They did not wait to be told twice. Earth yawned. The gates of Tartarus stood wide. They found themselves on the side of a steep mountain, down which they scoured madly, hand linked in hand. But fast as they ran, it was long ere they ceased to hear the tongue of Madam Lucifer.
THE TALISMANS
What a wondrous creature is man! What feats the humblest among us perform, which, if related of another order of beings, we should deem incredible!
By what magic could the young student escape the weary old professor, who was prosily proving Time merely a form of thought; a proposition of which, to judge by the little value he appeared to set on the subject of his discourse, he must himself have been fully persuaded? Without exciting his suspicions in the smallest degree, the student stole away to a region inconceivably remote, and presented himself at the portal of a magnificent palace, guarded by goblins, imps, lions, serpents, and monsters whose uncouthness forbids description.
A singular transformation seemed to have befallen the student. In the professor’s class he had been noted as timid, awkward, and painfully respectful. He now strode up with an air of alacrity and defiance, brandishing a roll of parchments, and confronted the seven principal goblins, by whom he was successively interrogated.
“Hast thou undergone the seven probations?”
“Yes,” said the student.
“Hast thou swallowed the ninety-nine poisons?”
“Ninety-nine times each,” said the student.
“Hast thou wedded a Salamander, and divorced her?”