said and sung the Enigma, continuing: ‘You are not an overwise chemist, my dear doctor, else you would never expect, either that Phosphorus gas could reach the condenser, with the stop-cock shut, or that a glass retort, already cracked, would long resist the immense pressure of the accumulating and continually heating vapor. I see you have turned Hermetist and Alchemist—Rosicrucian like! and that you are determined to blow yourself up, or else
“ ‘Find out the ’lixir Vitæ,
Or stumble across the Philosophers’ Stone,’
and the little old man clapped his hands and danced about the room in the most exuberant glee.
“ ‘But, my friend,’ said he, ‘as constant trying means eventual success, I have not the slightest doubt but that you will yet become a very rich man, as well as a long-lived one; for, to tell you the truth, you have come nearer this morning to compounding the Elixir of Life—that very Elixir for which Philosophers have toiled during thousands of years, in vain—than any man that ever lived. For instance: had you placed a less quantity of phosphorus in the retort; more of the first and third, and less of the second, fourth, and fifth ingredients, with a slower heat, and the addition of two ounces of ——, and ——, and one of ——,’ mentioning the articles, ‘you would have, indeed, made the water of perpetual youth and health—that wonderful chemic which purifies the juices, removes obstructions, clarifies the fluids, and renders man physically invulnerable to miasmas and disease—to all things destructive to life, except, of course, material injury. What d’ye think of that? Ha! ha!’ and again he burst out in a roaring squeak:
“ ‘I’ll discover the centre of gravity,
You’ll find out the Philosophers’ stone.’
“It has been the habit of the wiseacres of this world to deride the idea that it is possible to make gold; to laugh in face of the notorious fact that nature is constantly making it, and that, too, of gasses in the earth, as all things else, save souls, are made. It has been fashionable to laugh at the idea of compounding a material capable of freeing the system of all its gross and clogging impurities—the only friction to the wheels of life; a mixture which would exhilarate, purify, strengthen, and supply to the body the chemical and dynamic forces of which it is constantly being robbed. But these wise people will have done laughing by-and-by; not by any means must it be thought that I, for a moment, entertained the silly notion of the alchemists and false Rosicrucians—of finding a material which when brought into contact with metals would change them into gold. We of this century are too knowing for that; nor that I hoped to discover, from the application of the old man’s suggestions, that wonderful fluid alluded to awhile since; but I did believe it possible that I could compound a draught that when quaffed would repair the waste of nature, and believed until that moment, that in Phymyle I had found it. What, then, was my astonishment when the weird old man whispered in my ear that I stood upon the brink of the grandest success conceivable, that the grand Secret of secrets was all but in my grasp? To describe my sensations at that moment is impossible, and the more so because the old man told me the whole process and constituents.
“What cared I even if it was necessary for me to go to Jerusalem, and gather the precious seeds of a fruit that grows upon its walls, wherewith to prepare the water? In other years I did go, and the treasured seeds are mine.... In that awful moment of success I blessed the old man and internally vowed that in return I would read his horoscope, and sleep the sleep of Sialam; for was not the desire of my soul gratified? Why then should I not return the favor?
“Such, in that tumultuous moment, were my thoughts. Soon I became calmer, and then, ‘How came the old man to know the materials that were being used?’ ‘Perhaps he saw the fumes, and thus knew them!’ But how of the contents of the condensing-chest through which the vapor was forced for the purpose of nullifying its injurious qualities? for no living human being had seen me compound or place them there. How came he to know the purpose for which this compound was being brewed? How had he become aware of the dream, the hope of my soul, the fixed purpose of my life during long and wearisome years?
“All these queries served but to envelop their subject in a deeper robe of mystery; and while they were passing he stood at my side gazing curiously at the now white vapor, as it writhed and curled upward, and out upon the air, through the broken panes.
“It was very, very singular!