“Here,” cried Aldarin, with dilating eye—“Here, for twenty-one long years have I toiled. The sun shone over the beauty of spring, the luxury of summer, and yet I beheld him not. Autumn came with its decay, and winter with its cold, and yet Aldarin went not forth. Toil, toil, toil, while youth died in my veins, and age came wrinkling over my brow; toil, toil, toil, unceasing and eternal toil.
“Julian went to war, his plume waved over the ranks of battle. Aldarin toiled on, over the carcasses of the dead. Others have made friends among the living, and won honor from the great—it was mine to build a home amid the corses of the unburied dead, and to wring knowledge, wild and terrible, it is true, yet mighty knowledge, from the grasp of death. Toil, toil, toil, but not forever. It will come at last—the glorious secret.
“A few more weary days, a few more dreary nights, and the corse will speak, the alembic will give fort was! h the secret. The future speaks two words that fill my heart with fire—unbounded wealth—Immortal life!”
He looked around with a blazing eye and extended arm—“They rise before me, the host of victims—ghastly with the dead hue, gory with blood they rise, they raise their hands, and shriek my name? And yet, it was to be, it was to be, and it was! And he, the last, the most dread and fearful sacrifice—oh, Fiend, wring not my heart with throes of intolerable torture nor point to yon wan and pallid form! I tell thee when the last secret shall have been wrung from the lips of Death, then, then, he, aye, he may, may——”
He paused, he drooped his head low on his breast, a scarcely audible murmur broke from his lips. Two phrases of doubtful purport might alone be heard——
“Live again—” and then the murmur—“mighty secret——from his body—”
Aldarin turned from his dread and mystic reveries, he seized the scalpel, he commenced the work of knowledge, among the carcasses of the dead. Long he labored, and eagerly he toiled, but at last, as the solemn hours of the night wore on, he slept and dreamed a dream. Prostrate among the bodies of the dead, his arms flung carelessly on either side over the torn and mangled faces, Aldarin slept and dreamed.
And this was the Dream OF Aldarin the Fratricide.
CHAPTER THE SIXTH.
THE DREAM OF THE DAMNED.
He stood upon a lonely isle. His feet were tortured by the sensation of burning, he looked beneath in wonder, and discovered that he stood upon a rock of fire.