But alas! once now and then the rats began to run up the wall in broad daylight, and foolish Alere, wise in this one thing, immediately began to pack his carpet-bag. He put in his collars, his slippers, his sketch-books and pencils, some of his engraving tools, and a few blocks of boxwood, his silver-mounted flute, and a book for Amaryllis. He packed his carpet-bag and hastened away to his Baden-Baden, to Coombe Oaks, his spa among the apple-bloom, the song of finches, and rustle of leaves.
They sat and talked in the round summer-house in Iden's garden, with the summer unfolding at their knees; Amaryllis, Amadis, Iden, and Flamma.
By Flamma's side there stood a great mug of the Goliath ale, and between his lips there was a long churchwarden pipe.
The Goliath ale was his mineral water; his gaseous, alkaline, chalybeate liquor; better by far than Kissingen, Homburg, Vichy; better by far than mud baths and hot springs. There is no medicine in nature, or made by man, like good ale. He who drinks ale is strong.
The bitter principle of the aromatic hops went to his nervous system, to the much-suffering liver, to the clogged and weary organs, bracing and stimulating, urging on, vitalizing anew.
The spirit drawn from the joyous barley warmed his heart; a cordial grown on the sunny hill-side, watered with dew and sweet rain, coloured by the light, a liquor of sunshine, potable sunbeam.
Age mingling hops and barley in that just and equitable proportion, no cunning of hand, no science can achieve, gave to it the vigour of years, the full manhood of strength.
There was in it an alchemic power analysis cannot define. The chemist analyzes, and he finds of ten parts, there are this and there are that, and the residue is "volatile principle," for which all the dictionaries of science have no explanation.
"Volatile principle"—there it is, that is the secret. That is the life of the thing; by no possible means can you obtain that volatile principle—that alchemic force—except contained in genuine old ale.
Only it must be genuine, and it must be old; such as Iden brewed.