“You will in any case,” answered Guy, sighing heavily.
But at my instances, he tried to rouse himself from this inexplicable languor, and to drill hand and eye to exquisite precision. I watched him severely. I refused to pardon the least blunder. I trained him for this last trial, as men train horses for the winning race. Guy was really an able physiologist, and his skill only needed finishing touches to be as effective as was possible in the actual condition of science. After two or three weeks I was satisfied, and bade him prepare the next day to begin the last experiment.
I shall never forget that day, the supreme moment of my life. I sat at the windows of an inner room, waiting for Guy, and looked out over the valley that basked in the afternoon sunshine. It was the beginning of September—one of those perfect days at the prime of the year, when life has reached its culmination, and pauses in the fulness of its own content. The air, ripe and balmy, purged of the rawness of Spring and the violent heat of Summer, was as yet untouched by the faintest frost, and restored to such perfection as mortals might breathe after the regeneration of the earth. The grain had been gathered in, but the unfallen fruit still weighed down the orchards, and absorbed the sunlight for its mellowing juices. The first press of the harvest season was over, the second had not yet begun; for one precious moment man and nature paused together, and surveyed the long ascent by which the year had climbed to these high table-lands of peace—not innocent peace, ignorant of action, but the peace of victory after conflict, of repose after strife, of maturity entering upon its rewards. In the perfection of these sunful days, all possibility of change seemed to have been outgrown, left far behind in an old, wearisome existence of long ago. The world had entered upon an eternal blessedness, and the jasper walls of heaven shut it out from harm forever, like coral reefs encircling a lagoon in the Pacific seas. Only by remembering the years that had been before, and the years that should follow after, could the reluctant mind convince itself that this seeming eternity was frail; that whoso lingered too long among the splendors of September would be surely overtaken by treacherous frost, and biting winter winds; that there was but one way to escape the revolting decline from this pinnacle of life—to die. That was my secret. I alone, of all who shivered at approaching winter, had learned how to escape. For me, not only the year, but life itself, should cease at its pinnacle, refusing to go down to a lower place, as a dethroned being prefers death to miserable exile. And with these thoughts, I felt myself possessed by an unutterable calm, such as comes to fever patients when they are dying.
The first day of the experiment little was to be done. I called Guy, who lingered in the laboratory, and bade him apply the first layer of caustic to my breast, over the heart. The little operation required small skill, and this was fortunate, for Guy’s hand trembled so violently, that a delicate manipulation would have been ruined. A drop of the paste fell on my coat-sleeve, and in a few minutes had burned a hole entirely through.
“Look, Guy,” I exclaimed, “through such a window shall you soon gaze at the central mystery of life. I almost envy you the opportunity.”
“Oh!” he cried, “if you would but take it! If you would but use me for your experiment, and spare me this dreadful trial!”
He had urged this exchange from the beginning, but of course I would not consent. What! give up my great chance for immortality, surrender my unique place in the history of science and the world? No, indeed; I was already generous in sharing my achievement, in trusting the preservation of my fame to even my most loyal friend. Beyond that it were folly, madness, to go.
“Nonsense,” I replied therefore to this senseless entreaty. “That question has already been sufficiently discussed. Bah! that caustic burns.”
It was necessary to wait three or four days before renewing the caustic to deepen the eschar made by the first application. This delay gradually became intolerable to me,—the more, that Guy prolonged it on a multitude of trivial pretexts. I was finally obliged to resume the direction of affairs, and order him to proceed.