thoughts, that all pointed to the final good of mankind—”
“Thou didst at first dream the Secret would benefit the mass of men? Ha—ha—thou wouldst have made the Mob, immortal!”
“It is past, the dream is past. Yes, yes, Ibrahim I join in thy laugh. I would have made the Mob immortal! Ha—ha! The multitude, what are they? Now the autumn leaf, blown to and fro by the wind; now the hurricane that a breath may raise; to-day all sunshine, to-morrow all storm and cloud! The Mob! To-day, they strew palm-branches in the path of the Nazarene, and send their hozannas echoing to the sky,—‘Hail, hail king of the Jews!’ To-morrow, the Nazarene stands bound and pinioned in the halls of Pilate and their cry,—the cry of the Mob—comes shrieking through the casement ‘crucify, crucify him!’”