“You cannot;”—he said faintly—“you cannot stop the advance of death, my friend! You are a very clever man—you have a far-reaching subtlety of brain,—but your learning and wisdom must pause there—there at the boundary-line of the grave. You cannot overstep it or penetrate beyond it—you cannot slacken the pace of the on-rushing years;—no, no! I shall be forced to depart with half my discovery uncompleted.”
El-Râmi smiled,—a slightly derisive smile.
“You, who have faith in so much that cannot be proved, are singularly incredulous of a fact that can be proved;”—he said—“Anyway, whatever you choose to think, here I am in answer to your rather sudden summons—and here is your saving remedy;—” and he placed a gold-stoppered flask on the table near which they sat—“It is, or might be called, a veritable distilled essence of time,—for it will do what they say God cannot do, make the days spin backward!”
Dr. Kremlin took up the flask curiously.
“You are so positive of its action?”
“Positive. I have kept one human creature alive and in perfect health for six years on that vital fluid alone.”
“Wonderful!—wonderful!”—and the old scientist held it close to the light, where it seemed to flash like a diamond,—then he smiled dubiously—“Am I the new Faust, and you Mephisto?”
“Bah!” and El-Râmi shrugged his shoulders carelessly—“An old nurse’s tale!—yet, like all old nurses’ tales and legends of every sort under the sun, it is not without its grain of truth. As I have often told you, there is really nothing imagined by the human brain that is not possible of realisation, either here or hereafter. It would be a false note and a useless calculation to allow thought to dwell on what cannot be,—hence our airiest visions are bound to become facts in time. All the same, I am not of such superhuman ability that I can make you change your skin like a serpent, and blossom into youth and the common vulgar lusts of life, which to the thinker must be valueless. No. What you hold there will simply renew the tissues, and gradually enrich the blood with fresh globules—nothing more,—but that is all you need. Plainly and practically speaking, as long as the tissues and the blood continue to renew themselves, you cannot die except by violence.”
“Cannot die!” echoed Kremlin, in stupefied wonder—“Cannot die?”
“Except by violence—” repeated El-Râmi with emphasis, “Well!—and what now? There is nothing really astonishing in the statement. Death by violence is the only death possible to any one familiar with the secrets of Nature, and there is more than one lesson to be learned from the old story of Cain and Abel. The first death in the world, according to that legend, was death by violence. Without violence, life should be immortal, or at least renewable at pleasure.”